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The Duke Center on Law & Technology coordinates many of Duke’s leadership activities in legal technology; our initiatives aim to understand, re-imagine, shape, and lead the next generation of tech-enabled legal practice and to employ the tools of the law to ensure that rapidly emerging technologies empower and ennoble people.

Active Programs & Projects


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Duke Law By Design is an initiative to bring human-centered design principles and practices into the law school.

A group of faculty and staff have completed training through IDEO U about design thinking, and are engaging student, staff, and faculty in human-centered design processes with stakeholders, other service professionals, and partner organizations from the community.

Topics have included eviction procedures in Durham, imagine measurements of project and attorney success beyond the billable hour, access to justice, improving forensic reports, and serving human trafficking survivors, and others.

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Design thinking for law is a process of experiencing knowledge and exploring the human mind’s ‘playground of ideas'.

Design thinking helps us to change the law for the better by…

  • Asking participants to take on a beginner’s mindset
  • Looking beyond the borders of the “law” as currently defined
  • Stripping away the fear of making mistakes
  • Teaching creativity and prototyping as core skill sets
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Legal Design Derby

In teams of three or four, law students used human-centered design principles to develop, refine, and present a prototype answering a focused "How Might We" question for each event. 

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Access Tech Tools

The Duke Center on Law & Technology's Access Tech Tools Initiative includes incorporating technology into access to justice programs, integrating design thinking processes into academic courses and community workshops, and supporting scholarship on these topics.

Our faculty, staff, and research assistants partner with Duke Legal Clinics and technologists in tech-development projects that aim expressly at expanding access to legal services and increasing efficiency at the Law School. 

Data Governance Design Conference & Research Network

The Data Governance Design Conference (DGDC), held in November 2019, convened policymakers, industry, academia, and legal practitioners to explore models, needs, and enabling environment for data governance. The DGDC featured expert-level content, for a select audience of data governance leaders, toward establishing a practice-led research agenda that unlocks the field’s tremendous potential. 

Data Governance at Duke Law

As an outcome of the conference, a new collaborative research network on data governance was created, involving the Duke Center on Law & Tech, Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop, The University of Western Australia, and the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Read more.

Watch the recordings.

Law +Data Science

In connection with the Duke +Data Science initiative, research assistants and faculty with the Duke Center on Law & Technology are current developing training modules and learning experiences which involve specialized content on the intersection between law and data science.

Duke LawNext (Summer 2020)

Duke Law Next

Duke LawNext is a set of curated, remote, self-directed enrichment opportunities for Duke Law students and recent alumni to explore next-generation legal practice. Launched in summer 2020, this program helps participants explore the ways that both legal practitioners and the world in which they are situated are changing on account of emerging technologies. Participants will choose from these Pathways:

  • Tomorrow’s Digital Lawyer - Exploring shifts in the delivery of legal services driven by digital technologies 
  • Legal Design, Innovation, & A2J - Applying design & tech to enhance access to legal services & solve entrenched social problems 
  • Lawyering in the Age of AI - Confronting our increasing embeddedness in a world of big data & artificial intelligence 

By completing Pathway Foundations (core materials), engaging with Enrichment Windows, and completing a demonstration project, participants will be eligible to add a designated notation to their CV/résumé.

Past Events

Tech Trust Podcast

Tech Trust explores the challenges of ensuring trust in an increasingly digital age.

TechTrust Podcast

Risk Some, Risk All: COVID, Public Health, & Undocumented Immigrants

October 14, 2020

20:14

In Episode 1, we look at trust among vulnerable populations in the times of coronavirus, specifically how public health data surveillance in the times of COVID affects undocumented immigrants. Host Jeff Ward is joined by Emma Ritter, a student at Duke Law and Andrea Rojas Rozo, a Fulbright Scholar from Colombia and Fellow with the Duke Center on Law & Tech, both of whom were part of a research team aiming to better understand the needs of some communities left out of primary public discussions on pandemic response.

Fishing for Data Podcast

Fishing for Data is a four-part podcast series that explores the governance of fisheries data under the Magnuson-Stevens Act & related data laws & policies. This podcast aims to mediate a dialogue among various stakeholders on key issues related to the future of electronic monitoring in fisheries management. The series was produced in May and June 2021.

Fishing for Data was produced by a legal, policy, and environmental science team of fellows from the Duke Center on Law & Tech and sponsored by the Net Gains Alliance, a nonprofit global initiative dedicated to better information for better oceans.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

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