WHAT AI CAN’T SAY: ORAL COMPETENCE IN LEGAL EDUCATION
- Cynthia Ho
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
This Article brings together two critical conversations rarely considered in tandem – generative AI’s impact on legal education and the need for more practical skills – and argues for a shared solution centered on oral communication skills. Law schools have historically devoted substantial attention to teaching students how to write like lawyers, but not how to speak like one. Although this is a long-standing imbalance, the widespread use of generative AI in written work provides an additional urgent reason to reconsider how learning is assessed and places more emphasis on oral assignments. These challenges are generally treated separately, yet both reflect a common blind spot: systemic neglect of oral communication skills, especially within doctrinal classes.
Although attorney surveys and ABA accreditation standards alike identify oral communication as a core
professional competency, it has largely been overlooked. Most law schools only require oral assessment once—during 1L oral arguments in legal writing classes. This leaves oral communication skills largely unaddressed during legal education, resulting in a continuing problem of recent law school graduates with inadequate skills. The ABA’s recent proposal to double experiential learning credits aims to address this, but even the ABA admits that implementation is challenging due to the limited enrollment of experiential classes.
This Article argues that doctrinal classes offer an underused, scalable opportunity to develop oral competence in ways that meet the challenges of an AI era, and a recognized need for increased skills. Drawing on learning science and assessment literature, this Article shows how short oral reports and presentations embedded in doctrinal classes can deepen substantive learning while simultaneously promoting readiness for practice. Unlike expansion of experiential learning, such as law school clinics, these approaches require no new resources. Also, these experiences can mirror oral work that junior lawyers perform, such as explaining law to supervisors, clients, and courts.
This Article provides specific recommendations for the ABA, law schools, and individual
faculty. However, recognizing institutional reform can be slow, the Article focuses on providing classroom-ready strategies that individual faculty can immediately adopt, including ones that are quick to implement. By recentering oral communication as a core mode of legal assessment, this Article provides a practical and principled response to generative AI that also strengthens legal education and professional preparation.
