CounselPro selected as a finalist for Startup Alley at ABA TECHSHOW 2026

CounselPro has been selected as one of 15 finalists for the 2026 Startup Alley competition at ABA TECHSHOW, taking place March 25 through 28 in Chicago. I wanted to share a bit about what this is, how the selection process works, and what it means for us.

What Startup Alley is and how it works

Startup Alley is a competition now in its tenth year at ABA TECHSHOW, organized by Bob Ambrogi. If you follow legal technology at all, you probably know Bob. He's a lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal tech for nearly three decades through his LawSites blog (now LawNext), his Above the Law column, and the LawNext podcast. TECHSHOW gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2023 for his contributions to the field.

The selection process is what makes it interesting. A panel of judges narrows the applicant pool down to 25 semifinalists, but the final 15 are chosen by popular vote. Attorneys, paralegals, legal tech analysts, and other legal professionals all cast ballots. Past participants have gone on to become established names in legal tech, so the competition has a real track record of surfacing companies that stick around.

We're grateful to everyone who voted for us. Being selected by the legal community means a lot to a small but mighty team.

Why we applied

We applied because TECHSHOW draws the kind of audience we want to be in front of: practicing attorneys who deal with financial documents every day and know firsthand what works and what doesn't.

If you handle family law, bankruptcy, fraud, criminal defense, or complex civil litigation, you know the problem we're working on. Discovery dumps land as hundreds or thousands of pages of PDF statements. Someone has to turn that into something usable, and too often that means hours of manual data entry into spreadsheets, with all the errors and missed details that come with it.

CounselPro automates that process. Our platform ingests raw financial documents, including the messy stuff like faxed copies, crooked scans, and commingled accounts, and produces structured, source-linked output. Flow-of-funds maps, timelines, categorized transactions, exportable exhibits. The goal is to get attorneys out of the data entry business and back to the part of the work that actually requires a law degree.

What happens in Chicago

All 15 finalists compete in a live pitch competition on opening night, March 25th 2026, where TECHSHOW attendees vote for the winner. We'll also be exhibiting in a dedicated Startup Alley section of the EXPO hall for the rest of the conference.

Honestly, the pitch competition is exciting, but what we're most looking forward to is the conversations. Showing the platform to attorneys who work with these documents daily, hearing what frustrates them, learning what we should build next. That feedback loop is the most valuable thing a company at our stage can get.

Thank you

Thanks to Bob Ambrogi for building and sustaining Startup Alley as a platform where early stage companies can get a fair shot in front of the right audience. And thanks to everyone who voted. We'll do our best to make the trip to Chicago worth your confidence.

If you're attending TECHSHOW, come find us in Startup Alley. If you can't make it, schedule a demo and we'll walk you through everything.

See you March 25th!

Ian O'Brien, Co-Founder, CounselPro