Blue J Legal
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Legal technology, Legal informatics |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario , Canada |
Number of locations | New York City, Washington D.C., and Toronto |
| Products | Blue J Tax (Canada), Blue J Tax (USA), Blue J L&E, Blue J HR |
| Services | Computer-assisted legal research and emulations |
| Website | www |
Blue J Legal is a legal technology software company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The company operates as a legal expert system in the domain of computer-assisted legal research and emulations for predictions of legal outcomes in the tax law, labor law and human resources litigation. Blue J Legal was founded in 2015 by Canadian jurists Benjamin Alarie, Anthony Niblett and Albert Yoon, as well as technologist Brett Janssen.
History
The company began in 2015 as a joint incubator project of the UTEST (University of Toronto Early Stage Technology) program and IBM's initiative to develop new AI applications for its Watson (computer).[1][2][3] Among the company's founders were Benjamin Alarie, Anthony Niblett and Albert Yoon, three Canadian lawyers and academics.[4][5] Brett Janssen joined the company the same year as the company’s first CTO.[6] By 2017 the company developed its first product Tax Foresight[7] (later renamed Blue J Tax), a computer-assisted legal research for predictions of the legal outcomes in the Canada tax litigation system.[8][9][10] Eventually, the company developed other products Blue J L&E (formerly Employment Foresight)[7][11] and Blue J HR.[12][13]
In January 2018, Department of Justice (Canada) in Canada launched an 18 months pilot program that applied Blue J Legal technology, in particular its software program Tax Foresight.[14] The program, which also involved the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), was used for legal outcomes analyses and predictions in the field of tax litigation.[8] Later, Federal Justice Department also applied Blue J Legal technology to predict results in public service labour and employment cases.[15]
In addition to Canada, the company has been also developing software tools for the US market in the fields of tax and employment law.[11] Blue J Legal has its main office in Toronto with the satellite offices in New York City and Washington D.C.[14]
Technology components
Blue J Legal is a specific example of a general category of legal expert systems, broadly defined as systems that make use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to solve legal problems.[16] Artificial intelligence and law|Legal AI systems can be divided into two categories: legal retrieval systems and legal analysis systems. Blue J Legal belongs to the latter category of legal analysis systems. Designed to operate in more than one legal domain, Blue J Legal accounts for statute law, case law, and the doctrine of precedent in areas of public law. Whilst it accommodates statute law, it is primarily a case-based system.[17][18]
Blue J Legal software operates as a hybrid legal expert system, combining rule – based reasoning with neural network theory to emulate the decision-making abilities of a human expert in the field of law. Basically, it employs a legal case-based reasoning from previously tried cases and other relevant data,[19] comparing the contextual information in the current input case with that of cases previously tried and entered into the system. It is designed to assist attorneys, judges, mediation|mediators, and lawyers and individuals with legal expertise.[4]
Limitations and ethics concerns
Arguments have been made that a failure to take into consideration various theoretical approaches to legal decision making will produce expert systems that fail to reflect the true nature of decision making.[17] Meanwhile, some legal expert system architects contend that because many lawyers have proficient legal reasoning skills without a sound base in legal theory, the same should hold true for legal expert systems.[20]
A number of legal experts note that new legal technologies such as Blue J Legal software might eventually replace many legal occupations[1] or hand over excessive authority to AI algorithms.[21] However, they also admit that algorithms mostly perform routine and menial tasks that were earlier assigned to the young lawyers and trainees.[22][7][1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Big law is having its Uber moment". MacLean's. 17 January 2017.
- ↑ "LegalTech is Building its Profile in the Professional Community". BornDigital. 23 April 2018.
- ↑ "University of Toronto Early Stage Technology". University of Toronto.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "This Toronto startup uses A.I. to help lawyers predict trial outcomes". Canadian Business. 7 February 2017.
- ↑ "The Ontario AI start-up helping to transform the legal sector". InvestOntario.
- ↑ "Blue J Legal Tax Foresight Predictive AI for Tax Lawyers". Dewey B Strategic. 21 October 2019.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Artificial intelligence takes the drudgery out of legal work". The Globe and Mail.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Litigation gone digital: Ottawa experiments with artificial intelligence in tax cases". CBC Canada.
- ↑ "The Company's History". Blue J.
- ↑ "Canadian tech firm Blue J Legal will help build split-income tax tool". Canadian Lawyer.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Law firm teams up with Canadian legal tech company on AI-powered case prediction tool". Aba Journal.
- ↑ "ADP Canada and Blue J Legal to Offer AI-based HR Foresight". NASDAQ.
- ↑ "ADP, Toronto startup bring employment law insights to HR with AI-powered tool". IT Business California. 10 January 2019.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "AI Coming For Tax Planners - The Horror". Forbes.
- ↑ "Federal justice department testing artificial intelligence to predict results in public service labour and employment cases". The Logic. 4 February 2020.
- ↑ "Machines Regulating Humans: Will Algorithms Become Law?". SLAW (Canada's Online Legal Magazine). 13 February 2017.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Susskind, Richard (1986). "Expert Systems in Law: A Jurisprudential Approach to Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning". Modern Law Review. 49 (2): 168–194. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2230.1986.tb01683.x.
- ↑ "Machine Learning (AI) to Answer to Legal Questions: Blue J Legal". PrismLegal. 13 June 2016.
- ↑ "Blue J Legal launches AI tool for employment law issues". Canadian Lawyer Magazine.
- ↑ Popple, James (1996). A Pragmatic Legal Expert System (PDF). Applied Legal Philosophy Series. Dartmouth (Ashgate). ISBN 1-85521-739-2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 September 2006. Retrieved 6 July 2021. Alt URL Template:OL work. Also available at Google Books.
- ↑ "Professor Alarie announces plan for new "hunt down, kill" feature of Blue J Legal computer". UltraVires. 28 October 2015.
- ↑ "AI technology can enhance a practice". Law Times.
External links
This article "Blue J Legal" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.