A Saanich-born UVic-alumnus has helped create an AI software that could revolutionize legal research.

Alistair Vigier, a UK-trained lawyer who is also the CEO of counsel-rating software Clearway Law, came up with the idea for Caseway – an AI system designed to sort Canadian court decisions listed online. 

The goal: to help make legal information easier to find.

“There are millions of court decisions out there; I think we found 2.5 million of them across Canada,” said Vigier. “They’re 100 pages each on average, and it takes paralegals and lawyers hours to find one case.”

In contrast, Caseway, which Clearway’s chief technology officer Andrew Hodge coded, can find relevant court decisions in just three seconds.  

The way it works is simple. Users input questions such as, “Find me three cases involving medical malpractice in Victoria,” and the software scans its database of court documents – most of which are from the Canadian Legal Information Institute – in search of wording that matches the user’s request. It then lists matches. 

“Our AI can’t consider what some guy wrote on Reddit, what someone wrote on their Facebook page – it doesn’t know anything about that,” said Vigier. “If a judge didn’t write about it, we don’t know about it.”   

That makes it more reliable than other chatbots, according to the software’s founder.

“ChatGPT is good if you want a really high-level understanding of something,” said Vigier. “It’s not something you can ever reference in a court document. You’re never going to reference a blog, you’re never going to reference a social media post – you have to reference court decisions.”  

Caseway also lists its sources, whereas ChatGPT doesn’t. That makes it even more trustworthy because users can fact-check results the software has produced, Vigier says. 

Because the software is easy to use, Vigier said it could help self-representing people in addition to paralegals and lawyers.

“70 per cent of people going through the justice system are self-represented,” he said. “This is something they can actually ask it – what kind of arguments should I be making, what kind of arguments have been successful, give me some cases.”   

The founder added, however, that Caseway will benefit users only with a healthy understanding of the legal system and legal procedures.   

“The thing that we don’t want is some lawyer, paralegal or self-represented person to just copy and paste something into a court document and then file it,” he said. “You’re going to have to have some knowledge at least that you’re supposed to be presenting case law and statutes as your legal basis, otherwise you’re doomed regardless of what you do.” 

Caseway could also benefit people who find the cost of lawyers prohibitive.

“The problem for the public is that, if you’re paying a lawyer $300 an hour and it takes them two hours to find a case, that’s [already] $600,” said Vigier.

If lawyers can reduce the time they spend finding court decisions, they could also reduce their costs, making council more affordable for the average person, Vigier says.

Despite all the software has to offer, Caseway still dons a beta label and can produce nonsensical answers. The company is working day-to-day to train it to reduce the chances of errors. Coders are also working to fix bugs, strengthen the software against cyber-attacks and improve speed.

In addition to these tweaks, Vigier wants to expand the database to include American court decisions to attract new customers.  

“The other thing I’m really excited about, and I guess this is more important for self-represented people, is there are many forms when you go through divorce court, bankruptcy court, whatever,” said Vigier. “They’re really complicated and the court clerks don’t accept them unless they’re perfect, so what I would like to do is get some samples of perfect court documents and then have the AI fill them out in a draft form for people.”  

Caseway launched on Sept. 3. In the past seven days, 175 people have signed up for a free seven-day trial, said Vigier, who hopes even more lawyers will sign up.  

“I call lawyers herd animals,” he joked. “Either everything is bad if it’s outside of what’s being accepted or it’s really good if it is being accepted. Our job is to get … credible lawyers using the platform.”