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University Labs as Justice Innovation Partners: Different Models for Academic-Community Collaboration
Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center
Universities have resources that justice organizations need — student labor, technical expertise, research infrastructure, and the luxury of experimentation.
This session presents several fundamentally different models for university-community justice partnerships. Ohio State's JusticeTech initiative pairs law students and computer science students to co-develop AI-assisted online dispute resolution tools for the Franklin County Municipal Court Self Help Center, with a focus on eviction proceedings. Students conduct field research, attend hearings, and build tools informed by Dispute System Design principles — navigating the line between innovation and unauthorized practice of law while producing systems that real litigants can use. The program offers lessons on interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical AI deployment, and how to build courses that produce lasting infrastructure rather than disposable prototypes.
UIC Law's legal technology partnership with direct representation clinics takes a different approach: students use Docassemble and JosefLegal platforms to build guided interview tools that scale the capacity of pro bono and clinical programs. The model demonstrates how law school classes can produce real, deployable technology — not just learning exercises — when they partner directly with legal services providers who define the need. Attendees will test-drive tools built by students and explore strategies for replicating this model in their own states.
Stanford's Legal Design Lab also has examples of it building justice AI co-pilots for legal aid and court teams, through its class AI for legal help.
Northeastern's NuLawLab and its East Boston Spatial Justice Lab represent the most community-embedded model. For over seven years, the lab has partnered with East Boston residents, local artists, and community organizations to address housing insecurity through popular education, legal empowerment workshops, and art-based advocacy. The Neighborhood Eviction Defense project treats community members as co-creators of knowledge, using participatory methods drawn from popular education to build collective understanding of tenant rights and displacement. This model challenges the assumption that justice innovation must be technology-driven — sometimes the most powerful tools are cultural.
The University of São Paulo's Legal Design Studies Core (NELD) brings an international perspective and a different methodology entirely. Working with USP Law School's Legal Aid Department — a longstanding institution providing free legal assistance to the community while training law students — NELD applied design-based methodologies to map the department's operational and institutional challenges and propose user-centered solutions. Over the past decade, the Legal Aid Department had struggled with structural problems that hindered service quality and accessibility. Rather than building a technology tool, NELD used journey mapping, service design, and participatory methods to redesign how the organization itself works. This model challenges the assumption that justice innovation requires new technology — sometimes the most impactful intervention is redesigning the systems and workflows that already exist.
A facilitated workshop will follow the panel presentations. Tables of participants will sketch concrete partnership ideas and ideate the details with the panelists. Panelists will circulate among the workshop tables to discuss how their unique models would approach each table’s partnership ideas. Participants will leave with concrete ideas for launching their own university-community partnership, and a good understanding of which models are best suited to each partnership.

Speakers
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Amy Schmitz

The Ohio State University
Professor Amy J. Schmitz is a full professor at The Ohio State Moritz College of Law and Program on Dispute Resolution as the John Deaver Drinko-Baker & Hostetler Endowed Chair in Law and Director of JusticeTech at The Ohio State University. She also is affiliated with The Ohio State... Read More →
avatar for Dan Jackson

Dan Jackson

Executive Director, NuLawLab
Dan Jackson has directed the NuLawLab at Northeastern University School of Law since 2013. Dan is a 1997 graduate of Northeastern Law and a 1990 graduate of Northwestern University. He recently served as Chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal... Read More →
avatar for Claire Johnson Raba

Claire Johnson Raba

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Illinois at Chicago
IN

Isabella Nobre Brant

University of São Paulo Law School
Isabella Brant is a lawyer graduated from the University of São Paulo (FDUSP). Completed a Zertifikatsstudium in Deutsches Recht (German Law) and Privatrechtstheorie (Theory of Private Law) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Legal Designer at Studio Mater. Co-founder of the... Read More →
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Nora Al Haider

Assistant Director, Stanford Legal Design Lab
Nóra Al Haider is the Assistant Director at the Stanford Legal Design Lab. Nóra is a multilingual lawyer and interdisciplinary researcher. She combines the fields of law, design, data and tech to increase access to justice.
MY

Mindy Yocum

Justice Mobile
Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202
  Research

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