WashU Law’s AI Collaborative has announced the winners of its inaugural International Vibe Coding Challenge, a global innovation competition inviting lawyers, legal professionals, legal technologists, and law students to design practical legal tools using AI-assisted, natural-language, low-code, or “vibe coding” development methods.
The Challenge was created to explore how emerging AI-assisted development tools can be used responsibly in legal practice. Rather than focusing on production-ready software, the competition emphasized practical legal workflows, professional judgment, ethical awareness, and clear communication of risks and limitations. Participants were asked to prototype tools addressing real legal problems in areas such as legal research, litigation workflows, regulatory compliance, law firm operations, legal education, and access to justice.
“Vibe coding is not a substitute for legal judgment,” said Stefanie Lindquist, Nickerson Dean and Professor of Law at WashU Law. “But this competition showed that lawyers and law students can use AI-assisted development tools to prototype meaningful solutions to real legal problems. The strongest submissions did not just build tools. They identified a workflow, understood the legal risks, and designed systems that kept human judgment at the center.”
The finalist submissions were evaluated by a distinguished judging panel that included Pablo Arredondo, Founder, Casetext; Glenn Davis, Partner, Hepler Broom, LLC; Judge Joshua Deahl of the DC Court of Appeals; Kshitij (TJ) Dhyani, Database Analyst at WashU Law; Judge Christopher Hall of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas; Earl Mah, Attorney at Epic Games; Christian Puzder, CEO of Casefriend; Evan Shenkman, Chief Innovation Officer at Fisher Phillips; and Wei Zhu, AI IP at Eli Lilly.
Submissions were received from participants around the world, reflecting growing international interest in how AI-assisted development can expand what lawyers, students, and legal professionals are able to build. After initial review, four finalist projects were selected for judging:
- EDITH: An AI-Powered Disclosure Checker for Hong Kong’s Specialist Technology IPO Regime. EDITH is designed to help lawyers review prospectus disclosures under Hong Kong’s Chapter 18C listing framework.
- DPDP Privacy Agent, a browser extension prototype that analyzes privacy policies against principles of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act and presents findings in plain language.
- Client Compass, a legal matter status tracker designed to help attorneys communicate case status, client obligations, billing information, and next steps in a clearer and more structured way.
- Hallucinated Autopsy, a training tool that helps lawyers identify AI-generated hallucinations and error patterns in legal documents.
Judges evaluated the submissions based on practical utility, legal soundness, responsible AI use, and execution and clarity. The judges also submitted final rankings for the top submissions.
The first-place winner was EDITH, developed by Zihan Zhang of The University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong ) and Shane Liu of Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). EDITH received the most first-place votes and also ranked highest under the competition’s aggregate scoring methodology. The project stood out for addressing a specific, high-value regulatory workflow: helping lawyers assess whether specialist technology company IPO prospectuses satisfy disclosure requirements under Hong Kong’s Chapter 18C regime. The tool uses an AI-assisted review process to extract relevant disclosures, evaluate them against a structured rulebook, and generate a findings report with rule references, prospectus page citations, and severity ratings.
EDITH was recognized for combining a sophisticated legal-regulatory use case with practical workflow design, while also acknowledging the limitations and risks of AI-assisted legal analysis.
The second-place award went to Client Compass, developed by Jason Huang, a J.D./M.P.P. candidate at Arizona State University, expected to graduate in 2027. Client Compass was recognized for its practical focus on a recurring legal-services problem: the communication gap between lawyers and clients during active matters. The project demonstrated how AI-assisted workflows can improve client understanding while preserving attorney review, confidentiality, and professional responsibility safeguards.
The Challenge reflects WashU Law’s broader commitment to preparing the legal profession for responsible AI adoption. By focusing on practical use cases, legal reasoning, and professional ethics, the competition highlighted both the promise and limits of AI-assisted development in law.
WashU Law congratulates Zihan Zhang, Shane Liu, Jason Huang, and all finalists for their work in advancing responsible legal innovation.
