Justice Through Collaboration and Smarter Tools: Free Law Project at LITCon2025

This week, the Suffolk LIT Lab hosted its annual Legal Innovation & Technology Conference—#LITCon2025—bringing together practitioners, technologists, and justice system changemakers to share ideas for building a more equitable and efficient legal system.

Free Law Project was proud to contribute two "LITBit" talks focused on a common theme: how open source, nonprofit partnerships, and AI can help courts and legal advocates do more with less.

The Case for Open Source and Nonprofit–Court Partnerships

In a talk titled “Justice Through Collaboration: Why Courts Should Partner with Nonprofits & Use Open Source,” Free Law Project’s User Researcher/Project Manager Jessica Frank delivered a compelling message: courts can achieve better outcomes, faster innovation, and greater public trust by working with mission-driven nonprofits and embracing open source technology.

Too often, courts are locked into expensive, long-term contracts with proprietary software vendors. When addressing the access to justice gap, courts aren’t able to control or modify their own systems. Jessica contrasted that with Free Law Project’s model—where tools are free, transparent, and built in the public interest. Drawing on examples like our Litigant Portal/efiling project, the LitLab’s Document Assembly Line, and CALI’s A2J Author, she highlighted how open ecosystems support both internal efficiency and external accountability.

“Courts, nonprofits, and tech experts need to work together.” Jessica emphasized. “By collaborating, they can create adaptable, user-friendly solutions that actually meet the needs of the communities they serve.”

Her call to action was clear: courts should seek out and collaborate with nonprofits building tools that align with access to justice goals—and funders should prioritize these partnerships.

Watch on YouTube See Her Slides

Smarter Case Tracking and Legal Research with AI

Picking up that thread, Free Law Project’s AI Developer Rachel Gao followed with: “Harnessing AI for Smarter Case Tracking and Legal Research.” Her talk showed how Free Law Project is integrating AI with its data infrastructure to make litigation tracking and legal research more intelligent, scalable, and useful for researchers and advocates.

Using a new prototype built on top of the CourtListener database, Rachel demonstrated how AI can:

• Empower legal professionals to conduct efficient research, automate time-consuming tasks, and provide data-driven insights that enhance strategic decision-making.

• Accelerate legal research through natural language queries, reducing the knowledge gap between legal experts and pro se litigants.

• Enable legal professionals and pro se litigants to proactively manage their cases and respond strategically to developments at ease.

Importantly, she stressed that these tools aren’t replacing lawyers or legal researchers—they’re accelerating their work. “In the past, a lot of this was done painstakingly by legal professionals, and our goal is to utilize AI to help you find precedents faster and easier,” she said.

Rachel’s presentation sparked excitement in the room, offering a glimpse into how open legal data and thoughtful AI integration can empower watchdogs, journalists, and access-to-justice organizations alike.

Watch on YouTube See Her Slides

Building the Future of Public Legal Infrastructure

Taken together, the two talks offered a unified vision: one where public legal infrastructure is collaborative, transparent, and built for the long term. By combining open source values with cutting-edge AI, Free Law Project is helping modernize legal tools—not just for courts and researchers, but for the broader public good.

We’re grateful to Suffolk LIT Lab for creating space at LITCon2025 to explore these possibilities. And we’re especially proud of Jessica and Rachel for bringing the Free Law Project mission to life: using technology, data, and partnerships to make the legal system more equitable, more accountable, and more understandable for everyone.

Interested in partnering with us or supporting this work? Reach out!