Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University hosted the reciprocal visit of the United States Embassy university partnership programme, with a week of workshops on how technology is integrated into legal education and how interdisciplinary programmes are built and sustained. The visiting expert was Nicole Morris of Emory University, director of its TI:GER programme, an established model for interdisciplinary teaching across law and technology.
The opening day included a meeting with the Public Diplomacy Section of the United States Embassy in Tbilisi. The meeting was attended on the Embassy’s side by Harvey Sernovitz, Public Diplomacy Counselor, and Sophie Bzishvili, Higher Education Program Coordinator, as well as Natia Sirdadze of the American Councils for International Education, Dimitry Gegenava, Vice Rector of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University, and Shalva Jokharidze, founder of the LegalTech Lab.
The Lab presented its work to date: the AI Policy and LegalTech course launched in 2025, the smart-contract blockchain simulator introduced into classroom teaching, and the student document-automation capstones that replaced conventional written examinations.
Sessions with visiting colleagues covered existing interdisciplinary models at partner law schools and the practical requirements for running cross-faculty programmes – supervision structures, assessment design and the institutional agreements they depend on. The programme had a direct focus on exactly this problem, and it was timely: if the integration of technology into legal education does not begin now, it will begin late.