Backed by investors including BDC Capital, Toronto-founded Blue J Legal hopes to adapt its legal forecasting technology to the US system.
Blue J Legal, a Canada-based legal outcome prediction software spinout of University of Toronto, has obtained $7m in a series A round featuring BDC Capital, an investment subsidiary of government-owned Business Development Bank of Canada.
The round was led by VC firm Relay Ventures, with commitments from its peers LDV Partners and Mistral Venture Partners.
Founded in 2015, Blue J Legal has devised a machine learning-powered technology that predicts the outcome of upcoming tax and employment cases by scanning thousands of previous decisions to ascertain patterns and precedents.
Blue J currently focuses on Canadian tax law, but will use the cash to release an adapted product for the US legal system by the end of the second quarter of 2019. Money will also go towards enhancing existing products and hiring more staff.
The spinout was co-founded by three members of the Faculty of Law – Benjamin Alarie, Albert Yoon and Anthony Niblett.
Mistral Venture Partners supplied it with an undisclosed amount of funding in May 2017 through the Mistral Venture Partners II fund, according to the Globe and Mail.
Commercialisation firm Mars Innovation and BDC Capital also backed the spinout previously, though further details could not be ascertained.
– A version of this story first appeared on our sister site, Global Government Venturing
