These are classes on building, buying, evaluating, and funding AI for legal help. Each one is built around a decision somebody actually has to make, and each one ends with that decision written down.
About these classes
The Stanford Legal Design Lab runs these classes as part of the Legal Help Commons. They cover building, buying, evaluating, and funding AI for legal help, and each one is written for a particular person facing a particular decision.
We run them because this field builds better when it builds together. The aim is a more coordinated ecosystem, one that can produce public interest technology that is sustainable and that actually helps people.
We are building these courses out now, and looking for testers. Please let us know which courses you'd be interested in. And let us know if you'd be willing to be a test user.
Start here
Choose the description closest to your own situation and the page will show you the classes written for it.
Frontline advocates and paralegals
You go from using these tools unsupervised to checking every answer against its source, and knowing what never goes into the box.
These classes cover the everyday tasks people already use AI for, including summarizing a document, explaining a notice in plain language, and pulling a deadline out of a letter. They also cover the checks that catch a wrong answer, and the rules about what should never be typed into a tool in the first place.
You will be able to use AI on your own matters without being burned by it, and to spot a wrong answer before a client acts on it.
Executive directors and program leaders
You go from being pitched at to making the call in writing, and holding a supplier to a standard you wrote yourself.
These classes cover the build, buy, and build-together decision, vendor evaluation, contract lock-in, organizational AI policy, and how to set a quality standard a supplier has to meet. It works from your own staffing, content, and budget rather than from a general framework.
You will be able to defend a build or buy decision to a board, judge a vendor on evidence rather than a demonstration, and set a five-year direction for your organization.
Funders and statewide leaders
You go from funding pilots that end when the grant ends to using conditions, procurement, and convening power to build something that outlasts them.
These classes cover how a market for legal help technology actually functions, and which instruments move it. It works through grant conditions, requests for proposals, pooled multi-state commitments, prizes, cohorts, and the reporting requirements that decide what the field can later know.
You will be able to diagnose why a market is failing before choosing an instrument, and write grant conditions that change what gets built.
Evaluators and researchers
You go from a role somebody handed you informally to running studies that hold up, and publishing an instrument other people can cite.
These classes cover how much evaluation a given decision requires, whether a reported number can be trusted, how to build a test set that represents the people a tool will actually meet, and how to design a study before the money is committed. It assumes deep knowledge of legal services and no quantitative background.
You will be able to commission the right kind of evaluation, tell evidence from decoration in a vendor's claim, and know when a study needs a specialist rather than your own team.
Builders and intrapreneurs
You go from a blank page to a working tool that another organization could pick up, built on patterns that already work rather than from scratch.
These classes cover how to choose a problem bounded enough to build well, how to prepare content so a system can retrieve from it, how to stand up a working prototype, and how to stop a model inventing citations. It also covers what makes a tool portable enough that a second organization can adopt it.
You will be able to judge whether your idea is buildable, ship something grounded and evaluated, and avoid the failures that make a tool unusable outside the place that built it.
Court leaders and court technology staff
You go from knowing your court needs to work better to having a route you can take, whether that means building it, partnering for it, copying it from another court, or buying it.
These classes cover the routes available to a court that wants better technology, including building it, partnering with another organization, replicating something a peer court already runs, and buying it. It covers what your case management system exposes, how to open court data responsibly, and how to write a purchasing requirement a supplier has to meet.
You will be able to use the authority you hold inside the building, which means changing a workflow, opening a data feed responsibly, partnering, replicating, or writing a requirement a supplier has to satisfy.
Existing companies and innovators
You go from a claim you make about yourself to a result a buyer can check, at a point when the standards are still being written and you can still shape them.
These classes cover what evidence a public buyer will actually accept, how a conformance test differs from a demonstration, and what publishing a reference architecture does for a company selling into this field. It is about the commercial value of being checkable at a point when the standards are still being written.
You will be able to show a buyer evidence rather than a demonstration, and to help set the bar your competitors will have to clear.
The class list
The classes are still in draft and the list is not public yet. If you are reviewing them with us, open the list below and use the password we sent you.
Register your interest
We are building these out now, and what people tell us they need decides the order. Let us know who you are and what decision you are facing, and we will come back to you as the class closest to your situation is ready.