Our 2025 Director's Letter

Free Law Project is the leading non-profit using advocacy, technology, and data to improve the legal system. This year, we achieved incredible milestones that will transform legal research for generations to come. Today we are asking for your continued support to ensure 2026 can be even better.

Read on to learn about our groundbreaking year, or click below to give us your support. Thank you.

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2025: A Year of Revolutionary Change

This year stands out as one of the most transformative in Free Law Project's history. We didn't just grow as a team and organization—we fundamentally expanded our impact. And we didn't just maintain our mission—we accelerated it.

Revolutionary New Tools

This year, we launched tools that change how people interact with legal information:

1. Semantic Search

   In November, we launched our semantic search API , allowing researchers to find relevant case law based on meaning, not just keywords. This AI-powered tool understands legal concepts and finds cases that matter. It's open source, open model, and open embedding, and it's available via our API. Next year we will integrate it directly into CourtListener.

2. Case Law Redesign

   We completely rebuilt how opinions appear on CourtListener. The new design is cleaner, faster, and makes it easier to read and research case law. Every citation is now clickable, making legal research more efficient than ever.

3. Oral Arguments at Scale

   We used AI to transcribe over three million minutes of oral argument audio and made it searchable and alertable for the first time. Researchers can now search within transcripts and get alerts whenever things are said in circuit courts.

Awards and Recognition

The legal and tech communities recognized our work with major awards this year:

• AWS Imagine Grant — Amazon Web Services awarded us a $150,000 grant to support our Justice Initiatives division and the development of a new portal for self-represented litigants.

• American Legal Technology Award — Free Law Project was named the winner in the Artificial Intelligence category for the careful approach to AI we took in partnership with the Civil Litigation Clearinghouse. This work was supported by Arnold Ventures.

• Paul H. Chapman Award — As director of Free Law Project, I was honored to receive this award from the Foundation for Improvement of Justice for my contributions to the legal system.

New Initiatives

We launched major new programs this year that expand our mission:

1. Justice Initiatives Division

   We created a new division focused on justice reform and litigant support. This expansion recognizes that technology alone isn't enough—we must also work directly with courts and litigants to improve legal outcomes.

   This division is currently working on solutions for public defenders and a portal to help self-represented litigants navigate the court system.

2. Justice Partner Circle

   We launched a new giving program for law firms that want to make an impact. Justice Partners shape the future of legal practice, support the creation of open legal information, and are leaders that are committed to transparency, accountability, and the public good.

3. AI Citator

   We launched an ambitious project to create an AI Citator to flag unreliable case law. To make this a world-class tool, we are working with more than 80 volunteers to build a benchmark of good and bad case law. This collaborative effort brings together law librarians, practicing lawyers, and court clerks to verify and enhance our citation graph.

   When complete, this project will provide a free and open alternative to expensive commercial citators.

4. Case Law Scanning

   The only way to have a complete record of case law is to scan the books. This will ensure that our database of case law is current and complete. We'll have much more to say about this in 2026, as this project ramps up.

Learn about the Justice Initiatives DivisionLearn about Justice Partners Circle

Advocacy and Impact

We continued our advocacy work to protect access to justice:

• A Friend of the Court — We led a coalition of legal innovators that filed an amicus brief in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS, a landmark case about copyright and legal research. Our brief argues that legal data must remain accessible and that restrictive copyright claims threaten innovation in the legal sector. The case has major implications for the future of legal research.

• Presentations — We worked hard this year to get our message out and to advocate for a better legal system. We spoke on podcasts, lectured classes at law and journalism schools, and presented at conferences.

• Transparency Advocacy — Throughout the year, we advocated for court transparency, including speaking out when courts restricted access to records, fighting to keep legal research private, and pushing for greater PACER access. We continue to be a voice for open courts and accessible justice.

• Powering News and Awareness — The biggest newsrooms in American now use our APIs and data to power investigative pieces and legal dashboards. We also are a driving force behind numerous legal trackers that help people understand changes to the law.

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Infrastructure and Scaling

This year we served over 800 million downloads and had over 1,000 people use our APIs. Scaling to this level of traffic and attention has been difficult and expensive, and we've spent considerable time shoring up our systems. We see no sign of this slowing down and are targeting a billion downloads in 2026.

Community Engagement

We stayed connected with our community through regular updates and engagement:

• 465 Bluesky Posts — We kept our community informed with nearly daily updates about new features, policy developments, and legal tech news.

  Follow us @free.law for the latest updates.

• Reddit — To reach new audiences, we created a new subreddit and expanded our presence on LinkedIn.

• Open Source Contributions — Nearly all of our work continues to be open source so that others can build on the work we do. This year we had an unprecedented level of volunteer engagement, and we were proud to release an innovative new tool to make our web framework more scalable.

Looking Forward

2026 is going to be busy:

• Litigant Portal Launch and Expansion — We'll expand our litigant tool to more jurisdictions and case types.

• Tools for Public Defenders — We've begun working with public defenders to identify their needs and challenges. In 2026, we'll begin building the tools they need.

• Case Law — We'll ramp up our scanning project, launch an enhanced viewing experience on CourtListener, and provide an unimpeachable case law database.

• Citator — We'll complete and launch our AI-powered citator, providing a free alternative to expensive commercial tools.

• State and SCOTUS Filings — The RECAP Archive has almost half a billion federal records. In 2026, we'll begin adding records from state courts and SCOTUS too.

• A New Website — CourtListener needs a more modern design, and in 2026 we'll deliver a new, faster, more accessible, and more modern version of the site.

• Search Enhancements — We'll continue improving search with better relevancy and smarter features.

• Advocacy — We'll continue fighting for open courts and accessible justice, filing amicus briefs where needed, and speaking out when access is threatened.

Your Support Makes It Possible

Every accomplishment listed above was made possible by grants, partnerships, and donors like you. Your support pays for servers, staff, and the countless hours of work that go into making legal information freely accessible.

This year, we're asking you to invest in accessible justice. If you have benefited from our work or if you share our vision of a better legal system, we ask that you please donate today.

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Thank you for being part of our community and supporting accessible justice. Together, we're building a legal system that works for everyone.

Thank you and happy holidays,

Michael Lissner
Executive Director