I’m Chris Trudeau — a law professor, researcher, and a zealous advocate for clear communication and ethical use of new technologies. I have taught legal writing, contract drafting, property law, business organizations, and health law, over my 20+ years of teaching in law schools.

I’ve spent nearly two decades studying how people read, interpret, and act on legal, governmental,  and medical information. And I find myself asking the same question over and over: why do organizations (and their lawyers) craft documents in ways that make it more difficult for people to understand?

I’m currently a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, but everything I write, build, or accidentally overthink on this site reflects my own views, not the university’s.

Over the past twenty years, my work has ranged from teaching (of course) to clinical-trial regulation to clarity research to building early AI tools to enhance student learning. I’ve published studies on how people actually absorb information and created guides to help organizations communicate like actual humans.

Then AI showed up

It was brilliant, inconsistent, and very confident about things it shouldn’t be confident about. Lawyers, students, and many others embraced it in ways that helped people and in ways that hurt people. Suddenly the stakes around clear thinking and clear communication got a lot higher. If we want good outcomes, we need good judgment. And judgment depends on understanding.

That’s why I created Trudeau.ai.

It’s where my work comes together: the research, the writing, the teaching, and the experiments with AI. I view this site as my way of thinking in public .