Law has a dress code. These 9 New York lawyers know how to bend it.

Law has a dress code. A navy suit is safe. Black is safer. Shoes should be sensible. The message is clear: Blend in. Never give the jury something to talk about.

But a new class of lawyers is finding room for a little more zhuzh. Men are badging into Hudson Yards office towers in vintage sport coats and baseball caps. Women are power suiting in Celine pumps. Even jeans have made their way into firms that once treated them like contraband.

The softening of the dress code comes at a moment when lawyers are being forced to think harder about what, exactly, makes them indispensable. Artificial intelligence can already draft briefs, research case law, and dig through piles of documents. Yet, software cannot earn a client's trust. It cannot read a room or persuade a judge.

Law is still a people business. And at a time when attorneys are being asked to defend the value only they can provide, some lawyers tell us that personal style is more than self-expression. It is part of how they show clients they are worth their hourly rate.

Business Insider asked readers and law firms to nominate New York's best-dressed lawyers.

Our judging panel included Business Insider's editor in chief of Life, Joi-Marie McKenzie, fashion editor Leah Faye Cooper, who's worked as digital style director for Vogue, and Roberto Concepción Jr., a former Hearst lawyer, who's now an employee relations senior leader at Instacart.

They reviewed 46 nominations and whittled the list down to nine honorees. We then invited the lawyers into our newsroom for a photo shoot and interviews about why they wear what they wear.

Vanessa Ajagu likes her clothes loud. "Nothing feeds me more than a compliment about my outfit," she says.

For the Gibson Dunn litigator, Nigerian designers fit the brief. She flies home for the holidays with an empty suitcase and returns with it full of vintage pieces and demi-couture suits from Ohlanna bu Zikora, whose founder won the top prize on Nigeria's version of "Project Runway."

For the office, Ajagu builds an outfit around one anchor piece, then adds a printed scarf, statement earrings, or a dash of color. In court, she turns the volume down with a plain black suit so her outfit doesn't become the conversation. "The client comes first," she says.

Her hair finishes the look. Ajagu has worn cornrows tipped with beads, blonde braids, and more traditional designs, pushing back on old ideas about what Black hair is supposed to look like in a corporate setting. When her students at Columbia Law School, where she teaches legal writing, ask, "You get to wear that to work?" she answers: "Hell yeah, I wear it to work."

Judge's note: "The way Vanessa blends Nigerian and Western fashion is to be admired. And while many think of beauty as an afterthought, it's clear from her hairstyles that she thinks about a look from head to toe." — Joi-Marie McKenzie