Relativity has named Steno’s Joe Stephens, JD, the 2026 Best Innovator for Legal Education. The award recognizes professors at academic institutions who are advancing the technical competency of the next generation of legal professionals. Joe's win was announced on October 1 during Relativity Fest in Chicago.

Three Jobs, One Feedback Loop

Joe holds three roles that most people would treat as separate careers, and each one sharpens the other two. He's the Director of Legal Solutions at Steno, a Clinical Lecturer at Texas Tech University School of Law, and Chief Public Defender of the Caprock Regional Public Defender Office, the only public defender office in the country housed inside a law school.

Joe’s students aren't studying legal technology in the abstract. They're watching him deploy it in active litigation and bring what he learns back into the classroom. That's a distinction Relativity's Legal Education category recognizes: Joe’s not just someone who talks about where legal tech is headed, but someone who's teaching from hands-on experience.

Teaching Judgment, Not Just Tools

Joe doesn't ask students to memorize AI concepts. He asks them to work through the questions that actually come up in practice: how to verify an output, how to protect client confidentiality, when to trust a workflow and when to slow down. That distinction is important because most law graduates encounter these questions for the first time after they're already practicing, without a foundation for how to think through them.

The Caprock office gives students a different starting point. They learn that technology and good judgment must go hand-in-hand, in the context of real representation for indigent clients across rural West Texas, a part of the state where the justice gap is widest and where good workflow design has an outsized effect on case outcomes.

Joe's reach extends past the classroom. He's presented at the National Legal Education Conference, spoken on legal podcasts, moderated a Legalweek panel on AI and malpractice, and published in Bloomberg Law, Law.com, and the ABA Journal on AI governance and professional responsibility.

Why It’s Important

Legal technology is often built by people who have never had to use it under deadline pressure, in front of a judge, and for a client with no other options. Joe's work is different. His experiences in the courtroom and classroom fuel his work at Steno, and vice versa, and clients, students, and customers all reap the benefits.

Congratulations to Joe, and huge thanks to Relativity for the recognition.

See the full list of this year’s honorees on Relativity’s Innovation Awards page.