Note: This course is restricted to first-year J.D. students only.

The drop deadline for 1L January Experiential Term classes is December 2, 2026. Students may not drop a course if they do not have an offer to enroll in a different January Experiential Term course.

1L January Experiential Term courses are intensive learning courses. Class attendance is required in each course every day of the term. Students should plan accordingly and should not take on other work commitments during the term.

Exam Type: No Exam

In the course Technology and the Public Interest 2027, we ask a deceptively simple question with dramatic stakes: should societies regulate AI, social media, and other new digital technologies — and if so, how? During the January term, this course will bring students into direct conversation with the people shaping this debate who join the course as guests, including a mix of regulators, technology executives, journalists, litigators, and scholars who have spent careers wrestling with these problems from different vantage points. Students will examine concrete controversies — from state attorneys general suing Meta over child safety, to the fight over Section 230, to the EU’s AI Act and its global ripple effects — not as abstract case studies but as live disputes with unsettled outcomes. Alongside these policy questions, the course also turns inward, asking how AI is already changing the practice of law itself and what it means to prepare for a legal career in which these tools are a given rather than a novelty.

Students should expect an experiential course that adopts a discussion-driven, guest-intensive format rather than a traditional 1L law school course. The course culminates in group presentations that require students to take a position on one of the term’s central debates. This course is designed to meet the Negotiation/Leadership Course Requirement. We do so by focusing in particular on experiential learning with individualized feedback, especially on the topics of decision-making, cognitive biases, judgment; active listening; and team creation and functioning. No prior technical background is assumed; what the course does assume is curiosity about how law, technology, and public policy are being renegotiated in real time, and a willingness to wrestle with these themes both to understand them on their merits and their applicability to the practice of law itself.

Note: There may be days throughout the winter term that require attendance beyond the scheduled times. Please refer to the course syllabus and page for more information.