LIT Con 2026 - Mini Panel: Legal Innovation Labs

Why It Matters

Legal innovation labs demonstrate how AI can close justice gaps while simultaneously preparing lawyers to navigate an ever‑evolving tech landscape, reshaping both service delivery and legal education.

Key Takeaways

• Legal aid lab uses AI to scale intake for 2 million eligible clients.
• Vanderbilt AI Law Lab trains students to adapt to rapidly evolving tools.
• Both labs blend in‑house engineers, vendors, and student developers for projects.
• Projects focus on information access, not just lawyer‑client matching.
• Collaboration between labs accelerates real‑world testing of legal tech solutions.

Summary

At LIT Con 2026, a mini‑panel titled “Legal Innovation Labs” brought together Sheree Gilchrist, chief innovation officer of Legal Aid of North Carolina, and Cat Moon, co‑director of Vanderbilt’s AI Law Lab (VEIL). Both leaders outlined their labs’ missions: expanding access to justice through technology and cultivating a generation of lawyers fluent in AI.

Gilchrist described how her lab tackles a massive demand gap—over 300,000 intake calls annually for a pool of two million eligible residents—by piloting AI‑driven intake tools, language‑assist features, and information portals. The Vanderbilt team, meanwhile, runs a learning‑focused lab that embeds AI experiments in curricula, partners with vendors, and equips students with transferable tool‑agnostic skills. Staffing blends a handful of full‑time engineers and program managers with student developers and external collaborators.

Key moments included Gilchrist’s reminder that “access starts with information,” and Moon’s mantra from Mary Oliver: “I live in the open‑mindedness of not knowing enough.” Both speakers highlighted student‑led projects that anticipate corporate‑law firm AI stacks, underscoring the labs’ role as incubators for practical, real‑world solutions.

The discussion signals a shift toward systematic, technology‑enabled legal service delivery. By marrying public‑interest needs with academic experimentation, these labs create scalable models that could reshape how the legal profession meets underserved populations and trains future practitioners.