CiteRight and Jurisage to Merge, Creating Transformational Platform for Litigation Professionals

New company to integrate knowledge access and unique, on-demand content insights into common litigation workflows, enabling law firms worldwide to deliver high-quality client services

 

TORONTO and EDMONTON—Sept. 5, 2023—CiteRight, Canada’s leading litigation drafting platform, and Jurisage, a breakthrough legal artificial intelligence (AI) company providing instant access to legal insights, announced an agreement to merge their two companies under the name, Jurisage. Together, CiteRight and Jurisage will weave AI insights into litigation workflows, creating a more seamless and efficient experience for legal professionals. 

 

The merger will combine CiteRight’s robust litigation drafting platform with Jurisage’s cutting-edge AI technology to deliver a comprehensive, integrated legal research and drafting solution. As a co-founder of Jurisage through its Venture Studio, AltaML will continue to support the new company through technical and back office services. 

 

Jurisage’s AI-powered platform helps legal experts make better, more informed decisions by extracting and embedding instant access to legal insights through their cross-platform legal research processes.

 

Enriching CiteRight’s Microsoft Word-based platform with Jurisage’s AI capabilities will allow users to access and cite a wide range of resources, such as case law, pleadings, affidavits, and submissions—all in one place. This enhancement provides users with an easier way to access and draft legal documents, ultimately saving time and reducing errors. 

 

The combined company will be led by current CiteRight CEO, Aaron Wenner, while Jurisage’s Co-Founder and CEO, Colin Lachance, will take on the role of Chief Innovation Officer (CIO). The senior executive team will also include Ariel Nacson as Chief Customer Officer (CCO), and Juliano Rabelo as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

 

“We’re thrilled about what this merger means for our customers,” said Wenner. “From extending CiteRight capabilities to opposing party pleadings, seamless knowledge extraction and enrichment, and dynamic access to relevant case law suggestions and analysis—we’ve heard what they want, and through this merger, we’re responding.”  

 

“From the first development of our earliest AI-powered prototypes, customers asked about our plans to integrate with CiteRight,” explained Lachance. “As our suite of services expanded from research insights to interactive knowledge assets and deep legal research accelerators, our goal was to ensure we built with the users preferred workflow in mind. Together with CiteRight, we see enormous potential to support legal professionals with the tools that will help them outperform their best selves.”

 

“Jurisage, a company born from the AltaML Venture Studio, is partnering with CiteRight in a step toward strategically expanding their presence within the legal sector,” said Cory Janssen, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of AltaML. “Through CiteRight’s well-established relationships with major law firms and Jurisage’s machine learning capabilities, the two companies are united in their shared vision to drive product advancement that will define the evolution of assistive technology for litigators. Ultimately, this winning combination will create an undisputed leader in the legal tech space.”

 

The merger is expected to be complete in Q4 2023.

 

About CiteRight

CiteRight is a collaboration platform that helps litigation teams remove the barriers to drafting and delivering well-researched materials to courts and clients. Canada’s leading litigation firms, including Borden Ladner Gervais and Gowling WLG use CiteRight to keep track of the research their litigation teams rely on while drafting complaints, briefs, motions, and opinions, so that they can cite, share, and refer to their references in real-time. When the writing is done, CiteRight builds elegant PDF bundles of filings and their attachments in seconds – allowing teams to focus on winning cases and adding value to clients.

 

About Jurisage

Jurisage launched in 2021 as a joint venture between AltaML, a leading AI-powered solutions developer that builds tools to elevate human potential, and independent Canadian legal publisher Compass Law, the successor to venerable legal publisher Maritime Law Book. Jurisage products, including the popular MyJr browser extension and case dashboards with on-demand generative AI summaries, have always prioritized workflows that deliver the best and highest value insights in response to the narrowest and simplest input. 

 

Media Contacts: 

 

Aaron Wenner, CEO
CiteRight
aaron@citeright.net

Colin Lachance, CEO
Jurisage
colin.lachance@jurisage.com

Andrea Dion, Manager, Communications

AltaML  

andrea.dion@altaml.com 

 

AARON WENNER, M.A., LL.B., B.C.L.

CiteRight Co-Founder and CEO

A lawyer and self-taught coder, he holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University, a Master of Arts from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Civil Law and Common Law from McGill University. Currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, Aaron was also a Senior Editor of the McGill Law Journal and an Associate Editor of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citations. Aaron speaks frequently about using legal and technological insights to help lawyers work smarter and law firms use their knowledge more efficiently.

 

ARIEL NACSON, M.A.

CiteRight Co-Founder and CCO

Chief Customer Officer leading the customer experience strategy through application of skills drawn from a diverse professional and academic background, including project management in a medical technology software venture, business analysis in a global payment company, and project work and research in psychotherapy and clinical psychology. Possesses a deep understanding of customer needs, motivations, and behaviors, and passionate about creating and delivering value, building authentic relationships, and making a positive impact. 

 

COLIN LACHANCE, LL.M.

Jurisage Co-Founder and CEO

An acclaimed leader in legal innovation, a three-time founder, and a seasoned 25-year lawyer, Colin boasts over a decade of experience in national and international legal publishing executive leadership roles. Notably, he served as the CEO of CanLII from 2011 to 2015 and as interim General Manager for North America at vLex from 2018 to 2020. Some of Colin’s achievements include being named one of the Top 25 Most Influential by Canadian Lawyer Magazine, recognition in ABA Journal Legal Rebels, and is frequently called on by legal organizations and the media for insights on legal tech opportunities and advancements. 

 

JULIANO RABELO, PhD (Artificial Intelligence), PMP

Jurisage Co-Founder and CTO

With 20 years of experience in artificial intelligence (AI) and technology team leadership, along with globally recognized expert credentials in legal and explainable AI, Juliano brings a wealth of expertise to the table. Having previously served as the Director of Data Science at AltaML, Juliano played a key role in organizing a global legal natural language processing (NLP) competition, and co-founded a 70-person international applied AI research company. 

 

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