The University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law will prohibit the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and digital devices in most first-year Juris Doctor (JD) classes starting Academic Year 2026-2027, in one of the strictest AI policies yet adopted by a Philippine law school.

The Regular Faculty of UP College of Law approved the policy, titled "Philippine Legal Education in the Time of Artificial Intelligence I: Recommitting to the Fundamentals of Legal Analysis," on August 4, 2026. It was published on the college's website on August 5.

According to the policy, the move follows faculty observations of a marked decline in students' reasoning and argumentation skills that coincided with regular AI use for case briefing, in-class recitation, and legal research. The college said employer feedback on recent graduates echoed the same concern, that many students have become not just AI-literate, but AI-dependent.

The faculty also pointed to a pattern in the college's disciplinary records: Students repeatedly turning to AI tools for exams and writing requirements even when the practice was explicitly prohibited.

While acknowledging that AI has been praised by legal scholars and even the Philippine judiciary for its potential to improve legal research and access to justice, the faculty said unsupervised AI use by lawyers who lack a firm grasp of legal fundamentals risks malpractice and the "dehumanization" of legal practice.

The policy applies to first-year JD core subjects, those traditionally covered in the Philippine Bar Examinations, and introduces the following rules:

Onsite, offline instruction. Core subjects must be taught fully onsite, except in exigent circumstances, make-up classes, or when the Dean grants an exception.

Phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, smart glasses, and recorders are banned during onsite core classes for any purpose, including notetaking, unless an instructor allows a device for a specific class activity or exigent circumstance.

Midterm and final exams for core subjects must be taken individually, offline, and onsite. The policy clarifies this does not require "clean desk" exams or bar open-book exams, which remain at each professor's discretion.

AI-free legal writing. For academic papers and legal memos, particularly in research and method courses, students are barred from using generative AI at any stage — from conceptualization to drafting, editing, and grammar-checking — and from using research databases that rely principally on AI.

In core-subject assessments, simply having a digital or electronic device on one's person, even unused, will be treated as an academic integrity violation subject to formal disciplinary action.

Faculty may introduce AI-based research tools only with the endorsement of the college's Legal Research Cluster, after students have mastered research fundamentals, and subject to mandatory student disclosures on the scope of AI use in every draft and final output.

The Legal Research Cluster, working with the college's Faculty Colloquium on Technology, Legal Education and Law Practice, will publish a list of approved non-AI-reliant legal databases for use in research and method courses.

UP Law framed the policy as a first step toward developing what it called an "AI-resilient" pedagogy, referencing similar measures recently announced by law schools abroad, including the University of Chicago Law School and UC Berkeley School of Law.

The college said the policy will initially apply only to first-year students, with the Colloquium tasked to monitor its effects and eventually craft an equivalent policy for upper-year JD courses.

The faculty said the goal is not to reject AI outright but to ensure students master skills that generative AI cannot replicate — deriving legal arguments from language and social context, working within the gaps of the law, and applying legal reasoning in a persuasive, ethical, and humane way.

The policy also took a philosophical swipe at how generative AI tools operate, noting that such systems tend to present oversimplified, overly authoritative answers and to "pander" to users, in contrast to the critical distrust, patience, and tolerance for uncertainty the college wants to instill in future lawyers.

Incoming and current first-year JD students at UP Diliman's Malcolm Hall should expect a return to fully in-person, lecture-and-recitation-style instruction for bar subjects, with laptops and phones off the table in the classroom and during exams. Students who wish to use AI-assisted research tools in permitted courses will need to disclose their usage in every draft they submit.