Comment 8: Is AI a Crutch for Legs that aren’t Broken?
The conversation regarding artificial intelligence often centers on what the machine can do for us. We marvel at the speed of a summary or the fluidity of a generated brief. However, there is a quiet, accumulating cost to this efficiency that the legal community is only beginning to reckon with. Software engineers have a term for this phenomenon called comprehension debt. It describes the gap between the technology we use and our actual understanding of how that technology arrived at its output. In the context of the law school classroom or the clerk’s office, this debt is becoming a significant liability.
Legal education has always been a slow, deliberate process of closing comprehension gaps. We ask students to read dense cases and parse archaic language because the “struggle” is where the expertise is formed. When a student uses generative AI to bypass that struggle, they are essentially taking out a high-interest loan. They get the immediate output of a case brief, but they haven’t actually integrated the legal reasoning into their own mental framework. They have acquired the answer without the ability to defend it or replicate the logic when the machine is no longer available.
This is particularly dangerous in a profession built on authority and precedent. Much like relying on Wikipedia when writing an essay, an AI-generated legal analysis is a fragile thing. If you do not understand the underlying mechanics of the law being discussed, you cannot spot the hallucinations or the subtle shifts in logic that might lead a client toward disaster. We are seeing a shift where the researcher is no longer a navigator but a mere passenger. This is a point of failure that no amount of prompt engineering can fix.
The problem is not the tool itself but the reliance on it as a substitute for cognitive labor. If we continue to prioritize the outcome over the comprehension, we risk creating a generation of legal professionals who can operate the software but cannot practice the law. AI must be viewed through a lens of cautious utility, not a magic remedy for manufactured problems. We must ensure that our tools do not outpace our ability to understand them. Otherwise, the interest on our comprehension debt will eventually come due in a courtroom where “the AI said so” is not a valid defense.
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The ABA Rules of Professional Conduct, Model Rule 1.1 Comment 8 requires, “To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer shall keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” To that end, we have developed this regular series to develop the competence and skills necessary to responsibly choose and use the best technologies for your educational and professional lives. If you have any questions, concerns, or topics you would like to see discussed, please reach out to e.koltonski@csuohio.edu with “Comment 8” in the subject.
