On Being Named a WIPL Finalist — and the Work Behind It
I'll be honest: when I found out I hadn't won the Women, Influence & Power in Law Thought Leadership award, I was disappointed. Not in a dramatic way, but in that quiet, deflating way that happens when you've let yourself hope.
And then I sat with it for a day, and something shifted.
I'm not an attorney. I work for a small legal technology nonprofit. The WIPL Awards are given out among some of the most accomplished women in the legal profession — partners at major firms, general counsel, judges, legal innovators with decades of practice behind them. And I was a finalist. Among them. Being recognized for making an impact in their field, from the outside.
That realization genuinely stopped me. I hadn't won, but I had been seen. In a room full of people who have spent their careers building the legal profession from the inside, someone looked at the work I've been doing and said: this belongs here too. That's not nothing. That's actually everything.
I'm so proud to have been recognized, and I want to use this moment to talk about the work that earned it.
What the Nomination Was Really About
The WIPL Thought Leadership category recognizes women who aren't just succeeding within the legal system — they're reshaping how the profession understands itself. What I've been building at Free Law Project, and specifically through the Justice Partner Circle, is an attempt to do exactly that: to change how law firms think about their role in the public infrastructure of the legal system.
Free Law Project builds and maintains open legal data and research tools — CourtListener, RECAP, Bots.Law, and more. These are resources that lawyers, journalists, researchers, and courts rely on every day. They're free because legal information belongs to the public. But building and sustaining them requires real, ongoing investment.
The Justice Partner Circle is a way for law firms to contribute to that work in a structured, sustainable way. Firms participate at per-attorney giving levels, starting at Bronze ($10 per attorney) and going up to Platinum ($100 per attorney). The benefits are designed to be genuinely useful: group membership access for all firm staff, recognition, and at higher levels, things like additional API access to CourtListener and RECAP, personalized support from our team, and direct consultation with FLP's researchers and leadership on how to apply our data to the firm's specific needs.
For firms with more specific goals, we also put together custom packages, including access to FLP's data for developing bespoke legal technology tools.
Why I Think Law Firms Belong in This Conversation
Access to justice is often treated as a problem for courts and legal aid organizations to solve. Those institutions carry enormous responsibility, and I don't want to minimize that. But law firms are part of the same ecosystem, and I think we do the profession a disservice when we treat its public obligations as someone else's job.
I've spent a lot of time in conversation with firm leaders who genuinely care about legal innovation, DEI, and access to justice, but aren't sure how to engage in ways that are sustainable and strategic rather than episodic. The Justice Partner Circle is my answer to that. It's an attempt to create a framework that lets firms align those goals in a single, coherent commitment, rather than treating each as a separate initiative.
One piece of that I don't talk about enough: participation in the Justice Partner Circle also opens up asynchronous pro bono opportunities for partners and associates. This matters more than it might sound. Traditional pro bono work requires time, scheduling, and direct client contact — all of which create real barriers for busy attorneys. Contributing to open legal infrastructure is different. It's meaningful, it counts, and it can happen on a timeline that works for the people doing it. For firms that want to expand how their attorneys engage in public service beyond the billable hour, this is a genuinely practical on-ramp.
There's also an urgent, practical dimension right now. AI is entering the legal profession fast, and firms that want AI tools built on rigorous, transparent, publicly accountable data have a direct stake in making sure that kind of infrastructure exists. Proprietary and opaque systems are the alternative, and they carry real risks around accuracy, accountability, and equity. Supporting FLP isn't just a charitable write-off. It's an investment in the legal data commons the profession increasingly depends on.
Hitting Above My Weight
Coming back to the award: I think what moves me most is the category I was nominated in. Thought leadership. Not fundraising, not nonprofit management, thought leadership, alongside eight other women, attorneys and firm leaders who have spent entire careers earning that designation. I read that list and thought: what am I doing here?
And then I thought: this is exactly the point.
That tells me that the ideas behind the Justice Partner Circle are landing. That reframing law firm participation in access to justice as something strategic, values-driven, and operationally practical — not just a pro bono checkbox — is a contribution the profession recognizes as meaningful. And that even from a small nonprofit, even as a non-attorney, it's possible to shift how an entire field thinks about its responsibilities.
I'm proud of that. And I'm energized to keep going.
An Invitation
If your firm is thinking about how to show up for access to justice, open legal data, or responsible AI in law, I'd genuinely love to talk. We can walk through what participation looks like, what the benefits mean in practice, and whether a custom arrangement might serve your firm's goals better than the standard tiers.
I believe this work matters. I'd be honored to do it with you.
I will be at the WIPL Conference this Fall in Nashville, if you'll be there too — let's meet for coffee or a drink to chat. Or shoot me an email at jenifer@free.law to chat anytime!
