Talk Justice: Episode 91

Guest Speakers

Nora Freeman Engstrom is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. A nationally recognized authority on tort law, professional responsibility, and complex litigation, she also co-directs the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, the premier academic center seeking to make the civil justice system more transparent, accessible, and equitable. Beyond that, she is the author of numerous award-winning scholarly articles, the author or co-author of three casebooks, and a Reporter for two Third Restatement of Torts projects: Miscellaneous Provisions and Medical Malpractice. In 2022, the American Law Institute (ALI) awarded her the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter’s Chair for her work on the Restatement, one of the highest honors that organization bestows.

Professor Engstrom is an elected member of the ALI, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Editorial Board of Foundation Press, and, from 2023-2024, served as Chair of the Section on Torts and Compensation Systems of the AALS. She is also the 2025 recipient of the William L. Prosser Award, a lifetime achievement award furnished by AALS for her outstanding contributions to tort law.

Before joining Stanford’s faculty in 2009, Professor Engstrom was a litigator at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP. Before that, she was a law clerk to then-Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She also worked at the Department of Justice where she focused on international terrorism and was awarded the Attorney General’s Award for Superior Service. She earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she graduated with distinction and was elected to the Order of the Coif. She earned her B.A. from Dartmouth College, summa cum laude.

David Freeman Engstrom is the LSVF Professor of Law at Stanford 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, and law and technology, Engstrom focuses his current work on the future of courts and legal services in the AI age. His projects have spanned court use of technology in MDLs, lawyer use of “legal tech” tools to serve clients, and technologies that assist individuals without lawyers. Engstrom has published numerous articles on these topics, and he is the editor of Legal Tech and the Future of Civil Justice and, with Nora Freeman Engstrom, a forthcoming volume, Beyond the Lawyer’s Monopoly: Access to Justice and the Future of Legal Services, both with Cambridge Press. He also co-founded the Filing Fairness Project, an ambitious collaboration with seven states to modernize court technologies. In its latest venture, the Project is partnering with the L.A. Superior Court, the nation’s largest, to redesign digital pathways serving court users. Finally, much of Engstrom’s work focuses on access to justice in the millions of low-dollar but consequential cases, including debt collection, eviction, and child support actions, that shape Americans’ lives 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 urgent challenges these cases raise. He is an elected member of the ALI, an appointed member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a faculty affiliate at CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. A longtime litigator, Engstrom has represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts and agencies. He has a J.D. from Stanford, an M.Sc. from Oxford, and a Ph.D. from Yale.

Host

As director of innovation design for the Program on Law and Innovation, Caitlin “Cat” Moon designs the J.D. curriculum for PoLI Institute with the goal of empowering students to lead in the innovation of 21st century legal services delivery. Professor Moon also founded and directs the PoLI Institute, which provides interactive post-graduate executive education to legal professionals. She also co-founded and produces the Summit on Law and Innovation (SoLI), which brings together experts across legal, technology and other disciplines in collaborative innovation projects

In addition to her roles at Vanderbilt, Moon works with law firms, legal departments and law schools globally to apply the methods and mindsets of human-centered design to re-imagine leadership and legal professional formation and modernize the delivery of legal services. Her current research focuses on innovation leadership and legal professional formation and includes co-creation of a 21st century framework for lawyer competency, the Delta Model.

Moon maintains an active law license and, before joining the Vanderbilt Law faculty, she provided legal counsel and strategic guidance to start-up companies through her Nashville-based legal practice for over 20 years. She serves on the College of Law Practice Management’s Board of Trustees and on the advisory boards of the MIT Computational Law Report and the Justice Technology Association. Moon was recognized in 2016 by the American Bar Association among the inaugural Women in Legal Tech and as a Fastcase 50 honoree. She received the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services’ 2017 Janice M. Holder Award, which recognizes a legal professional who “has made significant contributions in advancing the quality of justice statewide by ensuring the legal system is open and available to all.”

Moon holds a B.A. and J.D. from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. from Western Kentucky University.