Last week, Suffolk Law School became the latest venue for the American Legal Tech Awards ceremony, an event informally called “Legal Tech Prom” as the legal technology world’s best and brightest trade the corporate-branded quarter zips for evening formal wear. While the red carpet may lack custom Versace gowns, it does feature a bunch of people who just spent 45 minutes watching YouTubers explain how to tie a bow tie. For what it’s worth, this is a good one and only required two viewings.
With its strong tech and innovation bona fides, Suffolk Law was the obvious choice to host the event in Boston. Home to the Suffolk Legal Innovation & Technology Center and the associated LIT Lab, Suffolk takes a tech-forward approach to training its students, embracing the innovation and change that the rest of the profession grumbles about “the kids watching TickerToks” while dictating their email responses to an admin.
LawDroid’s Tom Martin serves as an adjunct professor at Suffolk and is also one of the Awards’ founders along with Vanderbilt’s Cat Moon and attorney Patrick Palace. Palace is also the current President of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and “President of Presidents Palace” has a real “we’re all about to be expendable extras in 300” feel to it.
Damien Riehl returned for another year as the event’s host, offering a new round of legally themed song parodies. Like a number, performed with Jackie Schafer of Clearbrief, about artificial intelligence inspired by Little Shop of Horrors, a musical about a nerd who falls under the thrall of an unholy creation that eventually tries to kill him. At least no one called Seymour “agentic plant life.” In any event, it’s proof again that our annual Law Revue competitors don’t need to give up on their passion after law school.
The full list of nominees and winners showcases the breadth of what “legal technology” means. There’s more happening out there beyond the now reliably consistent conveyor belt of AI hallucination briefs ripe for our ridicule and occasional sanctions. Like the Maryland Justice Passport, which compiled scattered resources into a single, user-friendly digital interface for litigants navigating the Kafkaesque nightmare of the courts. Or Onit, who took home the enterprise award for “democratizing access to legal expertise through AI-powered tools.” Across 10 categories, the ALTA honored the people out there doing the hard work of making the profession suck less through technology. And while we’re talking about people who make the profession suck less, the Lifetime Achievement Award went to Jim Calloway, the recently retired Director of Management Assistance Program at the Oklahoma Bar Association, who spent his career helping lawyers serve clients better.
In an industry with its share of vapid buzzwords and bloated venture capital debts, the ALTA ceremony is a yearly reminder that there’s a lot of room for combining law and technology to improve the profession. Some of the law students out there might also see that there’s a path to using their degrees on something potentially more rewarding than billing 2400 hours to ClubbingBabySealCorp’s IPO.
While the rest of the profession keeps threatening to collapse under the weight of its own dysfunction, the American Legal Tech Awards confirm that there are people out here making the law actually work. And that legal tech geeks own an iron.
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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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