Women In Tech: Top 10 Women In Legaltech In 2026

In many markets, most lawyers are women. Most legaltech founders still aren’t.

Only about 29% of legaltech companies globally are founded or co-founded by women, according to industry reports, which also found that Africa has the highest proportion of female co-founders and Europe the lowest. As AI takes on more of the work in contracts, compliance, discovery and access to justice, the people building those tools have a big say in which problems are solved first.

The women below work across regulatory intelligence, dispute resolution, eDiscovery, legal design, litigation management, community building and access to justice, spanning the globe.

Why Legaltech Still Has A Founder Problem

Women hold 40% of General Counsel roles in the FTSE 100, up from single digits in 2010, according to Obelisk Support, so they’re well represented among the people who buy legal technology.

The creator side tells a different story. Women hold nearly 20% of tech-focused C-suite positions at the largest US firms, according to Law360, although they’re close to parity in roles centred on innovation.

There are signs the builder side is growing, however. The Lady Justice Initiative’s dashboard now profiles 181 women leaders across 30 countries working on justice tech, with the biggest concentrations in North America and Europe and a growing presence across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. As legal leaders become more tech-focused, who designs the tools becomes a strategic question rather than a diversity footnote.

The Top Women In Legaltech In 2026

Here are ten women making waves behind the next decade of law, from regulatory AI for African markets to pro bono platforms in the US.

1. Chioma Wilson-Dike, Founder, Lexlytic

Wilson-Dike founded Lexlytic, a legaltech venture using AI to analyse and track legislative requirements in regulatory and compliance workflows. At MVP stage it secured five customer letters of intent,  she was the first legaltech founder admitted to Antler Africa before being selected for Lawtech Scaler and an Innovate UK accelerator.

She also founded the Nigerian LegalTech Network, a community connecting law students, lawyers and founders across Africa and the UK, and was named to ILTA’s 2026 Influential Women in Legal Tech list.

2. Hanna Roos, Founder and CEO, Aavalynx

Roos founded Aavalynx, an AI-powered dispute management platform, and dispute resolution law firm Aavagard, after earlier roles at Quinn Emanuel and Latham & Watkins.

Her startup has raised £1.5 million and won Legal Enabler of the Year at the 2025 Legal Leaders Awards. The company says it delivers around 30x ROI for enterprise clients through shorter disputes and lower risk and cost.

Roos has also pointed out that women founded only 7% of AI businesses in Europe in 2025, and that all-female founding teams received 2% of total UK equity investment.

3. Ebru Metin, Chair, European Legal Design Action

As chair of the European Legal Design Action, Metin runs a four-year pan-European research network uniting academics, regulators, designers and tech builders to make contracts and legislation actually readable. She proposed the network herself while basing her academic work at Tallinn University of Technology as coordinator of the TalTech Legal Lab.

Beyond her university post she launched Legal Design Turkey, driving access-to-justice work alongside UNDP Turkey and UN Women before landing on ILTA’s Influential Women in Legal Tech roster in 2022. Fresh off defending her doctoral thesis on legal design in corporate sustainability governance, she focuses on making complex regulation clearer and easier for organisations to act on.

4. Kelly Twigger, CEO and Founder, Minerva26

As founder and CEO of Minerva26, Twigger heads up an AI-driven discovery strategy platform built specifically for litigators while continuing to direct ESI Attorneys, the firm she’s led since 2009. Her platform work earned an ALM Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Award for knowledge management innovation.

Outside her executive duties she hosts a weekly Case of the Week video series dissecting discovery rulings, co-authors the annual Electronic Discovery and Records and Information Management Guide, and teaches eDiscovery students as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

5. Alma Asay, Chief Innovation and Value Officer, Crowell & Moring

Serving as chief innovation and value officer at Crowell & Moring since 2023, Asay initially arrived in 2021 to establish the firm’s very first practice innovation department.

Her entrepreneurial roots go back to 2012 when she left her litigator post at Gibson Dunn to create Allegory Law, a cloud-based litigation management platform that she launched with no prior experience in tech or entrepreneurship, and successfully sold to Integreon in 2017.

Inside her current firm she has spearheaded Crowell Compass, a paid multi-state labour compliance tool, alongside a rebuild of the regUP monitoring tool. Having sat on both sides of the fence as a startup founder and an institutional tech buyer, she brings valuable perspective to the market.

6. Shreya Vajpei, Founder, Indian LegalTech Network

Vajpei founded the Indian LegalTech Network because she couldn’t find a legal tech community in India. It now counts more than 500 members across over 15 cities and ran the first India-UK legal tech trade mission, backed by the UK Department for Business and Trade. She’s also ILTA’s India Envoy and one of its 2026 Influential Women in Legal Tech.

Day to day, she leads legal AI adoption at Stephenson Harwood in London, after running the GenAI adoption programme at Khaitan & Co across more than 1,200 lawyers. Her argument is that most legal AI programmes fail at the same point: the tool works, but the lawyers don’t use it.

7. Nicola Shaver, CEO and Co-founder, Legaltech Hub

Shaver is CEO and co-founder of Legaltech Hub, which provides data and insights on legal technology and generative AI worldwide. Its GenAI in Legal Tech map tracks around 400 companies building with generative AI.

She previously ran knowledge and innovation globally at Paul Hastings. She’s a two-time Fastcase 50 honouree, an ILTA Innovative Leader of the Year and a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, and wrote The Handbook for Legal Innovation in 2023.

8. Kristen Sonday, Co-founder and CEO, Paladin

Sonday is co-founder and CEO of Paladin, a pro bono management platform used by law firms, in-house legal teams, law schools, bar associations and the US Department of Justice. Paladin says it’s made nearly 65,000 pro bono connections between lawyers and people who couldn’t otherwise afford representation.

She’s also a founding partner at Chicago pre-seed fund LongJump and writes the NextGen Justice Tech column for the Thomson Reuters Institute. Paladin features in the documentary series How to Change the World, with its episode due during Pro Bono Week in October.

9. Aalia Manie, Partner and Director, Webber Wentzel Fusion

As a partner at Webber Wentzel, Manie heads up Webber Wentzel Fusion, the firm’s specialised division for AI, innovation, tech and NewLaw, having evolved the unit into a standalone subsidiary with a much broader scope.

That operational muscle helped the firm to win the Innovation Award at the 2026 African Legal Awards for the third year running. She made the jump into legal innovation after starting out in intellectual property law and serving as chief operating officer at tech startup Snapt.

Her industry standing is underscored by winning Transformative Legal Leader at the 2026 Legal Innovation and Impact Awards following her appearance on the 2024 ILTA Influential Women in Legal Tech roster.

10. Dana Denis-Smith, Founder and CEO, Obelisk Support

Denis-Smith founded Obelisk Support in 2010 and is still its CEO. The UK legal services provider supplies flexible, remote legal resource to in-house teams and law firms through a talent pool of more than 2,000 legal experts, and has ranked among Europe’s FT1000 fastest-growing businesses. Its Returners Programme, which helps lawyers back into the profession after a career break, says it has a 65% success rate across every cohort.

She’s also deputy vice president of the Law Society of England and Wales, moving into the vice president role next month, with the presidency expected in 2027. She founded the First 100 Years campaign, now Next 100 Years, celebrating women in law, and received an OBE in the 2025 New Year Honours. Obelisk’s Women Who Will research is the source of the FTSE 100 General Counsel figure above.