David Colarusso

Biography

David Colarusso is the Director of Suffolk University Law School's Legal Innovation and Technology Lab. An attorney and educator by training, he has worked as a public defender, data scientist, software engineer, and high school physics teacher. He is the author of a programming language for lawyers, QnA Markup, an award winning legal hacker, ABA Legal Rebel, and Fastcase 50 honoree. In 2017 he was named one of the ABA's top legal tweeters.

After receiving his BA from Cornell University and his MEd from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Colarusso taught high school physics and astronomy for six years both in a suburb of Boston and in Edinburgh Scotland, where he represented the American educational system on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange. While teaching, he co-founded and ran a small design firm that provided custom-built online systems for a number of multi-party projects involving collaborations with institutions such as The New York Times Editorial Board.

Colarusso obtained his JD from Boston University Law School and began his legal practice as a staff attorney for the Massachusetts public defender agency (CPCS), working in the Middlesex district courts. Eventually he became CPCS's first data scientist where he developed and implement methods to better leverage agency data for the benefit of clients.

His work has been featured on NPR and by the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the New York Times.

He likes to build things: furniture, software, and reasoned arguments. His latest creations can be found on his eponymous website.