Last week, the legal tech world convened at Suffolk Law School for the seventh installment of the American Legal Technology Awards. Once an online event held during the depths of COVID, the annual gala bringing so many people under the same roof serves as a moment to take stock of the year in tech. Last year’s theme was “time to build,” as vibecoding sparked a wave of creative solutions to underserved legal challenges. Awards co-founder Tom Martin of LawDroid announced this year’s theme as the more reflective: “ask why.” A back to basics call to focus on figuring out “the purpose of what we’re trying to do”
Frontline Justice won the access to justice award for training people that communities already trust — “the librarian, the social worker, the tribal health aide, the faith leader” — as community justice workers. The project grew out of the edge case that is Alaska, a state where it can be harder to find a lawyer than someone named “Dan Sullivan,” but today more than 15 states plus D.C. are proposing or approving justice worker policies.
The law firm award went to the Law Office of Sergei Tokmakov for showing that one attorney “using AI as infrastructure” can run a full-service firm and give away self-help tools that tens of thousands of people use every month. OpenLaws took the actual Artificial Intelligence award for making current, structured U.S. law available “like a public utility.” Amanda Brown won the Individual award for Lagniappe Law Lab and the Louisiana Legal Navigator, the shared technology backbone connecting Louisiana’s courts, legal aid, and self-help programs.
If you’re noticing a theme here, it might be self-help. Not to the exclusion of legal assistance, but as the necessary complement to formal legal advice. As Frontline Justice CEO Nikole Nelson put it in her acceptance speech “we can’t close that justice gap with lawyers only.”
But the formal legal system is still necessary. The Austin Community Court’s Mobile Court Team won the Courts award for bringing court directly to shelters and community centers, removing “barriers to accessing services by meeting people where they are already accessing services.” Korin Munsterman of the University of North Texas-Dallas picked up the Education trophy for training the next generation of lawyers in the responsible use of AI. Harbor picked up the Enterprise award for its work guiding strategic tech adoption. And Marc Lauritsen won the Lifetime Achievement award for his long-time work convincing lawyers that technology adoption can deliver efficiency for solo practitioners.
Stephanie Everett and Zack Glaser of Lawyerist won the Journalism award for their work providing practical guidance for solo and small firm lawyers. In accepting the award, Everett announced that the show’s 2027 mission would be giving voice to women founders, an issue flagged by Legal Tech Awards co-founder Cat Moon who noted that another event’s roster of world-changing legal tech companies featured “one woman in a list of twelve or fifteen.”
The startup winner, Techtivist, had the story of the night. More than a decade ago at a New York public defender’s office, its founder Julie Ciccolini watched officers “abusing our clients with zero accountability. And naively I thought, let’s start tracking it in a spreadsheet.” The spreadsheet outgrew itself and became a database. Techtivist now operates in more than nine states keeping track of police abuses to provide visibility for defense lawyers with clients walking into court to face officers with a track record.
Chasing the “time to build” theme with “ask why” might sound a little like the cart before the horse. But it’s more a byproduct of the rapid flood of innovation hitting law right now. We’re now blessed with more products and insights, yet cursed with a glut of tools and approaches that makes it hard to find the right response (or responses… there’s rarely a single solution to every problem) for the task at hand. Recentering on what matters makes a lot of sense in the middle of the maelstrom.
Speaking of what matters, co-founder Patrick Palace noted that the lawyer pledge to the protect rule of law that he discussed at last year’s ALTAs is now official ABA policy. Of course, this might have something to do with the Trump administration’s all-out war against the ABA.
But everything boils down to delivering justice for clients. Whether technology helps lawyers get that job done, or helps people solve their problems directly isn’t really important. Getting to the result is what matters and the more clear pathways technology can pave the better.
The full list of winners and runners-up can be found here.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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