Georgetown Law

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.