For the Relativity Innovation Awards in 2025, we shifted our award categories to better align with how our community is working to meet the needs of their clients and helping to support others within our industry.
Ultimately, at Relativity Fest Chicago, we celebrated a total of ten teams and individuals during a ceremony designed to demonstrate how honored we are to play a part in this incredible and brilliant community.
We’re now well into March and, believe it or not, that means it’s time to kick off this year’s awards. Nominations and submissions are open, and we encourage you to advocate for the people and builds that make your everyday work ever better.
To set the tone for the 2026 Innovation Awards, let’s go over this year’s categories (spoiler alert: they’ll look pretty much the same as last year), reflect on how 2025’s awards unfolded, and give you some tips on building exceptional submissions and admirable nominations for this year.
2026 Innovation Awards Categories
This year’s Innovation Awards continues our tradition of keeping our community members squarely in focus and celebrates innovations and innovators.
Technical Innovation Award Categories
- Best Innovation: Beyond
- Best Innovation: Organize, Discover, Act
- Best Innovation: Organize, Discover, Act
- Best Innovation: Organize, Discover, Act
- Best Innovation: Workflows
Individual Innovation Award Categories
- Best Innovator: Access to Justice
- Best Innovator: Customer Experience
- Best Innovator: Inclusion
- Best Innovator: Legal Education
- Best Innovator: Stellar Women
Submissions for the technical categories and nominations for individuals are now open! Jump in and throw your hat in the ring—we can’t wait to see what you have in store.
Reflecting on 2025
After we unveiled our new categories last year, we eagerly waited to see how they landed with our community.
We’re thrilled to say you all nailed it.
Your technical innovations demonstrated creative and practical uses of RelativityOne to organize information more effectively, surface meaning faster, and enable confident action. From financial analysis and chronology building to advanced discovery tools and highly specialized redaction workflows, these solutions reflected a broader industry shift toward efficiency, adaptability, and real‑world impact.
Notably, last year’s submissions emphasized innovation “beyond” litigation itself, showcasing how legal data can be leveraged for alternative use cases while still maintaining rigor, defensibility, and scalability. Together, our Innovations finalists exemplified how thoughtful technical design and workflow creativity can solve today’s most pressing legal data challenges.
Then, we saw individual innovators who shared a deep commitment to people‑driven progress, highlighting leaders who are shaping the legal industry through education, inclusion, access, and exceptional client experience. Spanning law firms, service providers, and academic institutions, these individuals were nominated not only for technical expertise, but for their ability to elevate communities, expand opportunity, and drive meaningful change.
Overarching themes among those nominated included a dedication to broadening access to justice, advancing legal education, fostering inclusive practices, and redefining what excellence in customer experience looks like in legal technology. Collectively, the Innovator nominees embodied the spirit of curiosity and leadership at the heart of the Innovation Awards, demonstrating that lasting innovation is powered as much by people and values as it is by technology.
How to Take Your Best Shot
We get it: clicking that “apply” button can feel a little intimidating. But we want you to know that the Innovation Awards are, genuinely, for you—and your work deserves to shine in the spotlight at RelFest Chicago this fall.
To help make the submissions and nominations processes feel more approachable, we’ve compiled a quick look at what to expect from both the Innovator and Innovation categories—and a list of best practices to keep in mind.
First things first: Whether you’re filling out a form for a technical Innovation or an individual Innovator, be prepared to provide some key details:
- Your name
- Your company
- Your company email address
Any submission or nomination that doesn’t include these details has to be disqualified, so don’t forget the basics!
Submitting Your Tech for a Best Innovation Category
For technical Innovations, we simply need an overview of what you’ve built, why, and the impact it has on your team and customers.
You’ll be asked to provide some fundamental background on your submission:
- An overview of the challenge that your solution solves. What prompted you to build it?
- How you’ve solved it. How does your solution work and why did you build it that way?
We’ll ask for things like demos and screenshots that help tell the story and bring the impact of your solution to life.
The most effective submissions include tangible evidence of that real-world impact. For example:
- Related client success stories that help bring your message home.
- Adoption and usage metrics that demonstrate how the solution is being used.
These details can be anonymized if necessary. If the solution is new or has not been widely used, try to provide any information that highlights projected use and success metrics.
Nominating Someone for a Best Innovator Category
When preparing to nominate individual Innovators, it’s all about painting a picture of a person who’s making an incredible impact on our community.
We’ll ask you for high-level details like:
- Who they are
- Where they work
- Their work email address
But, of course, that’s not all. We’ll also want to know, through specific examples, what makes this person a good candidate for the award. Consider including details like:
- Projects with which they have been involved
- People, organizations, and/or schools they have impacted
- Any announcements or articles highlighting their accomplishments
Remember that these categories are designed to celebrate one specific individual each; the goal is to recognize some of the brightest movers and shakers in Legal Data Intelligence.
Some folks work in collaboration with colleagues to nominate a mutual colleague or connection. That’s okay! Just make sure you have one named nominee, and one named contact as your chief nominator. You may also have multiple folks submit their own nominations for the same person, although it should be noted that the number of nominations an individual receives is only one of many factors that will be considered by our selection committees when they choose finalists for each category.
And finally, to address one more FAQ: It’s up to you whether you inform your nominee that you’re submitting their name. We will reach out to them directly if they are chosen as a finalist, and your name can be shared or kept confidential depending on your preference.
Just Get Started
The very best thing you can do? Just go for it! Innovation Awards nomination forms are open as of March 23, 2026! Share your favorite Innovation by June 5, 2026, and Innovator by May 8, 2026.
Graphics for this article were created by Sarah Vachlon.
