Canadian Lawyer InHouse

7 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 A roundup of legal department news and trends Blue J Legal launches AI tool for employment law issues T oronto startup Blue J Legal has launched new artificial intelli- gence software to help predict how courts would resolve employment law issues. Mark Le Blanc, general counsel at educational public broadcaster TVO, says the software "doesn't give you the answer, but if you can frame the question clearly, what they can do is really limit the risk — they're risk tools. That's the most valuable thing for me as a GC." Le Blanc has done some preliminary testing of Employment Foresight, which helps users navigate difficult areas of employment law such as reasonable notice, worker classification, overtime exemptions and work classification by using machine learning to identify hidden patterns in judicial rulings. The tool doesn't give you a guaranteed outcome — "It's saying you're at 80 per cent, you're at 90 and gives some rationale," Le Blanc notes — but it provides a helpful and quick idea of what you're working with in a given situation. "Speed is super important," Le Blanc says. "These tools work really well where you have high volume. A lot of us GCs have pockets of work where you have high volume but high potential risk, so if it can drop your risk that's awesome." The software, which can be used Canada- wide, "collects and analyzes the facts and findings from thousands of previous cases to predict how a court would rule in new circumstances." The software uses algorithms to identify relationships between individual factors — industry of the employer, employee's position and length of employment — and outcomes in court decisions — for example, number of weeks' notice awarded — to uncover hidden patterns in case law from all provinces. "Really what we're doing is we're allowing the common law to work how it's supposed to," says Benjamin Alarie, founder of Blue J Legal. "Everyone is presumed to know what the law requires — our tools basically bring reality closer to that ideal . . . and basically make the system work better in ways that are perfectly consistent with the design of the system already." Employment Foresight follows the release of the company's first product, Tax Foresight, earlier this year. Alarie says employment was the next logical expansion because, like tax, it affects everybody. According to Statistics Canada, 800,000 people lose their jobs every year and many of them have questions, Alarie says. Employees might "Ask are the terms M e d i a t o r a n d A r b i t r a t o r Mediation Arbitration Neutral Evaluation Private Appeal Med/Arb Investigation W.A. Derry Millar a d r @ a d r c h a m b e r s . c o m a d r c h a m b e r s . c o m 1. 8 0 0 . 8 5 6 . 515 4 Derry has over 40 years of legal and neutral experience. His expertise includes commercial, aviation, estates, environmental, insurance, product liability and real estate matters. He has chaired and served on panels for numerous Law Society discipline matters. His skill as an advocate was recognized when he was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a recipient of the Law Society Medal. Untitled-1 1 2017-12-20 10:45 AM

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