LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman Wins Above the Law 2024 Lawyer of the Year Award
Thursday, January 9, 2024
For Immediate Release
Contact: Aliza Shatzman, 267-481-2095, aliza.shatzman@legalaccountabilityproject.org
LAP’s President and Founder Aliza Shatzman Wins Above the Law 2024 Lawyer of the Year Award
The Legal Accountability Project’s (LAP) President and Founder, Aliza Shatzman, is thrilled to officially earn the title of Above the Law Lawyer of the Year, adding to a long list of awards in 2024 that include two awards at the American Legal Technology Awards, Ms. JD’s Limitless Leadership Award, and a spot on Ms. JD’s Limitless Leadership List. In earning this title from ATL, Aliza joins a list of distinguished past Lawyer of the Year honorees, including President Barack Obama, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Aliza and LAP took this one to the voters (via reader poll), and we’re proud to share that we prevailed.
We appreciate the many supporters who took the time to vote last month, and particularly the current and former judiciary employees who actively campaigned for Aliza. This win is a victory for everyone who believes in a more transparent, accountable, and equitable judicial clerkship system and judiciary.
We also want to extend a heartfelt thanks to Above the Law, where Aliza serves as a Contributing Columnist. LAP flourished in 2024 thanks in part to our platform at ATL, where we have changed hearts and minds across the legal industry and beyond through Aliza’s monthly columns about judicial accountability and clerkship transparency.
Aliza and LAP did, as ATL referred to it, "Herculean work" to build and launch our Centralized Clerkships Database in 2024–less than one year ago. LAP’s nationwide Database already serves more than 1,300 users and contains nearly 1,500 reviews about more than 1,000 federal and state judges. It's the largest independent repository of clerkship information in the U.S., and it's already 2-3 times the size of the largest law school clerkships databases.
Awards are signals from within the legal profession—our peers—that our work is valuable and impactful, despite the handful of naysayers. While many thought LAP’s Database could not be done, and some thought it should not be done, we proved them wrong–and quickly.
LAP proved itself to be one of the most innovative and disruptive organizations - and our Clerkships Database, one of the most path-breaking initiatives - taking the legal industry by storm in 2024. Last year was a big year for LAP, but we’re confident that 2025 will be an even bigger one. We appreciate this recognition for our pioneering work on behalf of law students, law clerks, and society generally.