I’ve spent the last few years working on Canadian legal technology. Most law firms in Canada are still spend their software budgets on American software like LexisNexis, even while talking a big game about supporting locals.
If you’re using LexisNexis you’re paying in USD, sending your firm’s client data across the border, and helping fund someone else’s ecosystem. Canada needs to build long-term resilience. We need to make a decision on whether we want to build a self-sufficient legal infrastructure or rent it indefinitely from someone else.
Here’s what I see every day. We’re building Caseway to process millions of Canadian court decisions and deliver actual answers to real people and lawyers based on what judges in this country have said. There is no guessing. We’re not quoting a blog post from 2011. But we’re running into a strange wall. Not technical. Cultural.
Don’t pay more for less with legal tech
When a law firm or company in Canada compares vendors, they’ll routinely pick a bloated American platform with a slick UI over a Canadian-built software that understands our legal system. Why? Because they’ve been trained to trust legacy brands with massive budgets, like LexisNexis. It doesn’t matter if those brands were price-gouging during COVID or haven’t meaningfully improved their product in five years.
Meanwhile, here’s what happens with every dollar spent on Canadian software like Caseway or Spellbook:
1) the money stays in Canada,
2) it gets reinvested into jobs, R&D, infrastructure, and education here, and
3) it helps close the loop between law, technology, and public access to legal help.
It feeds a flywheel. American software doesn’t do that.
Let’s talk numbers. The average firm spends around $2,400 per lawyer year on legal technology. If just 1,000 Canadian firms flipped even half that to Canadian vendors, that’s $1.2 million reallocated annually. That’s enough to fund new features, hire local coding engineers, expand access to justice pilots, and support bilingual functionality. That money will primarily fund marketing departments in California or New York.
Don’t Support LexisNexis
The most significant spike in users for Caseway isn’t from lawyers, it’s from people who are self-representing or running a non-legal company. People are using Caseway to figure out what to do with a custody order or a debt claim because they can’t afford $400/hour. These folks aren’t trying to disrupt the system. They’re just trying to survive it. But the existing software? Built for law firms and built for U.S. firms. If you’re a Canadian tenant facing eviction in PEI or northern Ontario, good luck finding anything relevant in LexisNexis. Non-lawyers aren’t even allowed to use LexisNexis.
There’s also this security blind spot. When your client data lives on U.S. servers, it’s subject to the Cloud Act. American authorities can demand access to that data without notifying you. Some law firms are still shocked when I bring this up. Others wave it off — “We don’t do anything that sensitive.” Really? You’re a lawyer handling a divorce or lawsuit and don’t think your clients’ data is sensitive? That’s malpractice.
I’m not anti-American. I’ve worked with U.S. vendors. I respect some of them. But we have a weird inferiority complex in this country. We assume that unless something comes with an American logo and a Silicon Valley valuation, it can’t be best-in-class. That’s a lazy way to think. Spellbook is Canadian and so is Caseway. And we’ve all had to do more with less. Because we’re trying to develop an industry that doesn’t rely on someone else’s roadmap.
Canadians have to solve Canada’s problems
The truth is, no American company will solve Canadian access to justice. That’s our job. No American company will design software for BC family courts or Quebec’s small claims system. That’s our job. No American developer is waking up worried about what happens to an elder in rural Alberta who just got served a foreclosure notice. That’s our job.
So, the next time your firm is re-upping a contract or evaluating new software, ask better questions. Who owns this platform? Where is the data stored? What country’s legal system was it trained on? What happens if they get acquired by a hedge fund in New Jersey and your pricing triples?
Or don’t ask and keep paying American companies to solve problems they don’t understand for users they don’t care about.
Just don’t say you support Canadian innovation if your credit card says otherwise. Don’t support LexisNexis if you support Canada
