Independent 2026 field guide · by Terms.Law, a Law Firm finalist
Every 2026 finalist. One ballot.
Mark your picks, open a dossier, put finalists side by side, or ask the AI Legal Analyst about the field.
Winners announced Oct 25, Boston
- 27finalists
- 9categories
- 234submissions
- Oct 25Boston gala
Independent finalist guide · researched from public sources · Terms.Law is a Law Firm finalist · not affiliated with the Awards Methodology and disclosure
I am one of the 27 finalists, and I went and researched the other 26 from public sources. I have not seen anybody’s actual entry and I do not know what the judges weighed, so every profile here is my reading of what is public, checked September 17, 2026. I worked out the comparison method myself, and that is the whole of my role: no affiliation with the American Legal Technology Awards, and picks made here go nowhere.
Left to right, from information to delivery; bottom to top, from serving individuals to serving institutions. Placement is my reading of each finalist’s public work, not a ranking. Click a dot for the dossier.
Ask about the finalists
The same AI Legal Analyst that runs across Terms.Law, pointed at this page's research. It cites its sources and does not pick winners.
Attorney-supervised, not legal advice. For a legal question, use the AI Legal Analyst on the homepage.
About the Awards
Everything below is from the organizers' own announcement. Where the record is silent, this says so rather than filling the gap.
Three answers to what a law firm can be
The judges put a 700-lawyer national firm, a flat-fee family-law boutique, and a one-lawyer practice with no staff in the same final three. Same category, three different theories of how technology changes a firm.
Baker Donelson
National firm, Memphis and 20+ offices
- Lawyers
- 700+ attorneys and public policy advisors
- Innovation staff
- 20+ in-house client-solutions professionals
- Delivery
- Legal project management on 13,000+ matters since 2012
- Pricing
- 11,000+ alternative-fee engagements
- AI
- Firmwide approved AI for drafting, contracts, diligence, research
Evolve Family Law
Family-law boutique, Saskatoon, Canada
- Lawyers
- 1 plus an articling student and a small team
- Innovation staff
- None the founder redesigns the model personally
- Delivery
- Remote-first across Canada: video, online documents, e-signature
- Pricing
- Every service unbundled, priced flat, never hourly
- AI
- Virtual receptionists for intake and after-hours
Terms.Law (my firm)
Solo business-law practice, San Diego
- Lawyers
- 1 and zero staff
- Innovation staff
- None the software is the staff
- Delivery
- 10,224 pages; 113 generators; 914 automated reviews; written, fixed-fee work
- Pricing
- Fixed fees, e-sign engagement, no hourly intake calls
- AI
- AI Legal Analyst on 12,903 pages; 395 conversations in 30 days
The organizers’ finalist badge, issued September 17, 2026.How Terms.Law works, in numbers
Not a blog: a one-lawyer practice run as software. Every figure was counted on September 17, 2026 from sources anyone can re-run.
- 10,224pages in the sitemapA page for your exact problemEach built around one legal situation or tool, in five languages: an unpaid invoice, a frozen account, a contract you were just handed.
- 12,903pages carry the AI Legal AnalystAsk, do not readDescribe your own situation and upload your documents; the analyst helps organize the facts, the documents, and the issues for my review.
- 113 + 914generators and automated reviewsDo it yourself if it is simpleDocument generators, demand-letter libraries, calculators, and automated terms-and-privacy reviews, free and without a signup.
- 1 / 0lawyer / staffA fixed fee if it is notIntegrated intake, conflict and scope screening, an e-signed engagement letter with the exact fee, written delivery, a private workroom.
- 395AI conversations in 30 daysThe lawyer decidesEvery paid deliverable is attorney-reviewed. The AI stack, the workrooms, and a public post-mortem are published.
How each figure was counted
1 / 0 lawyer / staff: Sergei Tokmakov, California Bar #279869, runs the practice alone; 10,224 pages in the sitemap: sitemap.xml, September 6, 2026 build; the raw tree holds 13,593 HTML files including taxonomy stubs; 12,903 pages carrying the AI Legal Analyst: count of pages loading the chat widget, September 17, 2026; 395 AI conversations in 30 days: matter threads touched August 18 to September 17, 2026, in the live database; 788 turns; 914 automated terms and privacy reviews: ToS Watchdog and Privacy Watchdog pages; 113 document generators: generator pages in the templates library; plus 1,807 demand-letter pages, 85 calculators, 2,680 forum threads, and pages in English, Spanish, Russian, Thai, and Chinese.
What the field says
Read across all 27 finalists, the common thread is technology wired into the delivery of legal help: behind community advocates at Frontline Justice, inside a trial court's default-judgment queue in Los Angeles, around the verification of AI output at Benchly, beneath it as structured law at OpenLaws, and into the business model of a firm, whether Evolve's flat fees or Baker Donelson's pricing and project-management teams.
My own entry is the smallest organization on the list, and that is the point of it: what one lawyer can operate when the infrastructure is software. The lawyer still decides.
There is a personal reason I like the size of the field. I came to the United States in 1995 as a Rotary exchange student from a closed nuclear-submarine town in the Russian Far East, won a green card in the lottery, and went to law school in Boston on a scholarship. What I saw in America was that you could start from zero. The awards are in Boston on October 25, a few miles from where my legal life began.
How this page was made, sources, and disclaimer
The finalist list is the organizers' announcement, published by LawSites on September 16, 2026. Each dossier was compiled from the finalist's own site and public reporting, and lists its sources. The Awards do not publish the nominations, so I do not know what any finalist submitted or what the judges weighed; nothing here speaks for the organizers or for another finalist. The AI Legal Analyst on this page reads the same data file the ballot is drawn from. The lens colors and the map are a taxonomy, not a ranking. Corrections: owner@terms.law.
- Organizers' finalist announcement, reprinted by LawSites (September 16, 2026)
- American Legal Technology Awards, official site
- 2026 program announcement, LawSites (July 2, 2026)
- 2025 winners, National Law Review (October 2025)
- Each finalist dossier lists its own sources; open a finalist and expand Sources.
Related on Terms.Law: the AI Legal Analyst, how I built it, the small-law AI lab, and about me.
I built this page myself, as one of the 27 finalists looking at the other 26 from public sources. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or reviewed by the American Legal Technology Awards or by any other finalist, and I have not seen anyone’s entry. It is not legal advice, and reading it or chatting with the AI Legal Analyst does not create an attorney-client relationship. Descriptions of other finalists come from their own published materials and public reporting; trademarks belong to their owners. Sergei Tokmakov, Esq., California State Bar No. 279869. Verify license.
Side by side
No score, no ranking, no prediction. I set documented characteristics side by side from public sources; I have not seen anybody’s entry and I do not know what the judges weighed. Two rows are my own taxonomy, marked as such. Everything else is each finalist’s own description of itself and the sources behind it.