UND Law professor named among Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia
A UND School of Law professor has been named one of the nation’s Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia for her work exploring how generative artificial intelligence is reshaping legal education and the practice of law.
Carolyn Williams was recently selected for the inaugural Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia list, a national recognition presented by “The National Law Review” and Wickard.
The recognition honors educators, administrators, researchers and academic leaders who are helping shape the future of legal education through innovation, technology, leadership, scholarship and new approaches to legal training.
Williams has emerged as a national leader in conversations about the use of generative AI in legal education. In May 2023, shortly after the public release of ChatGPT began raising new questions for legal educators, Williams and Kirsten Davis of Stetson University College of Law co-founded the Legal Writing and Generative AI Convo Group.
What began as a way for legal writing professors to work through those questions together has grown into a national community of more than 550 law professors. The group meets monthly to discuss emerging issues involving generative AI and legal education and to share research, teaching practices and approaches to the rapidly changing technology.
Williams’ scholarship also focuses on preparing law schools for technological change. Her article, “Bracing for Impact: Revising Legal Writing Assessments Ahead of the Collision of Generative AI and the NextGen Bar Exam,” received the 2025 Teresa Godwin Phelps Award for Scholarship in Legal Communication from the Legal Writing Institute.
The article examines how the emergence of generative AI alongside the NextGen Bar Exam is prompting law schools to reconsider how they teach and assess legal research, reasoning and writing.
In addition, Williams is the author of the eighth edition of the “ALWD Guide to Legal Citation.” The latest edition includes a new rule addressing when and how lawyers and legal scholars should acknowledge or cite the use of generative AI.
The Top 50 honorees were selected through an independent evaluation process by a national committee composed of leaders from legal academia, the judiciary, law firms, legal technology companies and other areas of the profession.
A total of 76 eligible nominees advanced to committee review. Nominees were evaluated based on innovation, the impact of their work and their overall contributions to the future of legal education.
Williams joined the UND School of Law faculty in 2022. She teaches legal writing, research, advocacy and courses involving generative AI.
