Davos 2026: Investing in People Takes Center Stage

Davos 2026 made “Investing in People” a global imperative.¹ In the legal sector, strengthening mentoring for AI, innovation, and tech leaders should be the first step.

As AI and other tech transform law, women are leading some of the most important innovations in the sector. They are pioneering business models and operations in law firms, building AI-powered tech in legal departments and legal aid organizations, founding legal tech companies, and transforming how justice is delivered in the age of AI. Yet the vast majority are doing so without the support needed to accelerate their success and bring their innovations to markets, organizations, and people.

Lady Justice Initiative’s research examining the experiences of women across 31 countries who are driving AI and other innovation in law reveals a troubling pattern: 67% of women in the field lack access to mentors.² If you’re among them, you already know what this costs. The absence of accessible mentors makes already challenging work such as pioneering new approaches in traditional organizations or building companies in an environment where women’s access to capital is around 2 percent, even more daunting, slow, and costly.

Our findings highlight not only an individual problem, but also a systemic gap in mentorship with sector-wide implications.

The gap surfaced by our research reveals a critical vulnerability for the legal sector. With AI poised to reshape the industry, much remains uncertain. As discussions at last week’s World Economic Forum underscored, law—like other knowledge-intensive sectors—can expect the work of professionals at every level to change fundamentally. The Forum projects that 39 percent of workers’ core skills will be obsolete by 2030.³ Though the specifics in law are not yet fully known, new capabilities will certainly be required, career paths and roles will evolve, and navigating ongoing change will become constant. In this context, mentorship takes on elevated importance as a key development tool uniquely suited to guiding professionals through ambiguity and transformation. Mentorship in future-facing domains such as AI, legal tech, and innovation leadership will prove especially critical, yet these are precisely the areas where guidance is scarcest. The women leading legal tech and innovation are encountering this gap first. As AI-driven transformation accelerates, the rest of the legal sector will soon face it at scale.

Building this infrastructure starts with understanding the gaps. Our research surfaces what’s missing.

A Sector Wide Gap

Many leaders in AI and tech innovation driving transformation in law are working to change extremely traditional legal and justice sector institutions where resistance to change is often extraordinarily strong. They are also simultaneously navigating the gendered hurdles of elite leadership in law and entrepreneurship and doing so largely alone.⁴

Women founders and CEOs consistently report they “do not have a place” where they can raise issues and obtain advice on day-to-day challenges. Many practiced as lawyers before founding their companies and noted having limited experience in managing people, finance, and business more generally—with no support in navigating these new demands. Some mentioned feeling isolated or that their role can be lonely.

“She described her journey as a very lonely, challenging, psychologically difficult experience. She very much wishes she had support.”⁵

The stakes are real. One founder reported that building a legal tech startup without support was so challenging and stressful that she experienced a heart attack. Another spent months learning to write grant proposals through trial and error—time and setbacks that guidance could have prevented.⁶

Why Existing Networks Fall Short

Women in legal tech and innovation highlighted the critical importance of diverse, sector-aligned, women mentors. Yet existing support structures consistently fail to meet their needs. The gaps are structural.

Traditional legal institutions don’t address what’s needed. Bar associations and professional legal organizations focus on AI, technology and new business models remains limited and insufficient for the transformation underway.

Tech accelerators and networks lack legal sector expertise. Legal tech sits at a unique intersection: it bisects with a heavily regulated sector and requires specialized knowledge that generic business mentoring cannot provide. Most startup accelerators lack strategic insights needed to navigate this context. One founder noted that while she participates in legal tech networks, most participants come from tech backgrounds: “They are in a different space than me. The group does not support her as a woman lawyer working in the field.”⁷

Networks are also male-dominated. One founder noted: “There is a dearth of women in legal tech and innovation and finding support is challenging.”⁸ Even when women find mentors, the advice often proves misaligned. Another lawyer-founder who obtained mentorship found guidance tailored to male founders, investors, and product developers—leaving her unique challenges as a woman with both legal and tech expertise unaddressed.⁹

The result: patchwork support that doesn’t meet the full spectrum of needs. In the absence of formal mentors, women draw on family and friends, boards and advisors. But these sources often fall short in helping them with advance broader career goals or navigating the specific challenges of building in legal innovation.¹⁰

The Importance of Role-Aligned Mentoring

Beyond sector alignment, women emphasized the need for mentors who share their specific professional roles and experiences. One engineer highlighted the importance of role-aligned mentors and described being assigned a mentor from sales in the absence of female engineer mentors. She noted that this was inadequate and spoke to the need for professionally aligned mentorship. She ultimately founded a group for other women engineers at her legal tech organization to fill this gap.¹¹

Women in traditional legal roles at legal tech companies—such as general counsel—noted it is extremely hard to find women mentors with aligned interests and experiences in firms or in-house. Some women partners are not navigating the same life circumstances. Challenges are compounded in-house, especially if legal departments are small. One woman shared that she is the only lawyer at her legal tech company, meaning there are no potential mentors who are aligned professionally.¹²

Role-aligned mentors are critical in AI transformation accelerates. Access to guidance from those who have navigated similar challenges is pivotal to building the capabilities this moment demands.

Compounding Barriers

For many, barriers to mentorship are compounded by additional factors.

Founders and leaders also noted the importance of access to diverse mentors who can support them in addressing specific challenges they may face as people of color, people with disabilities, and/or who are mothers.¹³

For women of color, the barriers multiply. One CEO observed that the main actors in her space were not diverse. She was building something new and did not have access to others who she felt could support her effort. She didn’t feel engaging them would be useful and had a discomfort with doing so in support of her career journey. As a woman of color, she felt she did not fit into the groups that existed.¹⁴

Women who are mothers face additional layers of challenge. Women highlighted the need for professional mentorship support from women who are mothers. One senior leader who is an engineer in legal tech shared that she began to feel she lacked professional support after returning from parental leave. Her field is male-dominated, and there were no other women who could mentor and guide her with new work-life balance issues she faced.¹⁵

Another leader highlighted that executive women face unique professional challenges if they have families and can benefit from mentors who share their experiences. She has struggled to navigate challenges on her own, especially those related to work-life balance.¹⁶

“There is a need for holistic support for women leading companies but also navigating broader personal issues such as care.”¹⁷

Access to International and Flexible Mentoring

The need for mentorship is global, and flexibility is essential.

Several women in countries where AI, other tech, and transformation in law are more nascent expressed interest in connecting with international leaders through mentorship. One woman noted that among those in leadership roles in law and legal tech in her country, most lack vital international exposure.

Founders and CEOs also mentioned the need for mentoring tailored for busy executives. One CEO cited a Mastermind course she took for women lawyers prior to founding her company as being extremely helpful but indicated she would not have time to participate in such an intensive program as CEO, citing the need for more flexible options. Another CEO suggested mentoring which was “on-demand” instead of continuous would be helpful for busy startup founders who may not have time for traditional mentoring.¹⁸

Lack of Roadmaps

Without mentorship, the career and entrepreneurship paths are often unclear.

Lady Justice Initiative’s research found that women wanting to build careers in legal tech and AI face a common barrier: no clear path forward. Without mentors to guide them, they learn through trial and error—a process that is costly, discouraging, and drives talented people away from a field that urgently needs them.

This is especially acute in countries where legal innovation is nascent. One woman from Asia said there is no one who can guide her; her path is hard. Another from Africa has participated in fellowships and programs but remains uncertain what to do next—she “feels stuck.” With no women role models or mentors in her country, she has nowhere to turn.¹⁹

As AI transformation in law accelerates demand for professionals who can bridge law and technology, these barriers are no longer just individual obstacles. They are a constraint on the pipeline the entire sector needs to build.

AI Transformation in Law: Why Mentoring Matters Now

The stakes are high.

 The legal sector is undergoing its most significant transformation in generations. AI is reshaping business models, service delivery, access to justice, and how professionals work. New categories of work are emerging—AI governance specialists, legal engineers, and roles not yet named. Yet the profession’s infrastructure for developing human capital has not kept pace. Mentoring is pivotal: both for addressing current gaps and as a cornerstone of the professional development infrastructure the future demands.

Building that infrastructure should begin with women leading legal tech and innovation—and not only because the need is urgent. This is a definable cohort, already at the frontier, whose work functions as a force multiplier for the entire sector. The tools they build, the models they pioneer, and the barriers they break shape what becomes possible for everyone who follows. Every founder who succeeds accelerates transformation across the profession. Each one who burns out alone represents innovation lost—not just for her, but for the markets and institutions she would have served. Supporting the women facing the most complex version of this challenge will generate insights that can inform mentorship infrastructure across the profession—an investment that benefits far beyond this cohort.

What Effective Mentoring Infrastructure Looks Like

When asked what kind of mentor support would make the greatest difference, women identified clear priorities:²⁰

Strategic advice — helping founders understand what the journey looks like, from navigating career paths to building sustainable business models.

Sector-aligned guidance — from people who understand the unique dynamics of legal tech innovation and the highly regulated nature of the legal sector, not generic business advice.

Role-aligned mentoring — from mentors who share similar professional backgrounds and can speak to specific functional challenges, whether as engineers, general counsel, or founder-CEOs.

Diverse mentors — who can support women in addressing challenges they may face as people of color, those with disabilities.

Holistic support — acknowledging that women lead companies while also navigating care responsibilities. targeting the challenges women face in founding a company and navigating the emotional toll of changing entrenched systems. Support that helps founders keep going and not give up.

Flexible formats — including on-demand options designed for busy executives who may not have time for traditional intensive programs.

International access — connecting women in nascent markets with global leaders, alongside local programs that account for cultural contexts.

The time to act is now

By investing in people through robust, inclusive, and flexible mentorship programs, we can ensure that professionals in law —especially women—are equipped to lead, thrive, and transform the sector for the better in the AI era.

Will you join in building the mentorship infrastructure the legal sector needs? 

[1] World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting 2026, Davos, Switzerland (Jan. 19–23, 2026). The Forum identified five official themes: Cooperation in a Contested World, Unlocking New Sources of Growth, Investing in People, Deploying Innovation Responsibly, and Building Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries.

[2] Lady Justice Initiative, Innovating for Equality: Catalyzing Opportunity for Women in Law through Digital Transformation and AI, 2024, p. 20. Hereinafter, LJI Report.

[3] World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 (Jan. 2025), https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025

[4] See generally, LJI Report.

[5] Id at 21.

[6] Id at 22.

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[14] Id at 24.

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[17] Id at 23.

[18] Id at 25.

[19] Id at 22.

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