Inaugural RAILS Fellows: 2025-2026
In this self-directed role, each Fellow proposed and lead a specific project with defined outputs to be completed during Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
Read the original July 2025 Call for Applications (PDF).
RAILS Fellows are self-motivated professionals who are committed to leading responsible AI initiatives in legal services through research, resource creation, policy development, public engagement, and applied innovation. Fellows are leaders who have proposed and will execute specific projects or initiatives of their own design, in collaboration with the RAILS network and the Duke Center on Law & Technology (DCLT).
Contact us at rails@law.duke.edu if you’d like to connect with any of our Fellows to support their projects.
Heidi Behnke
Heidi Behnke is the Statewide Project Manager for Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP). Her role involves monitoring milestones/benchmarks, creating budgets, resource assessment, strategic planning, and more for a wide variety of projects impacting GLSP’s ability to impactfully serve and support Georgians with low incomes. This includes the incorporation of new technologies.
Heidi holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute and a Masters of Science in Development Anthropology from the University of Durham (UK).
Fellowship Project
Heidi will review AI practices and pitfalls in their application to client intake systems. This work will culminate in a white paper and case study as she looks to apply findings in the real-world setting of GLSP.
Aparna Komarla
Aparna Komarla is the founder of Redo.io, where she leads the development of transparent, interpretable AI systems for justice reform in partnership with Stanford Law’s Three Strikes Project and California’s Office of the State Public Defender.
Aparna has presented research at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) FAccT, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), and the AI4A2J Workshop at the International Conference on AI and the Law (ICAIL). She was featured in Relativity’s women in legal AI showcase.
Aparna holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from UC Davis.
Fellowship Project
Aparna will research innovative AI applications for justice reform to help close California’s second-chance gap.
Judge Martin (Marty) B. McGee
Judge Martin B. (Marty) McGee is a North Carolina Superior Court Judge with 25 years of judicial experience. He is a court technology leader in the areas of remote proceedings and the intersection of the courts and GenAI.
Judge McGee is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, B.A.; Wake Forest University School of Law, J.D.; and Duke University School of Law, Master of Laws.
Fellowship Project
Judge McGee will develop a model administrative (standing) order that provides a framework for the ethical use of GenAI in legal proceedings, which can be modified to suit the needs of individual courts. Judge McGee will access frontier model GenAI tools for his experimental learning, interview GenAI thought leaders and practitioners, and build upon his groundbreaking GenAI order (July 23, 2024), which has been called “the genAI standing order nationwide most protective of fairness at trial.” He will also produce practical scholarship, participating in continuing legal and judicial education programs to further the reach of his work.
