Tanina Rostain is a nationally recognized expert on legal ethics, the American legal profession, and access to justice. Her work focuses on innovative approaches to improving the transparency, equity, and accessibility of the civil justice system, including through the use of digital technologies, non-lawyer service delivery models, and court modernization. At Georgetown, Tanina launched the Justice Lab, a research center dedicated to investigating new approaches to address people’s everyday legal problems. Tanina co-leads the Georgetown Civil Justice Data Commons, a secure court data repository created to facilitate research on evictions and debt collection cases. Tanina’s interest in technology and access to the civil legal system dates back to 2012, when she first offered a course — since replicated in law schools across the United States and around the world — in which student teams work with non-profit legal service providers to build apps that increase access to the justice system.
Tanina’s earlier academic work explored the ethical challenges that arise in corporate and tax practice and the organizational factors that lead to professional misconduct. In 2014, she published Confidence Games: Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Industry (co-authored with Professor Milton C. Regan Jr.), which examined the role of tax professionals in the rise of the tax shelter industry at the end of the 20th Century. Tanina holds a B.A. with high honors from Swarthmore College, an M.A. from Yale University and J.D. from Yale Law School. After graduating from law school, Tanina clerked for Ellen Ash Peters, Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Prior to joining Georgetown Law Center, she taught at the University of Connecticut Law School and New York Law School.
Scholarship
Forthcoming Works - Journal Articles & Working Papers
Tanina Rostain, Access to Justice as Access to Data, 119 Nw. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming).
Tanina Rostain & James Teufel, Measures of Justice: Researching and Evaluation Lay Legal Assistance Programs, Fordham Urb. L.J. (forthcoming).
Contributions to Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals
Rebecca A. Johnson & Tanina Rostain, Tool for Surveillance or Spotlight on Inequality? Big Data and the Law, 16 Ann. Rev. L. & Soc. Sci. 453-472 (2020).
Brief of Amici Curiae Responsive Law and Scholars of Access to Justice in Support of Petitioner, Capital Associated Indus. Inc. v. Stein, No. 19-281 (U.S. Oct. 2, 2019).
Tanina Rostain & Amy O’Hara, The Civil Justice Data Gap, in Legal Tech and the Future of Civil Justice 368-388 (David Freeman Enqustrom ed., New York: Cambridge University Press 2023). [WWW] [BOOK]
"Career confessions of an atypical law school graduate," an opinion piece by Adjunct Professor Jason Tashea, appearing in the ABA Journal, December 17, 2019, and mentioning Professor Tanina Rostain and Adjunct Professor Alexandra Givens.
Professors Hope Babcock, Gregg Bloche, John Copacino, Deborah Epstein, Daniel Ernst, James Feinerman, Anne Fleming, Sheila Foster, Maria Glover, Vida Johnson, Gregory Klass, David Luban, Allegra McLeod, Naomi Mezey, Sherally Munshi, Alicia Plerhoples, Jarrod Reich, Tanina Rostain, Rima Sirota, Abbe Smith, and Kristen Tiscione are among 1700 signatories on a letter, published by The New York Times, delivered to the United States Senate, October 4, 2018, presenting concerns of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's qualifications to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.