Slaughter and May announces winner of 2026 Student Innovation Competition

Slaughter and May is pleased to announce the winner of its 2026 Student Innovation Competition, which challenged students to design an AI-powered multi-agent system to support lawyers or business services teams in their day-to-day work within a legal practice.

This year's winner is Max Ejogo, a Philosophy student at King's College London, who developed a platform called Institutional Judgement Architecture (IJA). It is a secure, AI-powered multi-agent operating system designed to enhance and protect legal judgement within law firms. The tool treats AI as infrastructure for consistency, accountability, and professional standards.

Innovation Lead Tom Price-Stephens said, "The quality of entries this year was exceptionally high, with a diverse range of formats, from videos and written presentations to interactive concepts such as games. Many submissions engaged thoughtfully with agentic AI, with a particularly strong emphasis on governance and responsible deployment, reflecting a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the legal profession."

Innovation Executive, Nico Caplin added, "This year's competition was fiercely contested, but Max's submission stood out immediately for the sharpness of thinking and the strength of its core idea. The proposed Institutional Judgement Architecture is a compelling response to the realities of modern legal practice, with a clear emphasis on embedding governance, institutional memory, and risk calibration directly into AI workflows".

Max will receive a £1,000 prize and a work placement with the firm's Innovation Team in September 2026.

Emma Davis, a postgraduate law student at King's College London, was awarded second place for designing a multi-agent architecture that embeds governance, institutional knowledge and human oversight directly into the workflow, showing how AI can enhance, rather than replace, professional judgement.

Third place went to Mila Bogdanovic, a Law student at the University of Manchester, who designed an AI platform to support the firm's lawyers while strengthening its Best Friends network model. The concept focuses on resource efficiency, cross-border collaboration, and client confidence in AI use within a confidentiality-sensitive environment.

Isabelle Tan studying Law at King's College London was highly commended for designing a tool named Taskit AI designed to automate tedious tasks.

The 2026 competition attracted over 50 entries from students at a wide range of universities, reflecting the growing interest in the intersection between law, innovation, and technology.