Alice Armitage

Bio

Professor Alice Armitage was the Director of Applied Innovation, which oversaw LexLab, an innovative hub focused on the many impacts that technology has and will continue to have on the law. Alice began her career as an international tax attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington DC, moving from there to a position as a federal regulator in the Office of the International Chief Counsel at the US Internal Revenue Service to develop tax policy for complex cross-border financial transactions.

More recently, Alice took a break from practicing law to found two startups. Her experience as a two-time entrepreneur ultimately led her to UC Law SF as Director of the Startup Legal Garage. In her time as Director of this popular program, Alice developed an extensive network within both the tech and the legal communities of Silicon Valley. Alice now teaches four courses for law students that are part of the concentration in “Technology and Innovation in the Practice of Law”. These courses include Legal Informatics, Legal Operations, Design Think and Access to Justice, The Fundamentals of Building Legal Tech Startups. In addition to building out new programs and courses at UC Law SF, Alice’s research interests focus on the intersection of technology, design thinking and regulation.  Alice published “Design Thinking: An Answer to the Impasse between Innovation and Regulation” in the Georgetown Technology Law Review, and also has a chapter on design thinking in “The Cambridge Handbook of Law an Entrepreneurship in the United States,” published in April 2022 by the Cambridge University Press.

Professor Armitage is a graduate of the Yale Law School where she was the first woman Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal since World War II. She also has an A.B. and an M.A. in British and American Literature from Brown University.

Selected Scholarship

Design Thinking: The Answer to the Impasse Between Innovation and Regulation, 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 3 (2017) (with Andrew K. Cordova, & Rebecca Siegel). FULLTEXT SSRN

The Gender Gap in Startup Catalyst Organizations: Bridging the Divide between Narrative and Reality, 95 Or. L. Rev. 313 (2017) (with Robin Feldman & Connie Wang). FULLTEXT SSRN

Startups and Unmet Legal Needs, 2016 Utah L. Rev. 575 (2016) (with Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams & Robin Feldman). FULLTEXT SSRN

Gauguin, Darwin, & Design Thinking: A Solution to the Impasse between Innovation & Regulation, UC Hastings Research Paper No. 235 (2016). URL

Education

• Yale Law School
  J.D., Law 1980

• Brown University
  M.A., British and American Literature 1975

• Brown University
  B.A., British and American Literature 1975