LAW SCHOOL DEAN, MORGAN GRAY
This spring, Gray has introduced a new course to the law school, Natural Language Lawyering. The class introduces students to Natural Language Processing (NLP), the branch of AI that uses computing to understand and interpret human language—skills vital in areas like legal writing and document analysis. While many law schools now offer courses on AI and the law, it is believed that St. Thomas is unique with students engaging directly the underlying architecture of large language models. In Gray’s course, students examine how systems represent, process and generate legal text—including the embedding structures, transformer architectures, and generation techniques that shape model behavior. Rather than treating AI as a black box, the course prepares future lawyers to understand, integrate, evaluate, and supervise the systems increasingly influencing legal practice. “The main idea of the course is to develop a substantial understanding of NLP methods and how they’ve been and will be applied in law,” Gray said. “This enables students to engage with techniques and problems in practice.” Next fall, Gray is teaching Coding for Lawyers, a class that was first taught by Professor Wulf Kaal in 2018. The class teaches law students the Python programming language, which in turn helps them approach legal problems as data challenges.
Gray's academic research and
scholarship will concentrate on artificial intelligence in law, with a
particular focus on case-based reasoning and its applications to argument generation, analysis, and evaluation; outcome prediction; and legal text analytics.
Professor Morgan Gray
pursuit of research in AI and law also felt welcomed by the St. Thomas community." He also believes strongly in mentorship, which is a distinctive aspect of a St. Thomas legal education. “I have been very fortunate to have stellar mentors,” Gray said. “My experiences in law school, clerking for a judge and in the sciences have shown me the value of a good mentor and how much one person who takes an interest in what you’re doing can completely change the trajectory of your career by a significant degree. I enthusiastically look forward to passing that on.” Though his professional passions are focused on technology, outside of the classroom Gray makes it a point to pursue non-technology- based activities like woodworking and fly fishing. "I’ve been told about the lakes, but I look forward to focusing on what I’m dubbing the ‘better water’ in Minnesota, and finding the best streams," Gray said jokingly.
Gray is completing his Ph.D. in Intelligent Systems through the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his J.D. at the Duquesne University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, also in Pittsburgh, where he has taught as an adjunct professor since 2022. “I have always felt a vocation to teaching and thoroughly enjoy it,” Gray said. “I think, my favorite moment in teaching is when a student who has grappled with a question, topic or assignment for some time finally comprehends what they’ve been struggling with. Possibly even more enjoyable is when a student dives deep into a topic that they do not understand, embracing difficult learning. I never tire of encouraging learning and watching it happen.” He says he was interested in teaching at St. Thomas Law for numerous reasons. "I was attracted to St. Thomas’ commitment to excellence in scholarship and its mission for the common good,” Gray said. "My
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