Global law firm Dentons and AXL, a Canada-based group that ‘creates and launches AI companies’, have announced a strategic partnership to help the firm deliver ‘exponential value to clients through innovation’.
The relationship will also see Dentons become the exclusive legal partner to AXL and the preferred provider to its growing portfolio of startups that it has helped to launch.
Dentons will therefore be involved in bringing new AI companies to market, ‘ensuring each company is built on genuine market demand, atop deep customer insights, and is positioned for scale’, they said.
Meanwhile, the law firm side of the partnership is designed to ‘accelerate the pace of innovation across the legal field and bring outdated workflows, pricing, access, and indeed, the very definition of legal services, into the future’, they said.
Tim Haney, CEO of Dentons Canada, commented: ‘This partnership reflects our ongoing commitment to staying at the forefront of legal innovation and AI. By collaborating closely with AXL, we will unlock new models for how technology can enable us to provide exponential value to our clients through innovation.’
I.e. part of this is about improving how Dentons works, plus then the opportunity to work on new AI startups with AXL as well.
Whether all of this will result in specific legal AI companies coming to market as a result of the project, or whether such potential ventures will be backed directly by Dentons is left unsaid for now. It’s possibly too early to say.
Dr. Daniel Wigdor, Co-Founder and CEO of AXL – an academic who is keen to see the commercialisation of university AI research projects – said: ‘We’re proud to partner with Dentons, a firm with global scale, legal sophistication, and a strategic AI roadmap that’s moving legal innovation forward.
‘Together we’re launching companies that will define what practical and scalable AI applications will look like in practice.’
And Mike Hollinger, Partner and Toronto Leader of Dentons’ Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies Group, added: ‘With AXL, we are not just offering legal services to startups – we are contributing to the formation of AI ventures from day one. Together, we are reimagining how legal services are delivered. This partnership puts Dentons and AXL at the centre of that transformation.’
Overall, a very positive move, although the firm will have to remain focused on the next few steps to get transformative value from this internally. I.e. working with an external startup group as legal advisers to help new AI companies is one thing, but, changing how the firm itself works is a whole new challenge. (Note: interesting that they mentioned pricing as a key area to focus on….)
AL gets the feeling that this is a project that while in motion, is still gestating in terms of what its ultimate goals are. But, that’s not a bad thing. Having some time to explore what’s possible and see where Dentons wants to go with this is likely a sensible way to evolve.
And one last point is whether this project remains focused primarily on Canada – which is clearly the starting point here – or whether its benefits can spread out across the rest of the firm.
You can find more info about AXL here.
—
Legal Innovators Conferences New York and UK – Both In November ’25
If you’d like to stay ahead of the legal AI curve….then come along to Legal Innovators New York, Nov 19 + 20, where the brightest minds will be sharing their insights on where we are now and where we are heading.
And also, Legal Innovators UK – Nov 4 + 5 + 6
Both events, as always, are organised by the awesome Cosmonauts team!
Please get in contact with them if you’d like to take part.
Discover more from Artificial Lawyer
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.