Contents

AI Law & Policy
Spring 2026
Tue & Thurs 10:40-12:10
Michael Froomkin — froomkin@law.miami.edu
https://ai26.umlaw.net

Welcome to AI Law!

This memo has some important basic information about the organization of the class, and some class policies. Please pay particular attention to the section on “Special Teaching/Learning Challenges this Semester” below.

Changelog

Ver 0.1 Dec 1, 2025.

Important Class Information & Class Policies

Casebook: Welcome to the (b)leading edge–There is no casebook for this class. Instead, we’ll be reading legal and technical articles and reports, most very recent, and even some journalism.

Class blog (essential reading): https://ai26.umlaw.net

Access blog with credentials
user: AI
pass: AI2026

(but of course you know that if you are reading this….)

Course Description and Objectives

‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) includes a variety of technologies, notably ‘machine learning’ systems such as IBM’s Watson, which won a ‘Jeopardy’ match, Google’s Ultra Go, which trounced a Go Master, and a plethora of systems designed to predict tumors, shopping habits, and even criminality. ‘Robots’ increasingly feature varying degrees of autonomy, including systems like self-driving cars, military drones, and robo-surgeons. Behind many robots lies an embodied or even remotely connected AI, making the two new technologies intertwined. Currently grabbing the headlines are “chatbots” such as Chat-GPT and “generative AI” for text (often overlapping with chatbots) and graphics (still or video) such as MidJourney.

All these technologies present a number of ethical, social, and legal challenges that are inciting a wide variety of responses. Representative examples of problems include: Should we permit AI-controlled robots to carry lethal weapons? Who is responsible for invidious discrimination by an AI? What should the liability (and ethical) rules be for accidents involving autonomous vehicles? Is existing malpractice law ready for AI doctors? Should AIs and/or Robots have ‘rights’, whether human rights, animal rights, or some sui generis set of rights? Is training an AI from other people’s materials fair use, or a copying in violation of the Copyright Act? What happens if an AI produces output that resembles an input — is that a copyright violation?

The course will treat AI Law as a distinct subject, and also attempt to put it into the context of the law’s ongoing encounter with new technology. Most law courses seek to give you mastery of a relatively well-defined body of law. This course is different: it will seek to give you a taste of what it is like to work in areas with little or no clearly defined law (as such–the task then is to borrow or invent it), or new law, or where the law is in the process of being created and assembled – and where you could have a hand in making it, or interpreting it. Much like acrobatics without a net, this can be thrilling but it can also be scary. Crashes are always a possibility.

Grading will be based on class participation which depending on class size may involve several stints as part of an on-call panel, a short (seven page) reaction paper during the term, and a circa 10-page final writing.

This course can satisfy a requirement for The Business of Innovation, Law and Technology: BILT Concentration

Course Prerequisites

No background knowledge will be assumed other than first-year law courses (notably Con Law I, Criminal Procedure, Contracts, and Torts) and a basic knowledge of how to use the internet.

Online Classes

Classes will be conducted via Zoom.

Educational experts seem to agree that Zoom-based classes need tailored rules of conduct. Most counsel requiring that students attend with webcams on for a number of reasons, high among them that it is too weird for both instructors and fellow students to interact with black rectangles with a name or photo on it. But it is not quite that simple: some people are forced to work from crowded or distracting spaces; some people are worried that their images may be captured and deepfaked for some nefarious purpose; some people have serious wifi or other technical issues that makes it difficult to maintain a live feed. I have tried, therefore, to craft the following policy with those and other special circumstances in mind.

Students should attend class via webcam whenever possible. Students should not have webcams off if it is avoidable.
If you have a distracting background, especially if you have one with other people moving about, please consider using Zoom’s “virtual background” feature to blur your background if your hardware supports it.
Please mute your microphone when not taking part in a class discussion.
I do not actually believe this needs saying, but one of the leading articles on remote teaching recommends it very strongly, so here goes: Students should “refrain from engaging in behavior (e.g., eating dinner, lounging in bed, using a treadmill) that would be inappropriate in a residential classroom.” (Then again, if you consider this, maybe it does need saying.)
If for some reason you believe you will need to have your webcam off routinely, then please get in touch to explain your reasons.

The law school is requiring me to record all classes conducted on Zoom. In order to protect your privacy, however, I have elected to not make those recording available routinely on the web. Rather, if you miss a class for an excused absence, you can ask me, or my Faculty Assistant, Ms. Crystel Hage chage@law.miami.edu, for a copy of the recording. It follows from this that I am trusting you not to make recordings of the class; indeed, recording the class is strictly prohibited. If you are ill and have to miss class I am also very happy to make an appointment to discuss the material with you. Really.

More generally, I will count on your feedback: if something is not going right, or if there’s something I could do differently and perhaps better, it would be very nice if you would send an email to tell me about it.

Being called on. This class, more than most, will depend on your participation. I like volunteer participants and often ask for them. Nevertheless, if (when) I think that the same voices are enjoying too much class time, I will broaden the pool by calling on others. You are free to decline, but I’d ask you not to do that often please. One method to ensure a variety of voices is setting small on-call panels for every class. If you need to trade a date please find someone to trade with, email me, copying my assistant and the other party in the trade.

How to contact me

I urge you to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions about the class. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to contact me early in the semester if you think you need help understanding something. If you are doing the reading but still feel lost or confused, don’t wait until the last three weeks of class. I can help. But odds are that I can’t help nearly as much at the last minute.

Probably the easiest way to contact me is to send me e‑mail at froomkin@law.miami.edu, putting AI26: at the start of your subject line. I am online a lot. If you don’t hear back from me within 24 hours, it almost certainly means my spam filter ate your email and you should resend it to my backup email account at michael.froomkin@gmail.com. You don’t get as fast service on that account, so don’t use it first, but the spam filter is a little more accurate. Please note also that the gmail account is in some ways less secure. I would not if I were you send anything confidential to that account; if you have something confidential and I didn’t reply to you at the froomkin@law.miami.edu address, then write to the google one asking me to see your other email (if indeed it got to me at all….) or suggesting some times when I can call you.

Office Hours. I will have online office hours; when I know a bit more about my own schedule, I will take a class poll to find out what times work best for the largest number of you, and to the extent I am able given my other commitments, I will schedule office hours then. Office hours will be like a virtual ‘open house’ and consist of my having a zoom session open, to which anyone can join if they have a question. Please note that office hours will be for law school related matters only. As noted above, however, you are always welcome to schedule a private zoom session at other mutually convenient times. Please if you are asking for a private meeting suggest a few times that would work for you in order to cut down on the back-and-forth about scheduling.

The Fine Print^[1]

Professional Behavior. Outside of class, I am as happy to kick back as the next (sober) person, but I have somewhat old-fashioned ideas of how both you and I should behave during the all-too-brief period we are yoked together in the (virtual) classroom. Please be sure to mute your zoom when you are not intentionally participating orally.

Class Assignments and Hypothetical Exercises: Whether or not each part of a class’s reading is specifically discussed, you are responsible for all cases, notes and materials assigned.

Attendance: Legal instructors differ in the extent to which they are willing to be parentalist. Some of us observe that law students are adults, and conclude from this fact that they should be allowed to make their own choices as to whether they show up for class and whether they participate in class. All that matters, these instructors argue, is how students do on the exam. (But we don’t have an exam….) Other instructors respond that by signing a contract with the law school, our students have engaged us to be trustees for their education, and to use our trained judgment to do whatever we can, within the bounds of law and reasonableness, to maximize our beneficiaries’ educations. I agree with both of those views. But what carries the day for me is the thought of your future clients. They’re entitled to expect the best you can deliver. So they’re entitled to expect me to try to encourage you to be the best you can be. Plus the ABA requires that I certify you actually attended class.

The law school has a system by which you certify you are in the zoom during the first few minutes of class. Gripped with the delusion that what I have to say after teaching for more than three decades may be of value, I will use this information to have my Faculty Assistance compile a record of your attendance. You can cut up to a whole week’s worth of classes (that’s, sadly, just two of them) without giving any reasons or suffering any penalty to your grade, although who knows what the lost knowledge will do to your education, or the fear of the lost knowledge will do to your mental health. Miss more than that without an excuse, and it will begin to lower your class participation grade. If you miss five or more classes without a good excuse I will contact the Dean of Students office and ask them to speak to you. Miss seven or more classes without a good excuse and there’s a risk we may drop you from the class. If you forget to sign in via the UM system, please don’t ask me to override it (I won’t). Lawyers need to be able to manage obligations and life is too short for me to be absence court.

Please make every effort to join the class on time. If you can’t make it on time, it’s still better to come late than not at all. One of the few unmitigated benefits of using Zoom to hold a class is that it should make the parking problem a lot easier. Set an alarm on your phone. I do.

Grading Policy

Your final grade in AI Law will be based on a combination of class participation and two writing assignments. Of these, the final writing assignment will have the greatest weight.

Please note that that you will be assessed on the quality, not the quantity, of your class participation. Just getting stuff wrong is at worst lost opportunity (and sometimes being wrong in an interesting way is valuable!) but not a negative score. Any negative assessment regarding your participation will be the result of rudeness to peers (happily this almost never happens!), or of your disinterest in the course, as reflected by protracted absence from class, repeated refusal to participate in class, unauthorized violation of the classroom policies, or sustained evidence of lack of preparation and engagement. Poor attendance may contribute to a diagnosis of poor class participation.

An important part of your class participation grade will be based on your role as an on-call panelist for some classes; the exact number will depend on our final enrollment.

Mechanics of Grading. I will make an effort to grade your papers anonymously by having you turn them into my assistant, who will then forward them in bulk, without names, to me.

Special Teaching/Learning Challenges this Semester

We face some special teaching/learning challenges this semester. Among the biggest are:

This is an all-online class. Please keep up. Please participate. Please ask questions. While most students have seemed able to deal with the special challenges of the online format in past years, it was distressing to me to discover, as the papers came in, that a (very) few students clearly were not getting it at all – and they never got in touch to ask for help. Don’t be that person. You have an open invitation to contact me via email to schedule one-on-one chats via phone or zoom. (Please suggest some convenient times in your initial email to save on scheduling back-and-forth.)
This stuff can change quickly. Last year’s syllabus already seems dated in many places, and I may be doing updates as we go forward. I hope you will see this as a welcome chance to be as up-to-date as possible and not as a pain.
I’m getting more medical attention than I want. As of this writing in early December 2025, I am in remission from lymphoma, but if it has left me immunocompromised which means I catch stuff, and am subject to various other side-effects. Plus I’m still recovering from my third open-heart surgery a year ago. And then there are the side-effects from recent so-called minor surgery… All signs are that the remission is stable and likely to endure, but were it to be the case that we decide I’m having a lymphoma relapse, step one would be to go back on the chemo which might involve rescheduling some classes. One thing I’ve learned from this process is that things can change suddenly, and you just have to roll with it. I hope you will understand and roll with me if needed.
At this writing, this class is small. That is great for me, as I get to know you better, but it makes it harder for you to coast…

I look forward to seeing you (virtually) soon!

Ver 0.1 Dec. 1, 2025.

^[1]Alert readers will have noticed that the type face which follows is not in fact any smaller than the type which precedes it. The text is not smaller because excessively small print can be an issue for people with disabilities. This class, like most law school classes, is heavily oriented toward reading a large quantity of difficult material in a small amount of time. The University of Miami School of Law is committed to creating an inclusive learning environment that meets the needs of our diverse student body. If you have a disability (including physical or mental health challenges) and need academic accommodations, please contact Student Accessibility Services via email at access@law.miami.edu. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive; students are encouraged to contact the office and inquire about any disability-related needs within the first weeks of the semester.

Also, if you have other concerns about your personal well-being or that of a classmate, please reach out to Student Affairs at deanofstudents@law.miami.edu or any of the resources of the resources listed on our well-being website (student.law.miami.edu/wellbeing).

If you ever find yourself struggling to afford groceries or basic nutrition, please take advantage of our food pantry located in F205.

Class Recordings

Students are expressly prohibited from recording any part of this course. Meetings of this course might be recorded by the University. Any recordings will be available to students registered for this class as they are intended to supplement the classroom experience. Students are expected to follow appropriate University policies and maintain the security of passwords used to access recorded lectures. Recordings may not be reproduced, shared with those not enrolled in the class, or uploaded to other online environments. If the instructor or a University of Miami office plans any other uses for the recordings beyond this class, students identifiable in the recordings will be notified to request consent prior to such use.

Title IX & More

The University of Miami seeks to maintain a safe learning, living, and working environment free from all types of sexual misconduct including but not limited to: Dating Violence, Domestic Violence, Sex- or Gender-Based Discrimination, Sexual Assault (including Sexual Battery), Sexual Exploitation, Sexual Harassment, and Stalking. For additional information about the University’s efforts to prevent, stop, and address sexual misconduct, including resources and reporting options, please visit www.miami.edu/titleix or contact the University’s Title IX Office at titleixcoordinator@miami.edu.