Jodhpur: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant Sunday called upon National Law Universities (NLUs) to take the lead in shaping the convergence of law and technology, saying legal education must prepare future lawyers not merely to use technological tools but to question, verify and exercise independent judgement while using them.He was speaking on the theme ‘Legal Technology and its Roadmap: Positioning Law as a Leader in legal Technology”, at the Vice Chancellors’ Conclave 2.0 organised by NLU, Jodhpur. The CJI said technology had already entered legal profession and is transforming contract drafting, due diligence, legal research and dispute resolution.“Technology has already walked in,” the CJI said, stressing that law graduates would enter a professional environment increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and other technology-enabled processes.He said legal education should equip students with judgement, adaptability and ethical grounding rather than merely familiarising them with new tools. Future lawyers would encounter systems capable of analysing thousands of precedents, identifying legal and regulatory risks, organising evidence and supporting online dispute resolution, he said.The CJI cautioned against completely prohibiting generative AI and other emerging technologies from classrooms. While acknowledging concerns over students becoming dependent on technological outputs or mistaking plausible answers for correct ones, he said supervised exposure was preferable to prohibition.“A student who is forbidden from encountering these tools in a supervised, disciplined academic setting, will still encounter them” in professional life, he said, warning that such students could enter the workplace “a step behind their peers.”He called for curriculum and pedagogy reforms to teach students when technology can be trusted, when verification is essential and when human judgement must prevail. Academic integrity, he said, must remain central to discussions around artificial intelligence.Moving beyond adaptation, the CJI urged law universities to become centers of serious research on algorithmic accountability, data protection, digital access to justice and technology-enabled dispute resolution. Congratulating NLU Jodhpur on completing 25 years, he said technological advancement must ultimately remain guided by the values of justice and fairness.
