Generative AI and legal and economic professions; AI-based training, including workshops on contracts and legal documents

To draft contracts, deeds, legal opinions, business plans and financial plans with the support of artificial intelligence, whilst learning how to verify the results and recognise when its use is inappropriate or unauthorised. This is the aim of the course ‘AI Applied to Legal and Economic Professions’, organised by the Faculty of Economics and Law at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Piacenza and Cremona campuses.

The course is aimed at students of Economics and Law and is designed to prepare future lawyers, judges, notaries, economists, executives and managers, as well as chartered accountants and employment advisers, to use artificial intelligence in an informed and responsible manner within their respective professional fields. The inaugural event is scheduled for today in the ‘G. Piana’ Conference Hall. The course will run from February to May 2027, totalling 20 hours, delivered both in person and online.

The innovative aspect of the course lies in the integration of technological knowledge, professional applications and the assessment of responsibilities. Alongside generative AI, which is capable of producing text, the programme covers agent-based AI and multi-agent systems, enabling students to experiment with their use in simulated scenarios. The planned activities include the practical development of multi-agent systems for drafting Sale and Purchase Agreements, contracts of sale, court documents, and other documents and reports used in business-related professions.

This original initiative was launched at the instigation of Deputy Vice-Chancellor Anna Maria Fellegara, the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Law, Marco Allena, and Francesco Centonze, Professor of Criminal Law. The course will be taught by Marco Carlo Passarotti, Professor of Computational Linguistics, and Riccardo Campione, Associate Professor of Private Law, who have expertise in the areas of AI governance, liability and data protection.

The programme is divided into three phases. The first provides the foundations for understanding how neural networks and large language models work, right through to RAG architectures – which integrate response generation with the retrieval of information from documentary sources – and multi-agent systems. This technical knowledge is designed to help future professionals choose and use these tools with greater awareness.
The second phase links the practical application of AI to legal and ethical issues. The programme covers the GDPR and the AI Act, the protection of professional secrecy, and accountability in the use of these technologies. Particular attention will be paid to prompt engineering – that is, the formulation of instructions for the systems – and to the critical evaluation of the responses generated.
The third phase will put these skills into practice in the laboratory. Using their own devices, students will work on simulated case studies prepared by the lecturers, experimenting with AI in the drafting of contracts, deeds and legal opinions. The practical exercises will be followed by a group discussion of the results, to assess the quality of the work and identify any errors.
A key element is the ability to recognise the limitations of the tools, including so-called ‘hallucinations’ – that is, responses that are plausible but incorrect or unfounded. The learning objective is to develop independent judgement: selecting and configuring technologies, validating outputs and clearly documenting the choices made. These are skills that combine professional expertise with the ability to keep up to date in a rapidly evolving field.