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Printed Apr 10, 2026
At ABA TECHSHOW 2026’s Startup Alley, the pitch competitors Clio has sponsored for a decade, this yr’s finalists confirmed a transparent shift. Authorized tech startups have moved previous chatbots into agentic AI, vertical practice-area instruments, and merchandise that meet legal professionals contained in the software program they already use. The winner, Collbox, automates accounts receivable for regulation companies. For companies watching the place authorized expertise is headed, these startups provide a sensible preview of what is coming.
We not too long ago acquired again from ABA TECHSHOW 2026, and we’re nonetheless occupied with what we noticed at Startup Alley.
If you happen to’re not acquainted, ABA TECHSHOW Startup Alley is a pitch competitors that Bob Ambrogi created over a decade in the past. Chosen startups undergo a public voting course of, get exhibit house on the convention, and pitch their merchandise on the primary evening, proper earlier than the opening reception. Clio has sponsored it yearly for ten years, as a result of we predict authorized expertise startups deserve a stage. And with extra various expertise choices, legal professionals find yourself with higher instruments for the precise issues they’re going through.
There are greater than a thousand authorized tech startups working at present, based on Legaltech Hub. There’s extra power in authorized tech proper now than at any level we are able to keep in mind. Strolling away from this yr’s Startup Alley, just a few patterns stood out. They are saying one thing clear about the place authorized expertise is headed and what you need to be taking note of. If there was one throughline, it’s that the startups that impressed us most have moved previous chatbots fully. They’re constructing brokers.
From chatbots to agentic AI in authorized expertise
Chatbots are simple to undertake. Legal professionals have advised us that. However there’s a great distance between typing a query right into a chat window and getting one thing you may truly file, ship, or hand to a consumer. You continue to need to know what to ask, the right way to sequence the prompts, and the right way to sew the outputs collectively your self.
What we noticed this yr was totally different. A number of authorized tech AI startups have constructed past the chat mannequin in direction of what’s being known as agentic AI. If you happen to don’t actually know what agentic AI is outlined as, you may consider it as stringing collectively duties dynamically, as first defined that approach by one of many analysts at Andreessen Horowitz, of Marc Andreessen fame. We’ve had brokers for lots of of years. A thermostat is one. TurboTax is one. They each string duties dynamically. Giant language fashions are the most recent model, and the startups constructing on them are getting good quick.
Lawdify, the third-place winner, was the clearest instance. A doc dump goes in. Litigation-ready output comes out: draft letters, interrogatories, timelines, profiles of each particular person within the paperwork. Legal professionals don’t have to do intermediate prompting or copying and pasting between home windows.
TwinCounsel took a special strategy. It creates what quantities to a digital twin of the lawyer, and it operates by electronic mail. You delegate to it the identical approach you’d delegate to a junior affiliate by describing what you want, and it handles the work within the background. For a lawyer who already spends a lot of the day of their inbox, there’s nothing new to be taught.
Litmas, CaseCreate, and VoiceScript rounded out the class, every centered on totally different items of the litigation lifecycle.
The widespread thread is that, with every of them, legal professionals don’t need to orchestrate each step. The platforms chain the duties collectively and hand them an output for evaluation. For a deeper take a look at how AI instruments are altering authorized apply, discover our AI for legal professionals hub.
Why startups are going vertical
Authorized tech startups have a tendency to begin slender. Founders with deep experience in a single space of regulation construct the device they need they’d had after they had been working towards.
LegalBridge pitched a full immigration workflow. EstateScribe and EstateMin each went after property planning from totally different angles. And two dispute decision instruments, Immediator and StreamSettle, constructed shared platforms the place negotiating events can see how a lot alignment exists earlier than they even sit down.
These startups remedy a selected drawback for a selected apply space or workflow, with the deep experience founders have typically gained in that space. This brings lots of advantages, and particularly when startups with deep area data can plug into the methods legal professionals already use, everyone wins.
That is a part of why Clio constructed an open API, an software programming interface that lets software program join collectively securely. It means a startup with deep immigration or property planning experience doesn’t need to construct a whole apply administration platform from scratch. They construct the specialised device, join it to Clio, and the lawyer will get each in a single workflow. With over 300 integration companions now listed within the Clio app listing, that technique is working. The startup will get distribution. The lawyer will get a device constructed particularly for the way they apply. And the consumer will get higher outcomes as a result of their lawyer isn’t preventing the expertise.
Assembly legal professionals the place they already work
Adoption is the oldest drawback in authorized tech. Legal professionals don’t have afternoons to spend studying a brand new interface. The smarter startups have figured this out. As a substitute of asking legal professionals to return to them, they go to the lawyer.
Candle AI is an electronic mail assistant that lives inside Outlook, gathering context out of your inbox and appearing on it. Sonar Authorized does one-click home model formatting inside Microsoft Phrase, which sounds modest till you’ve spent three hours reformatting a short as a result of Phrase determined to override your kinds. That ache level has existed since WordPerfect misplaced the phrase processing wars within the early nineties. There’s a purpose WordPerfect information nonetheless present up in apply administration methods at present.
The e-mail-as-interface strategy can be telling for a special purpose. Your inbox is the place your case lives. Consumer communications, opposing counsel exchanges, court docket notices, attachments. When AI is barely as helpful as what it is aware of concerning the matter in entrance of you, instruments that may learn your inbox have a bonus over instruments that ask you to re-explain every part from scratch.
We’re already used to typing messages to individuals we are able to’t see and getting responses. Including an AI on the opposite finish is a pure extension of how the work will get completed.
What this yr’s winner will get proper
The general winner of Startup Alley was Collbox, a device that automates accounts receivable for regulation companies. You’ve billed the consumer. You’re ready for fee. Collbox steps in and acts as a set agent in your behalf.
It received for a purpose. Legal professionals are much more prepared to invoice than to gather. It’s an open secret in agency administration. A lawyer would relatively spend a day producing $2,000 in new billings than choose up the telephone and name the consumer who owes them $10,000. Collbox takes that discomfort and turns it right into a system that runs within the background with out the awkward telephone name. We’ve solved this drawback at Clio as effectively, so it’s good to see Collbox recognizing the identical ache level and constructing for it.
CounselPro could have had the strongest demo of the night. It’s a monetary forensics device. Drag in a yr’s price of financial institution statements and it exhibits you the place the cash went. In a divorce, which means categorizing spending by partner, flagging the anomalies (resorts booked in somebody’s personal hometown, spending patterns that don’t match what’s been disclosed), and producing the monetary image a court docket wants to find out assist and divide belongings. It’s instantly helpful for any apply space the place the work includes following cash, which is lots of them.
CounselPro, Immediator, Collbox. All of them go the place the cash is. A agency will spend a greenback to get well ten. That’s not a sophisticated pitch, and it’s a sensible place for a startup to construct.
The place authorized tech startups go from right here
What struck us most about this yr’s Startup Alley wasn’t any single product. It was how particular the instruments have gotten. A yr or two in the past, authorized AI startups had been principally displaying chatbots with authorized coaching information. This yr, they’re displaying instruments that do specific jobs specifically apply areas and produce specific outputs. The pitches have gotten particular, and so have the outputs. That’s an indication of a maturing trade.
If you wish to perceive the way forward for AI in regulation, this yr’s Startup Alley was a preview. The instruments that automate your consumption, format your briefs, comply with your cash, and handle your litigation, these instruments are right here now. And the authorized tech startups constructing them are solely getting extra centered.
For the startups themselves, the chance has by no means been greater. If you happen to’re constructing one thing price displaying, ClioCon this autumn in Boston is the perfect place to place it in entrance of legal professionals who’re already enthusiastic about authorized expertise and able to undertake. We offer the sales space, the branding, and the expertise so startups can present up and concentrate on what issues: speaking to prospects. Whether or not you’re pitching to a solo practitioner who can change at present or a mid-size agency evaluating instruments for subsequent quarter, there’s no higher room to be in.
And for the companies occupied with AI and the way forward for regulation, the clearest lesson from this yr’s Startup Alley is that the perfect authorized expertise isn’t the device that does probably the most however the device that does the precise factor you want, contained in the workflow you have already got, with out asking you to vary the way you apply.
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