Institute for Law & Artificial Intelligence

The AI and Law Institute at Washington & Lee School of Law exists to help the legal profession navigate the rapidly evolving intersection of artificial intelligence, legal ethics, and professional responsibility. Our mission is to bridge the gap between a lawyer’s ethical duties in using AI tools and their obligation of technological competence as AI becomes central to modern legal practice.

The Institute trains law students, faculty, attorneys, and judges to understand the inner workings of AI systems, enabling them to use machine learning effectively, safely, and defensibly. This includes examining how AI training data, model design, and user interactions influence outcomes, and teaching practitioners how to reduce the risks of AI hallucinations, bias, misinformation, privacy breaches, and manipulation. By equipping the profession with this knowledge, we support the development of responsible AI governance and empower legal professionals to deploy AI with confidence, ethical clarity, and strategic insight.

The AI and Law Institute currently provides training, guidance, and expert insight to W&L faculty and legal professionals on ethical, competent, and risk-aware use of AI in law. We run student programs, workshops, and speaker series exploring AI’s impact on litigation, access to justice, legal research, small-firm practice, BigLaw efficiency, judicial ethics, discovery, algorithmic bias, and more.

The Institute serves as a hub for law faculty research on AI governance, machine learning regulation, and digital legal systems, helping promote shared best practices in responsible AI adoption across the academic community. Through active public engagement — including research summaries, policy commentary, and expert analysis — we help students, lawyers, academics, and judges understand how AI may reshape the legal system and how to use the technology in ways that strengthen, rather than endanger, the rule of law.

The AI and Law Institute is designing a suite of research-grade, high-integrity AI systems that allow students and faculty to study the risks, limitations, and failure modes of AI without relying on commercial models that report user interactions back to private companies. These tools will enable deep investigation into how and why AI breaks, how legal reasoning is distorted by machine learning systems, and how confidential attorney input can circulate through the broader AI data ecosystem; a central concern for attorney–client privilege and data security.

Once development is complete, these safer systems will support next-generation training programs for attorneys, judges, and regulators. Our goal is to deliver AI that teaches rather than replaces critical thinking, AI that enhances rather than undermines judicial impartiality, and AI systems in which the legal professional remains firmly in control of process, outcome, and ethical boundaries. This work positions W&L as a national leader in AI regulation, legal technology innovation, and the future of AI-driven law.