The Legal Accountability Project Founder Aliza Shatzman Named Finalist for 2026 American Legal Technology Awards
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
For Immediate Release
Contact: Aliza Shatzman, 267-481-2095, aliza.shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org
The Legal Accountability Project Founder Aliza Shatzman Named Finalist for 2026 American Legal Technology Awards
The Legal Accountability Project (LAP) is thrilled to share that our President and Founder, Aliza Shatzman, has once again been named a finalist for the 2026 American Legal Technology Awards (ALTA) in the Individual category. ALTA recognizes individuals and organizations pushing the legal industry forward through innovative legal technology and improving the legal profession and justice system through outside-the-box solutions. Winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony on Sunday, October 25, 2026, at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.
This recognition follows Aliza’s and LAP's success at the 2024 American Legal Technology Awards, where they took home two awards in the Individual and Court categories, respectively, for creating LAP's first-in-the-nation, pathbreaking Centralized Clerkships Database, often described as "Glassdoor for Judges."
“Four years ago, I launched LAP with an audacious goal: to fix the judicial clerkship system by democratizing judicial clerkship information and opportunities,” said Shatzman. “LAP's theory of change is accountability through transparency: using disruptive and innovative legal technology, we’ve created systemic change in the judiciary and legal industry.”
In April 2024, LAP launched our groundbreaking nationwide Clerkships Database, a verified repository of candid clerkship reviews submitted by former judicial clerks, forever upending the judicial clerkship system and legal industry. Today, LAP’s Database contains more than 2,000 reviews about more than 1,300 federal and state judges and has served over 4,000 law students and recent graduates from more than 100 law schools nationwide. By empowering aspiring clerks with critical, never-before-seen insights about judges as managers and judicial work environments, LAP transformed a historically opaque corner of the legal profession and fostered greater transparency and accountability in one of the nation’s most secretive industries—the judiciary.
Shatzman added, “Some thought it couldn't be done. Others thought it shouldn't be done. Yet where there’s a will, there’s a way. I was galvanized by my own negative clerkship experience to ensure more aspiring clerks could avoid experiences like mine, and those who couldn’t, at least knew where to go for support and resources. LAP’s Database is the resource I wish existed when I was a WashU Law student applying for clerkships. So, rather than waiting around for someone else to solve a problem I identified, I took it upon myself to fix a broken system and built it myself.”
This continued recognition for LAP’s industry-shattering work reflects LAP's dogged efforts to continue innovating in one of the legal industry’s most entrenched and slow-to-change spaces. Over the past four years, LAP has revolutionized judicial clerkship hiring, empowered the next generation of lawyers, held the judiciary’s feet to the fire every day, and finally held judges to higher standards for workplace conduct.
“This recognition underscores the importance of innovative, outside-the-box solutions to achieve meaningful systemic change, particularly now, when we cannot rely on the federal government to solve some of the most pressing issues of our time,” said Shatzman.
You can read more about the American Legal Technology Awards here and view the full list of 2026 finalists here.