In Professor Amy Salyzyn’s AI and the Legal Profession course, that question is explored through hands-on experience with emerging technologies.
This year, the Common Law Section became the first law school to formally integrate LawQi, a proprietary legal AI learning platform developed by uOttawa alum Colin Lachance, LLM ‘13, into its curriculum. The result is a dynamic course that prepares students to navigate a profession increasingly shaped by technology.
A course built for a changing profession
Now in its third year, Salyzyn’s upper-year seminar reflects the pace and unpredictability of AI’s evolution.
“It’s kind of an ‘of the moment’ course – one that’s always iterating and changing,” Salyzyn explains. “That makes it really fun and gives me a chance to continually learn, along with the students.”
The course examines how AI is reshaping every corner of the justice system. Students also gain a foundational knowledge of how AI technologies work, an essential step before engaging with its real-world applications.
To keep pace with constant developments, Salyzyn incorporates current events directly into the classroom. “We begin each class with a session on AI in the news… because there’s so many developments happening on a weekly basis,” she says.
Salyzyn herself is a leading voice in this space. Recently awarded the Law Society Medal, one of the Law Society of Ontario’s highest honours, she has worked extensively with organizations such as the Ontario Justice Education Network, Community Legal Education Ontario, and the Law Foundation of Ontario to advance technology-driven initiatives that improve access to justice. Her work emphasizes not only what AI can do, but how it must be used responsibly.
She was recently awarded a Dean’s Research Professorship in Technology and Justice Futures. This professorship is part of a new initiative supporting faculty whose work advances the Common Law Section’s strategic priorities.
Learning by doing
Recognizing that AI cannot be fully understood through theory alone, Salyzyn introduced LawQi at the beginning of the term to give students hands-on experience in a safe, structured environment.
“If you’re going to understand both the opportunities and limitations [of AI], you actually need to have experience using the technology.”
Professor Amy Salyzyn
The platform allows students to experiment with AI tools without the risks associated with real client data. It guides them through exercises that build both technical understanding and professional judgment.
For Lachance, this experiential approach is essential. “AI skill development requires AI use,” he explains.
Developed initially through his work as Innovator in Residence at the Ontario Bar Association, LawQi was designed to address a key gap in legal education: the lack of interactive, self-directed learning tools that allow users to engage directly with AI while developing critical skills.
“If you want to help people learn about AI, you need something that is relatively complete, self-contained, and allows them to go as deep as they want to go. The starting point for me,” Lachance says, “was the idea of having an embedded AI assistant in the learning environment.”
A new kind of learning tool
What sets LawQi apart is its emphasis on transparency and critical thinking. Unlike many AI tools, it actively teaches users to question its outputs.
“LawQi ensures that the user learns the shortfalls and the cautions [of using AI] … in every interaction.”
Colin Lachance, LLM ‘13
— LawQi Creator and developer
The system not only provides answers but also explains how those answers were generated, and where they may fall short. Over time, this builds a habit of reflection that students carry into their broader use of AI.
The University of Ottawa is the first law school to formally incorporate LawQi into its curriculum, and currently the only one doing so.
Students at the centre
For students, the experience goes beyond technical skill-building. It reshapes how they think about both AI and their future roles as legal professionals.
Wade Bryan Radmore, 2L, says the platform reinforces active engagement: “Effective AI usage starts with effective prompting,” he explains. “By requesting multiple outputs, I was still cognitively involved in the task. I got to assess each response, rather than just automatically accepting the first result.”
He notes that the process helped him “understand and mitigate one of the biggest issues with AI usage: automation bias, when users over-rely on AI’s outputs without thinking about them critically.
“By learning about AI’s flaws and how to mitigate them, we’re better positioned to use the tool critically, ethically, and effectively.”
Wade Bryan Radmore, 2L
Jillian Elizabeth Nield, 3L, similarly emphasizes the value of learning through direct experimentation. “Seeing these limitations firsthand was more effective than just hearing about them in a lecture,” she says.
Through exercises comparing outputs from different AI tools, she quickly saw how inconsistent results could be.
“The responses often differed and sometimes contained inaccurate information. That really highlighted the importance of carefully reviewing AI-generated content and verifying it through independent legal research.”
At the same time, she sees clear opportunities in how AI can be used in practice. “It was interesting to see how AI can be tailored to specific legal tasks, like drafting pleadings with a particular tone or structure. It showed me that AI can save lawyers a lot of time and make their work more efficient.”
For Nield, the experience has provided a strong foundation for the future.
“This course has given me valuable exposure to the world of AI, which will benefit my future career as AI becomes more common in the legal field.”
Jillian Elizabeth Nield, 3L
Building the right mindset
Beyond tools and techniques, Salyzyn is focused on cultivating what she calls a “3C mindset”: curiosity, confidence, and caution.
In a field where change is constant and uncertainty is inevitable, this mindset is essential. Students are encouraged not only to engage with AI, but to question it, to understand its limitations, recognize its risks, and use it responsibly.
This approach is particularly important given the real-world consequences of misuse. High-profile cases of lawyers relying on inaccurate AI-generated information have underscored the need for vigilance and professional accountability.
Preparing for what comes next
Looking ahead, both Salyzyn and Lachance see AI as a transformative force in the legal profession—one that will bring both opportunity and disruption.
“It’s going to be a scary time with a lot of upheaval,” LaChance acknowledges.
At the same time, he emphasizes that AI will not replace lawyers but will change expectations. “Clients will expect you to adopt this… and rely on you more for expert guidance,” he says.
For her part. Salyzyn highlights the importance of looking at AI in relation to the profession’s broader role in society. “Lawyers are particularly well placed… as guardians of the rule of law, to play a really important role,” she notes.
For today’s students, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. As Lachance observes, “There is no professional career for them that doesn’t involve AI.”
