Student Innovation Grants
Overview
$10 000 to Build Open-Source Access to Justice Tools
The Access to Algorithmic Justice (A2AJ) Student Innovation Grants Program is a competitive funding opportunity of $10, 000 for graduate students in any relevant discipline and JD students looking to build open-source tools that advance access to justice.
This program provides funding for qualifying technology projects that expand, enhance and utilize the A2AJ’s open-source datasets to advance access to justice.
Grant at a glance
- Funding: $10,000 per project
- Available: 5 grants
- Deadline: November 3, 2025
- Team size: 1–4 students
- Deliverable: Build a working tool / dataset / prototype
- Upcoming info session – join email list
Funding Details & Key Dates
Grant amount: $10,000 per project
Available grants: 5
Information session: Date TBD – enter your email here to be notified
Application deadline: November 3, 2025
Funding decisions: Late November, 2025
Successful applicants will have funding disbursed in three tranches:
- 33% at your project’s kickoff
- 33% after demonstration of substantial progress towards successful delivery of a complete project (eg, working proof of concept). No later than 6 months after kickoff.
- 34% on delivery of a complete project. No later than 12 months after kickoff
Note that failure to meet project milestones may result in funding being withheld.
Eligibility Requirements
Applicant eligibility
- Individual applicant:
- Current graduate student in any Canadian University, OR
- Current JD student enrolled in any Canadian law faculty.
- Eligible to work in Canada.
- Team applicants:
- Teams of up to 4 members may apply.
- The team’s principal applicant must meet the individual applicant criteria.
- All team members must be current students at Canadian universities and eligible to work in Canada.
- Partnerships between law students and students from computer science, data science, or related technical fields are encouraged.
Project scope (see expanded criteria below)
- Project proposals must focus on applications, analysis of A2AJ datasets and/or dataset creation that will enhance access to justice. Explore the A2AJ website and datasets for more information.
- Project deliverable (application, dataset, etc) must be developed as open-source tools and any publications must be made available open access.
- The project deliverable should be technically feasible within a 12-month timeline
About A2AJ and Available Datasets
A2AJ is a research project co-hosted by York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law, with support from the Law Foundation of Ontario. It provides free, programmatic access to over 116,000 (and counting) Canadian court decisions and 5000+ laws and regulations.
A2AJ removes barriers to legal information access by offering multiple ways to access Canadian legal data – from simple searches to bulk downloads for research and AI development. A2AJ’s datasets include decisions from Canadian courts and tribunals, such as:
- Supreme Court of Canada
- Federal Court of Canada
- Federal Court of Appeal
- Ontario Court of Appeal
- Tax Court of Canada
- Immigration and Refugee Board
- Social Security Tribunal,
- Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
The data also includes federal statutes and regulations. All documents are available in both English and French where translations exist, with full text search capabilities and comprehensive metadata.
Example Projects
Projects that expand A2AJ datasets
- Expanding A2AJ pipelines to include BC Court of Appeal and BC Superior Court of Justice decisions, as well as BC legislation and regulations
- Building a dataset of all materials submitted in Supreme Court of Canada cases
- Creating a programmatically accessible dataset of all publicly disclosed collective agreements in Canada
- Collecting and parsing all open access law journal articles from Canadian law journals
- Gathering open access public legal education documents
Projects that enhance A2AJ datasets
- Designing and implementing a user interface for lawyers to engage with A2AJ data, including integrating popular generative AI tools
- Building and optimizing semantic search systems for case law that can be added to the A2AJ API/MCP
- Creating automated processes to parse legal citations and create citation networks for A2AJ datasets
- Building automated summarization tools for A2AJ pipelines to make legal documents easier to search and work with
- Testing different approaches for delivering long legislation for use by LLMs through the A2AJ API/MCP
Projects that use A2AJ datasets
- Building a tool for a legal clinic to extract insights from A2AJ datasets
- Creating an automated process to use generative AI to create a weekly podcast about the latest cases from court / area of law obtained via the A2AJ API
- Establishing an AI benchmarking tool to measure how accurately LLMs can analyze cases or legislation obtained via the A2AJ MCP
- Using bilingual documents in the A2AJ dataset to create an automated translation system fine-tuned for Canadian case law (or for a specific court / tribunal)
- Writing a law journal article using A2AJ datasets – for example an article that measures quality of writing over time for an administrative tribunal
Evaluation Criteria
| Pillar | A highly ranked application looks like: |
Access to justice impact (35%) How significantly will this project advance access to justice? This includes direct service to communities, supporting institutions that serve marginalized populations, systemic improvements to legal processes, or increased understanding of an access to justice issue. | The proposed tool addresses important access to justice challenges through direct community impact, institutional capacity building/insights, systemic improvements, or increases to knowledge; demonstrates clear understanding of how the project will ultimately benefit those facing legal barriers; shows potential for substantial, measurable impact. |
Technical innovation and A2AJ integration (25%) How effectively does the project leverage, enhance, or expand A2AJ datasets and infrastructure? | The project significantly expands A2AJ capabilities or datasets; and/or proposes novel technical solutions to existing legal information, design or technical problems. |
Project feasibility and applicant capability (25%) Can the applicant(s) successfully deliver the proposed project within timeline and budget? | The applicant(s) has/have directly relevant technical skills and/or experience; project has a realistic timeline with clear milestones. |
Equity, diversity and inclusion (15%) How does the project reflect the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion? | The applicants:
equity deserving groups or groups who are underrepresented in legal or technological fields. The project reflects commitments to the principles of co-creation and “nothing about us without us.” |
How to Apply
You’ll need:
- Institutional email from a university in which you are currently enrolled
- CV of all applicants
- Academic transcripts of all applicants
- Confirmation of applicant(s) work eligibility in Canada
- Proposal (maximum 2500 words)
- Project statement explaining the challenge you will address, the community(s) that may benefit, and the project’s connection to A2AJ’s mandate
- Technical feasibility statement explaining your team’s technical skills and how you will accomplish your goals
- Project plan & timeline with specific milestones
- Equity, diversity & inclusion statement
- To agree that the tool, dataset and/or publication funded by this project will be open-source
All fields are mandatory; only complete applications will be considered.
Question & Information Session
Questions: email a2aj@yorku.ca
Information session: TBD – enter your email to be added to a list for an upcoming info session.