We build open source tools used at Harvard and beyond that preserve and expand access to knowledge.
Learn more about the lab on the LIL website.
Our Projects
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Perma.cc
Perma.cc helps scholars, journals, courts, and others create permanent records of the web sources they cite.
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H2O Open Casebook
H2O is a platform for creating, sharing, and remixing open course materials.
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Caselaw Access Project
The Caselaw Access Project offers free, public access to over 6.5 million decisions published by state and federal courts throughout U.S. history.
Our Team
Read our staff bios on the LIL website.
Christian Smith
Software Engineering Manager
Christian discovered the craft of research when his open source work with cryptography led to academic collaboration and an engineering role at MIT. Years prior he witnessed the impact of technology on law as a student at Berklee College of Music, when dotcom era file-sharing networks disrupted the music industry. At LIL, he aims to empower the engineering team, help invent breakthrough library tools, and improve access to justice.
Research Fellows
- Katy Gero
- Jim Cowie
- Max Neely-Cohen
LIL Blog Posts
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Announcing the Data.gov Archive
February 6, 2025
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Preserving Public U.S. Federal Data
January 30, 2025
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Open French Law RAG: Using AI for Cross-Language Legal Information Retrieval
Imagine that you are an English speaker visiting France, engaged in discussion with a French local about a legal issue, but you are a novice French speaker and not familiar with the French legal system. Fortunately, you have a laptop containing over 800,000 French law articles, where the answer to your question may be […]
January 21, 2025