URS KRAMER

Legal Education in Germany and the Use of Artificial Intelligence

"The presentation starts with a short description of legal education in Germany and their difficulties. A key feature of it in Germany is – first – the preparation for a central state examination with little scope for universities to tailor the programme. They often leave it therefor to commercial “repetitors”. Furthermore – and second –, the German law degree is a “mass subject” (between 300 and 700 students start each year at each of our universities), meaning that the individual risks “getting lost in the crowd”. In particular, individual feedback on one’s own academic performance is often lacking. Among other things, this contributes to the “traditionally” poor grades in law studies compared to other subjects and to students’ feeling of being left to their own devices.

The programme ""DeepWrite"" aims to change this situation by providing feedback on students’ answers (synchronous teaching) in class, as well as on ‘homework’ (asynchronous teaching), with the help of artificial intelligence. The steps taken to develop the tool, the hurdles encountered, and the thoroughly impressive successes achieved will be shown. The question to discuss is: What further steps should be taken?"

Urs Kramer is Professor of Public Law at the University of Passau, where he has held the Chair of Public Law since 2009. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2020 to 2022 and is a member of the Legal Advisory Board of the Centre for Higher Education Development.

His teaching and research focus on constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the fields of economic regulation and public security law. In recent years, he has been actively engaged in projects on the use of artificial intelligence in legal education, including the externally funded “DeepWrite” project. He is also Executive Director of the Research Centre for German and International Railway Law.