Free Law Project Director Michael Lissner Awarded for Work Improving Justice

Each year since 1986, the Foundation for Improvement of Justice accepts nominations for people and organizations that have "contributed unique improvements to the civil or criminal justice systems."

This year, I was deeply honored to receive the Foundation for Improvement of Justice’s Paul H. Chapman Award. The award recognizes the work I have led at Free Law Project—building open technology and data infrastructure that makes courts more transparent, accountable, and accessible.

At Free Law Project, we created tools like CourtListener (with over 10 million opinions and arguments), RECAP (which has liberated hundreds of millions PACER records), and Bots.law; we launched new initiatives such as the Litigant Portal; and we built the Judicial Financial Disclosure Database.

Alongside this, I have pushed for reform across the system—championing legislation to make PACER free, researching a FOIA-style framework for the judiciary, and supporting court-by-court efforts to expand public access to legal information.

This award affirms the idea that transparency isn’t just a principle—it’s a practical lever for justice.

In accepting the award, you are given a few minutes to talk. I chose to speak broadly about the philosophies that I try to bring to Free Law Project.

Follows is my speech.

Hello and thank you to the board and to those at the Foundation that have made this whole event possible, and thank you, Jenifer, for the wonderful nomination and introduction.

I’m sure you get an incredible number of applicants for this award each year, and I’m flattered to be selected for my work developing Free Law Project. I only have a few minutes to talk, so I thought I’d tell a few stories about what we’ve done over the years while building the organization and the platform.

Now, I’m a person that enjoys collecting little sayings and mantras to live by, so I thought I’d share four little sayings tonight, along with some stories they’ve inspired.

So. The first saying is DO HARD THINGS. This one doesn’t need much explanation, and it’s not exactly revolutionary, but the point of it is that you shouldn’t be deterred from things that seem impossible or difficult, and that haven’t been done before. Sometimes, if you can just work a little harder or be a little more patient than others in the field, you’ll break through.

This bit of organizational and personal philosophy emerged early on at Free Law Project. One of the first projects we launched was an effort to collect every bit of case law that had ever been published. We figured there are a few hundred courts issuing major decisions, so we could collect those each day and then work backwards in time until we had everything from the past — all the way back to the Colonial era.

We submitted a grant application to fund this work, and but we were denied because they thought the task was impossibly hard. It was a painful result for our young organization, but with the collaboration and help of many others we were able to slowly do the work anyway, and we’ve been at it now for 15 years. As Jenifer shared, the project is now nearing completion, and we finally got a grant for related work from that same organization late last year.

Right now, we’re launching another ambitious project to build a powerful system for pro se litigants that will probably take just about as long. We call it the "Litigant Portal," and hopefully we will find funding more easily this time!

So, sometimes people will tell you things are too hard. If you can — and that can be a big “if” — but if you can, my advice is to do hard things anyway.

The second mantra I like to share is DO THE WORK. To me, this saying is a way of reiterating that the work isn’t always glorious, it’s not always fun, but you just gotta sit in the chair each day and do it anyway. The work matters, and even if it’s not obvious at the time, each day adds up to something more than the one before.

As Jenifer mentioned, one of our successes a few years ago was the creation of a database of investments held by federal judges and justices. We created the database, Wall Street Journal used it to do a 17-article series, Congress passed a law fixing some of the issues it revealed, and ProPublica used the database to expose the linkages between justices and their rich friends.

But the reason all this happened was because for years we did the work by reading lengthy and boring policy documents published by the federal judiciary. In one of those documents, they changed a policy in an interesting way. The old policy was, “Send us a check for seven dollars and send us a fax, and we’ll mail you the investments held by a particular judge.” The new policy was, “Email us a list of the judges you want, and we’ll send you a thumb drive of their investments — free!”

Well, we did send them a list — of every judge and justice in the country — and several years later, after hiring more staff so they could complete our request, they fulfilled it by sending us about a dozen thumbdrives. From there, we made the database, and the rest followed.

So, even though the work is not always glorious, if you sit in the chair, and if you do the work each day, before you know it, you’ll have the impact you’re looking for.

The third saying I like to think about is FOLLOW THE PATH OF LEAST PROCRASTINATION. I fully admit I’ve described something of a grindstone so far — Do the Work! Do the Hard Thing! Sit in the Chair! — Well, this mantra — Follow the Path of Least Procrastination — is my antidote and my response to that grindstone. From what I’ve seen, I think it’s particularly important in the legal space.

What I’ve found in my own path is that my ambition to make a difference clouds out good decision-making, leading to long, grueling days.

The reason Free Law Project is a success, and the reason we can do so many hard things is because we love what we do — we genuinely enjoy it — and that brings us to our desks each day, year after year.

Finally, the last saying I think about a lot, but I rarely say aloud, is ALWAYS ZEINA. These two words are about my partner, Zeina, who is here tonight as my guest. For the last decade we’ve both worked from home, literally back to back, in a small office that we share. Every day. For over a decade. She’s always there for me, and I for her — I hope! — and she’s the secret — or not so secret — reason Free Law Project is a success.

But of course, this saying has a bigger meaning too, and it’s that it takes a community to make anything great. While I’m the one up here tonight telling stories and trying to preach my little mantras, the real reason Free Law Project is able to help so many people is because we’re all working together, supporting one another.

So I’ll just conclude tonight by saying thank you to my board; thank you to the FLP staff; thank you to the Foundation for Improvement of Justice; thank you to everybody else that has supported what we do here ­— And of course, always, thank you to Zeina and my family that has supported me and Free Law Project these many years!

Thank you!

I’m grateful to the Foundation for the Improvement of Justice for recognizing this work, and even more grateful for the community of colleagues, supporters, and partners who share the belief that transparency and access to justice must go hand in hand.