Episode 20: Marc Miller on Access to the Law, Education, and the AI Moment
Marc Miller has spent his career asking an uncomfortable question: why does legal expertise belong only to a select few? As former dean of the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, he helped create the first Bachelor of Arts in Law in the United States, built flexible master's programs for professionals, and championed a new class of limited-practice legal professionals—licensed, accountable, and focused on the people most underserved by the current system.
In this episode of Responsible AI, Alex talks with Marc about what it would actually take to remake legal education from the ground up, why the bar exam may be more about gatekeeping than competence, and how the trial penalty quietly guts one of our most fundamental constitutional rights.
When the conversation turns to AI, Marc brings the same clear-eyed pragmatism. He's not afraid of it, he's already teaching with it.
As he puts it: "Getting law students to think differently about using AI to provide a much wider range of basic legal services to people who now cannot afford them — that is a challenge where law schools need to think very differently about what they do."
And if you need a reminder to verify your sources along the way, Claude has you covered:
The case looks so real
Perfect citation, wrong world
Check, check again, check
Topics
01:44 Mark Miller's Innovative BA in Law
10:01 Expanding Access to Legal Education
13:36 Reimagining Law School Curriculum
17:38 The Impact of AI on Legal Practice
20:16 Legal Paraprofessionals and Access to Justice
23:13 Rethinking the Bar Exam
23:48 Vetting Lawyers: A New Approach
26:07 The Bar Exam: Rethinking Competency
28:07 Access to Justice: The Lawyer's Role
31:01 Understanding the Trial Penalty
32:32 AI in Law: A Transformative Force
40:56 Four Legal Haikus from Claude
About Marc Miller: Marc served as dean at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law from November 2012 until January 2025.
Under his leadership, Arizona Law was recognized as an innovator in legal education and the legal profession, creating a number of new degrees and programs, and opening and expanding access to legal education.
Marc is an active and highly cited scholar in criminal and environmental law. Before coming to the University of Arizona, Marc taught students at Emory University School of Law, at Stanford University and Duke University, and served as law clerk to Chief Judge John Godbold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Montgomery, Alabama, as Attorney-Advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Special Counsel at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York.
Learn more about Marc Miller’s work at the University of Arizona.
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