Biography
David Freeman Engstrom is the LSVF Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Co-Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, the premier academic center shaping the future of legal services and access to the legal system. An expert in civil procedure, administrative law, constitutional law, and law and technology, Engstrom focuses much of his current work on the future of courts and legal services in the age of AI. His many writings and projects have spanned court use of technology in multidistrict litigations, lawyer use of “legal tech” tools to serve their clients, and use of technologies to assist individuals without lawyers. Engstrom has published numerous articles on these issues and is the editor of Legal Tech and the Future of Civil Justice and a forthcoming volume, Rethinking the Lawyer’s Monopoly: Access to Justice and the Future of Legal Services, both with Cambridge University Press. He also co-founded the Filing Fairness Project, an ambitious collaboration with seven states to modernize court technologies. The Project’s latest chapter will partner with the Los Angeles Superior Court, the nation’s largest trial court, to design new digital pathways that better serve court users. Professor Engstrom’s expertise in law and technology also extends to the legal and policy implications of the “automated state.” In particular, he is an expert on growing government use of AI, which is poised to transform everything from policing, to regulatory enforcement, to the distribution of welfare and other public benefits. During 2018-2020, he co-led a project at the Administrative Conference of the United States, Government by Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence in Federal Administrative Agencies, which remains the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date. Finally, much of Engstrom’s work, both tech and non-tech, focuses on access to justice in the millions of low-dollar but highly consequential cases, including debt collection, eviction, foreclosure, and child support actions, that shape the lives of Americans each year. He is leading the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, High-Volume Civil Adjudication project, which will offer courts guidance on the millions of low-dollar but consequential cases, including debt and eviction, that shape Americans’ lives each year. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an appointed member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a faculty affiliate at the faculty affiliate at the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab), CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, where he chaired the Technology Policy Governance committee. A longtime litigator, Engstrom has a J.D. from Stanford, an M.Sc. from Oxford, and a Ph.D. from Yale.
