NUS Law joins Legora's legal AI scholars programme

The National University of Singapore Faculty of Law has joined Legora's Legal AI Scholars Program, adding another Asia-Pacific law school to the legal technology company's academic network.

Under the arrangement, NUS Law faculty and students will receive complimentary access to Legora for legal research, document review and drafting. Legora's Singapore team will provide training sessions, and the university plans to introduce the platform only after students have built core legal foundations.

NUS Law said the programme would focus on how students use artificial intelligence in legal work, rather than treating the software as a substitute for legal reasoning. The faculty intends to emphasise when AI should be used, how its outputs should be assessed and the need for students to remain responsible for their own arguments.

The partnership places NUS Law alongside Singapore Management University in the Asia-Pacific programme. Other participating institutions include Stanford Law School, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, King's College London, and The City Law School and BPP University Law School in the UK.

Partner institutions receive guides, training videos, and training sessions tailored to their specific needs. Legora also works with academic staff to build AI exercises and assignments into existing courses.

At NUS, Legora's legal engineering team in Singapore will work with NUS Libraries to support access to the platform and train faculty and students. The collaboration is intended to connect classroom teaching with the ways legal workplaces are adopting AI tools.

Professor Tan Cheng Han SC, Professor and Chief Strategy Officer at the NUS Faculty of Law, said the faculty would take a measured approach to the technology.

"Our students will spend their careers in a profession where AI is part of everyday legal work, and university is where they should learn to use it well. Good lawyering, however, still starts with reading cases closely, building a sound argument and taking responsibility for it. We will therefore introduce Legora only once students have established these foundations. The aim is for our graduates to be lawyers who understand when to rely on these tools, and when not to," Tan said.

The arrangement reflects a broader debate in legal education over how quickly universities should integrate generative AI into teaching and assessment. Law schools have weighed demand from students and employers against concerns that early reliance on automated tools could weaken training in core skills such as close reading, analysis, and drafting.

In this case, NUS Law is framing the technology as a tool to be introduced after students have developed those basics. That differs from models that place AI tools at the centre of first-year legal training and suggests a cautious stance, even as firms across the region increase their use of such systems in daily work.

Legora has been expanding its presence in Asia-Pacific, with offices in Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul and Bengaluru. More than 130,000 legal professionals across over 80 markets use the platform, including those at law firms and in-house legal teams.

Heather Paterson, Vice President of Legora APJ, said the local training element was central to the partnership.

"Singapore's law schools are deciding now how their graduates will learn to work with AI, and NUS has chosen to do that on the platform those graduates will use in practice. Providing access is the simple part. What matters is the time our team in Singapore spends with faculty and students, working out where the platform strengthens teaching and where the fundamentals still need to come first," Paterson said.