People

The faculty, fellows, and affiliates behind the Institute’s work.

Director

Prof. Josh Fairfield — William Donald Bain Family Professor of Law

Josh Fairfield directs the Institute and W&L’s AI Legal Innovation Strategy. His research covers digital property, electronic contracts, big data privacy, virtual communities, and the legal frameworks governing cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and blockchain. He is the author of Owned: Property, Privacy, and the New Digital Serfdom (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Runaway Technology: Can Law Keep Up? (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and is at work on a third book.

Before W&L, he taught at Columbia Law School and Indiana University Maurer School of Law; before academia, he was Director of R&D at Rosetta Stone. He has advised the White House Office of Technology and the DHS Privacy Office, provided oversight for IARPA’s virtual-worlds research, and studied trans-Atlantic privacy law as a Fulbright Scholar at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn. Elected to the American Law Institute in 2013. BA, Swarthmore College; JD, University of Chicago. More at joshuafairfield.com.

Faculty Affiliates

Open — list any W&L faculty contributing to Institute research or programming.

Student Fellows

Open — students who help run workshops or research get named and credited here.

Advisory Board

Open — practitioners or judges lending oversight or credibility, if formally attached to the Institute.