Toronto mayor John Tory recently helped welcome ROSS Intelligence, legal artificial intelligence (AI) leader, back to Toronto. ROSS applies AI and Machine Learning to legal research and has recently opened an R&D lab at U of T.
The company started as a course project at U of T’s computer science department in 2014. With its initial success, ROSS moved to Silicon Valley and became a member of the successful Y Combinator tech incubator and recently landed $8.3 million in Seed A funding. Coming full circle, co-founder Andrew Arruda views ROSS’s return to Toronto as an inevitable move. He describes Toronto as the “epicentre of artificial intelligence development” with “the best and brightest engineers” available to join the ROSS team. Although their headquarters will remain in California, having an office close to the cutting-edge research being done at U of T, especially the new Vector Institute, just makes sense for the burgeoning company.
The company’s software, which is based on IBM’s Watson AI system, is used to perform research in the area of US Bankruptcy law. Their software is used by lawyers working at Fortune 500 companies, small law firms, solo practitioners, and some of the world’s biggest law firms. ROSS’s software combs through legal databases, making this normally tedious process faster and more efficient. Lawyers can even pose questions to ROSS using natural language.
The AI software’s efficacy promises to make the work of lawyers not only quicker, but better. A study by Blue Hill Research found that researchers using ROSS in combination with traditional legal research methods found more relevant authorities, minimized non-relevant authorities, and completed the research task more quickly. While hypothetical, the study found that an associate billing at $320 per hour and converting 50% of saved time to billings, would generate an additional $26,532 to $30,934 in billings per year.
ROSS promises to make not only the practice of law easier and better for lawyers and their clients, but also advantageous to the AI community in Toronto. With the launch of ROSS North, plans for growing the company could mean employment for hundreds.
Arruda says that the move to Toronto is one of the most important moments in the company’s history. “Being back in Toronto, the hub of artificial intelligence, feels very good and feels right.”
