![]() We have an internationalization function built into the platform at a fundamental level, but it still takes a lot of effort to add a language, and now we have to do the heavy-lifting to translate the other two products into French. We’ve done this already with HR Foresight – it now works seamlessly in both languages, and that was a ton of work for our team. And then when your offerings come to market and you have customers liking them and using the platform and making suggestions, you get to a point when you have to accommodate the different interests of your customers.įor example, as we have started marketing to the Federal Government, we have realized that we will need to have a French version of Employment Foresight and Tax Foresight, and we plan to have those released by end of the year but it takes a substantial amount of time and investment. Typically you start with the minimum viable product (MVP) – and it really is that, minimal. How are you dealing with that problem at Blue J Legal?Īs a start-up, you have to begin somewhere. So there is a language problem in legaltech, you’re absolutely right, and it’s a manifestation of the way the law works – because words make up the law. From this it’s obvious that law’s reliance on language has a major impact on the efficient practice and operation of law. Every official communiqué has to be translated into each of the six official languages. There are six official languages in the UN. When I was clerking, every judgment took longer to come out than it otherwise would have because an English judgment had to be translated into French and vice versa before it could be released.Īnd look at the UN. At the Supreme Court of Canada decisions have to be published in both languages. ![]() In some jurisdictions, like the States, that’s not such a big deal, but in Canada, it is often a challenge.Ī good example is at the Supreme Court of Canada. It’s true that humans can learn to speak multiple languages but you still have to overcome the friction of switching from one language to another. Language is a problem with law and the development of law more generally. If you want to develop a legal solution that is truly multilingual, you need a lot of data from many different languages.īut I don’t think this is just a legaltech problem or just an AI problem – if you think about it, it’s actually a legal problem full-stop. Accurate data are essential for AI systems, and in law, the key data are words and language. Is there a language problem with AI or am I imagining things? Blue J Legal has just launched its AI-powered tool Tax Foresight into the U.S. I called this the Language Problem.Ī few weeks ago I sat down (on the phone), with Professor Ben Alarie, who founded legal start-up Blue J Legal in 2014, after IBM Watson’s challenge event at the University of Toronto. In Post 1, I talked about the way that legaltech was developing in different markets, and suggested that the difficulty of coding for multiple languages and jurisdictions was partly responsible for the uneven applicability of legaltech across the world, with the English-speaking jurisdictions served better than others.
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