At UC Law SF’s AI Bootcamp, Susmita Nanda LLM ’26 built GroundCheck, an AI tool that checks whether legal citations hold up under scrutiny.
- Susmita Nanda LLM ’26 learned how to critically evaluate and create legal technology tools at UC Law SF. AI-Enabled Lawyer Bootcamp.
- She built GroundCheck, an AI-powered platform that tests whether legal authorities actually support the arguments cited.
- At AI Bootcamp, her focus shifted from what AI can do to how legitimate AI systems should be designed, tested, and used responsibly.
As artificial intelligence reshapes the practice of law, UC Law San Francisco trains students through hands-on education AI-Enabled Lawyer Bootcamp This allows students to go beyond theory and have real-world applications before they graduate. Students will gain first-hand experience using AI for core law practices such as research, drafting, discovery, and document analysis while addressing ethical issues related to privilege, conflict, and professional responsibility. Capstone projects involve building your own AI tools, often with little or no coding experience.
First offered this spring, AI Bootcamp is part of LexLab, UC Law SF’s Center for Technology Law and Lawyers, led by Director Drew Amerson. The six-session course was designed by Tal Nib, director of applied innovation, and taught by adjunct professors Luis Villa and Zoe Dolan, both practicing attorneys with deep experience integrating technology into legal practice.
Below, Susmita Nanda LLM ’26 shares what she learned and how she created an AI-powered tool to scrutinize citations that she claims support a particular legal argument.
Why did you join AI Bootcamp?
AI is already transforming the practice of law, but I wanted to understand not only how these tools are used, but also how they are built and where they fail. Now was the time to do it.
What was your biggest takeaway?
We gained a practical framework for understanding whether AI should support or replace human reviews, and gained practical experience building workflows for AI agents rather than simply leveraging them. This program helped bridge the gap between knowing how to use AI tools and how to deploy them responsibly and effectively.
Also, my perspective changed from “What can this tool do?” to “How does it work and what should it not do?” No matter how the platform evolves, this is the mindset I intend to implement.
Please describe your capstone project.
I built GroundCheck, a Harvey AI workflow agent that checks whether legal authorities support the proposals cited in the draft. It matters not only whether citations exist, but also whether they hold up under scrutiny. Following the first pass grounding review, we perform an adversarial second pass and pass structured recommendations to human reviewers.
How will this help you excel as a new lawyer?
We can now evaluate AI legal tools from the inside and fully understand their architecture and failure modes to use them critically and advise others. Building GroundCheck also sharpened our intuition for making legal analysis reliable. Because designing a system to explain that reasoning required us to think rigorously about the same questions that every good lawyer faces.
The Ready for Tomorrow series focuses on UC Law SF students and shares how the university’s innovative practice programs are preparing them for a profession rapidly being reshaped by AI and emerging technologies.
