Georgetown Law

Tanina Rostain’s current scholarly and teaching interests focus on access to the civil justice system and the function of legal technologies developed to bridge the justice gap.  Her research explores the opportunities and limits of digital tools to provide information about and access to the legal system.  Rostain’s work also considers how data science can be used to produce knowledge about legal problems and the efficacy of interventions to address them.  Recently, Professor Rostain launched the Justice Lab at Georgetown, a research center dedicated to studying the various modalities emerging to address unmet legal needs.  The Lab’s initiatives include studies of “low bono” law firms and legal “navigators,” and a national multi-county investigation of different forms of assistance that are provided to self-represented litigants.  Rostain’s research interest in technology and access to the civil legal system dates back to 2012, when she created a course in which student teams work with non-profit legal service providers to build apps that increase access to the legal system. 

Professor Rostain’s earlier academic work explored the ethical challenges that arise in corporate and tax practice and focused on the influences of organizational context on professional misconduct.  In 2014, she published Confidence Games: Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Industry (MIT Press).  Co-authored with Professor Mitt Regan, Confidence Games examines the role of major accounting firms and corporate firms in the rise of the tax shelter industry at the turn of the 21^st Century.   Rostain has also authored articles on tax and corporate law practice.