LegalScout named a double finalist in the Australian AI Awards 2026, backing up its 2025 recognition
MELBOURNE, 10 September 2026 - LegalScout, the Australian legal AI platform built for SME law firms and in house counsel, has been named a finalist in two categories at the Australian AI Awards 2026: Best Use of Agentic AI - Start Up and AI Innovator - Start Up. The recognition follows LegalScout’s 2025 finalist placing in the AI Innovator - Start Up category, making it back to back recognition in one of the country’s most competitive AI awards programmes.
Being shortlisted twice in the same year, and for the second year running, says something simple about the way LegalScout has been built. The team has kept improving the product in the open, month after month, listening closely to the lawyers using it and shipping the things that actually save them time.
Two categories, two different things worth noting
The Best Use of Agentic AI nomination recognises LegalScout’s agents, which quietly take care of the busywork in the background, welcoming new client enquiries, sorting them into the right category and keeping a firm’s systems up to date without anyone needing to lift a finger. Nothing gets missed or forgotten, and the team gets to spend their time on the work that actually needs a lawyer.
The AI Innovator nomination recognises the wider platform, from contract and employment contract review through to document drafting, family law financials and legal research grounded in real Australian case law. Across all of it, LegalScout is built so the human stays in the loop and the lawyer always has the final say, which matters a great deal in a profession where judgement cannot be handed over to software.
LegalScout is also built as a private, sovereign legal AI platform, so a firm’s own documents and client information are never used to train external models. For principals weighing up whether to bring AI into their practice, that is often the question that needs answering before any other.
What it means for the firms coming on board
For SME law firms, awards recognition is only useful if it points at something real. What it points at here is a platform that has been tested, refined and trusted by Australian firms of all sizes, and a team that keeps building rather than resting on a launch.
The timing is significant for LegalScout, which is moving into a substantial growth phase and continuing to onboard SME law firms across the country. The firms joining now get a product that has already been through two years of independent scrutiny, and a roadmap shaped by the practices using it every day.
“This is a credit to the team,” said Peter Connelley, Co-founder of LegalScout. “Being recognised in 2025 was a genuine thrill, but backing it up in 2026 across two categories tells us the continuous improvement we have committed to is being noticed outside the building as well as inside it.”
“Agentic AI is easy to talk about and much harder to make useful in a law firm,” said Shamik Ghosh, Co-founder and CTO of LegalScout. “We have focused on the unglamorous work of making our agents reliable, safe and always answerable to a human, and it is rewarding to see that approach recognised.”
Winners of the Australian AI Awards 2026 will be announced at a gala event at the Hyatt Regency Sydney on Friday, 30 October 2026. The awards are presented by AI Daily, a Momentum Media brand, with winners selected by an independent panel of AI experts drawn from industry, academia and government.
About LegalScout
LegalScout is an Australian legal AI platform built for SME law firms and in house counsel, operated by NextAI Solutions Pty Ltd. It brings contract review, document drafting, family law financials, legal research and agentic workflow automation into one private, sovereign platform where firm data is never used to train external models. Law firms can see LegalScout in action at legalscout.com.au.
Media contact
Uttam Chakraborty
Head of Marketing, LegalScout
utttam@nextaisolutions.ai