By embedding students into tech-enabled legal services and building scalable, human-centered solutions, legal education programs have become engines for innovation
Key findings:
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Law schools as innovation hubs — Several law schools across the US are becoming laboratories for access to justice, using technology and partnerships to develop scalable legal tools that help underserved communities.
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Technology-driven experiential learning — Students are gaining hands-on experience by building digital tools — like document automation, chatbots, and AI-powered self-service tools — that expand legal services and improve service delivery.
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Systemic impact on legal education — These programs offer not just innovation at the local level but present an opportunity for a structural shift in legal education and justice reform more broadly.
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Law schools are stepping into a critical role as laboratories for persistent access to justice challenges. As the legal system grapples with rising demand and constrained resources, many law schools are forging partnerships, launching clinics, and embracing technology to bridge the justice gap.
Experiential learning is increasingly important in the rapidly changing legal sector, and with technological innovation, it is helping to close justice gaps that traditional models have failed to address. By embedding students into tech-enabled, hybrid frontline legal services and having them work on building scalable, human-centered solutions, a growing number of legal education programs have embraced this dual imperative. Students learn the law and deploy it through digital tools, virtual services, and data-informed strategies that help them augment their abilities and maximize impact.
Building for scale with guided tools
Many law school-based tech clinics currently leverage technology not just to serve clients, but to test new methods of delivery. Early pioneers in this space include collaborations with Pro Bono Net and schools like Chicago-Kent College of Law and Suffolk University Law School. Using the LawHelp Interactive platform, students recently built guided interviews and digital self-help forms with tools like A2J Author and HotDocs to assist unrepresented litigants navigating thorny legal issues such as divorce, eviction, and domestic violence.
These tools — designed to be used independently by non-lawyers — exemplify a modern variation on experiential education in which students create scalable, public-facing tools with measurable impact.
For example, Western New England School of Law’s Center for Social Justice uses document automation and online in-take portals to provide services for criminal record expungement and LGBTQ+ legal support. Students provide targeted services at scale, reaching individuals who may otherwise be excluded from traditional legal systems due to transportation, financial, or cultural barriers.
As the legal system grapples with rising demand and constrained resources, many law schools are forging partnerships, launching clinics, and embracing technology to bridge the justice gap.
At Suffolk University’s Legal Innovation and Technology Clinic, law students collaborate with legal aid organizations and courts to develop scalable solutions for civil legal issues. Students are taught project management and computer programming to create powerful tools that directly assist unrepresented parties, including courtformsonline.org and online guided interviews which help people navigate processes such as eviction sealing.
Ohio State University’s Justice Tech Practicum brings together law students and computer science students to design, build, test, and refine technologies aimed at addressing access to justice issues. The program is currently working with the Self-Help Center of Franklin County to develop tools for tenants facing eviction.
Tech clinics as justice design labs
Law school clinics are increasingly functioning as innovation labs for system-level design — incubating, testing, and improving justice tools in real time. Suffolk University’s Legal Innovation and Technology Clinic is partnering with the American Arbitration Association to pilot tech-driven approaches to low-contest divorces and family law matters in Massachusetts. Students help design and test accessible digital tools that streamline dispute resolution processes.
At the University of Arizona James E. Rogers School of Law, the Innovation for Justice program collaborated with the Alaska Legal Services Corporation to improve Benefactor, a digital tool that helps guide case managers, social workers, and community navigators through the Social Security disability application process. The Arizona UX for Justice team delivered a human-centered design roadmap for product refinement, legal empowerment, and broader implementation.
Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) is also tapping into the power of collaborative tech development. Through its Innovation Lab, LANC worked with law students from Duke and Vanderbilt universities to develop and refine its Legal Information Answers chatbot with students conducting auditing and user testing to optimize the client experience. Vanderbilt students also analyzed LANC lawyer workflows to identify how AI tools might improve staff effectiveness.
AI and data-driven legal empowerment
Law schools are also leveraging AI to improve access to justice, transparency, and user experience. VAILL, the Vanderbilt AI Law Lab, is collaborating with lawyers from the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee, Vanderbilt Data Science Institute (DSI) students and staff, and courts to create and implement Day in Court, a tool to help unrepresented parties navigate court appearances successfully. The pilot will initially focus on small claims matters and provide a platform that can be replicated in other jurisdictions. VAILL and DSI also collaborated to create an advanced directive tool, powered by generative AI (GenAI), for Tennesseans, a technology that will serve as the model for a future suite of self-service life planning tools.
Law school clinics are increasingly functioning as innovation labs for system-level design — incubating, testing, and improving justice tools in real time.
The Stanford Legal Design Lab engages students in service design, user research, and AI strategy in partnership with public interest organizations like Legal Services Corporation, the American Bar Association, Los Angeles courts, and legal aid groups around the country. Students conduct community interviews, run workshops, and develop accountability frameworks for AI-powered justice. In one project, Stanford students collaborated with the NAACP to refine and scale their Housing Navigator, an eviction prevention pilot that can help tenants navigate housing instability.
Implications for legal education
These are just a few examples of law school programs that are reimagining the student’s role not simply as a temporary service provider, but as a developer of justice infrastructure. What distinguishes these programs is not just innovation at the local level, but the structural insight they offer for legal education and justice reform more broadly. They suggest a model in which:
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- experiential learning is centered on service delivery;
- technology is now integral, not peripheral, to legal education; and
- students contribute to justice infrastructure, not just as one-time interventions.
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These models also underscore the power of public-private collaboration. As more courts digitize their services, these student-built tools are increasingly integrated into formal legal processes. Organizations can expand their capacity without proportional increases in cost or headcount, while advancing digital literacy among students and clients alike. Law schools, in this context, are neither isolated nor purely academic — they are collaborators and facilitators in a broader ecosystem of justice.
As legal needs intensify amid economic and social strain, these programs offer more than isolated success stories. They present a blueprint for rethinking how legal services are delivered and who delivers them. By treating law students not only as future lawyers but also as present contributors — and by equipping them with technology to do so efficiently — these initiatives are helping to shift the access-to-justice paradigm from one of scarcity to one of scalability.
For policymakers, educators, and legal professionals, the message is clear: innovation doesn’t have to wait for graduation. It’s happening now — in clinics, classrooms, and cloud-based platforms — where tomorrow’s lawyers are building the infrastructure for a more just and accessible legal system today.
