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Canadian Lawyer reveals the top legal tech, service providers, and products in the ninth edition of the Readers’ Choice awards.
Readers cast over 2,500 votes, ultimately crowning the top three winners across various service and product categories which legal professionals trust and confidently turn to when seeking solutions.
From legal tech giants and recruiters to dispute resolution and expert witnesses, all the organizations on the 2023 list have earned the highest commendation through the client-driven Readers’ Choice awards for pushing the boundaries in their respective fields.
While many of this year’s honorees are repeat winners, other awardees are debuting. Some have dominated the award categories in their area of expertise, a testament to their consistent performance, innovation, and creativity.
Thomson Reuters Canada won five Readers’ Choice awards across the following areas:
legal tech
online legal research
content and analysis
The organization has long established itself as an industry leader and the awards recognize the company for the additional value it brings to its customers and for helping them advance the legal profession, improve efficiency, and facilitate access to justice.
“We pride ourselves on being customer-obsessed, and I think that’s shown in our products,” says Steven Assie, head of Canada. “We’re constantly engaging customers to get their feedback into our products, which informs our road map.”
Factors contributing to its success include:
being renowned as a technological and content powerhouse
having innovative leaders collaborating with customers from the company’s new cutting-edge hub in downtown Toronto
editorial, sales, and corporate team members contributing their expertise to achieve goals
Practical Law Canada, the company's award-winning legal research, content, and analysis product, is powered by a team of full-time and highly experienced lawyers who have worked at Canada’s leading law firms
Thomson Reuters Canada has also been successfully integrating AI-powered technology into its products and solutions for more than 30 years, transparently and ethically.
One of their winning products, Westlaw Canada, is known for its powerful search capabilities, as one of the organization’s greatest strengths and competitive differentiators is the underlying editorial team expertise that powers such products.
An industry challenge of the past year is the pace at which generative AI has evolved. Thomson Reuters is well positioned to harness this technology with its recent announcement of a $100-million investment focused on organic development. The company has also prepared its current products for the generative AI revolution.
“We’ve announced partnerships with industry providers and third-party vendors, and we’ve also made targeted acquisitions to bring additional capabilities in-house,” Assie explains. “That’s one of the biggest challenges we’ve seen, but it also presents tremendous opportunities for us to serve more value to our customers.”
“What excites us about the future is our significant $100-million-plus organic investment in AI capabilities, partnering with the likes of Microsoft 365, Copilot, and other major technology vendors, acquiring best-in-class companies like Casetext and then bringing the capabilities that we get through that strategy to our wealth of content that our people power,” he adds.
From single malpractice cases to international class actions, Connect Medical Legal Experts is trusted to match extensively vetted expert witnesses with legal professionals who require their services.
The company prides itself on its highly trained experts, who are relied upon to:
give testimony
write medical-legal reports
educate the courts on the case issues
A serial Readers’ Choice winner, the company is at the forefront of curating physicians and nurses regarded as experts who have practised extensively within their area of specialization.
“Our company mission from the beginning has been to openly share knowledge because I firmly believe that legal knowledge can improve healthcare outcomes and medical knowledge can improve medical-legal outcomes,” says president and CEO Chris Rokosh.
“We pride ourselves in always being able to find the expert, whether that’s someone with a certain amount of experience in a specific province or experience with a type of surgical instrument used for a type of procedure.”
Connect Medical Legal Experts is leading the way in its selection process for expert witnesses, ensuring their qualifications meet the highest standards by evaluating the following criteria:
education and both specific and specialty clinical experience and expertise
leadership, management experience, and specialty certifications
status within professional associations and university affiliations
An example of that commitment involved a law firm that had taken on a class action and needed help to summarize significant medical records. Connect Medical Legal Experts built a team of knowledge-specific nurses who analyzed the information and put it into an accurate and concise summary, allowing the client law firm to advance the case that had previously stalled.
“The lawyers thought it was an impossible task, but to us, it’s all in a day’s work, and we were very proud of that,” notes Rokosh.
With an eye to the future, the company is leveraging technology to increase lawyers’ ability to reach them and find experts anywhere, anytime, from any location. A website revamp is also underway to further boost the client experience.
The company is a big proponent of education. Rokosh hosts the podcast Inside Medical Malpractice, which features content accredited for medical, legal, and nursing professional development in many jurisdictions in Canada and the US.
“We’re helping to keep everyone educated and up-to-speed on the issues around medical malpractice easily and conveniently,” she adds.
First-time winner ALT Recruitment Partners is Canada’s only firm specializing in in-house corporate legal recruitment. They are also a women-owned company, a certified Women Business Enterprise company, and all partners are former lawyers.
They ensure a perfect match between clients and candidates by doing the research in-house, drawing upon the three partners' combined 60 years of experience in legal recruitment. Working as one team, they collaborate internally and with their clients to find and evaluate candidates.
“It’s a way for us to focus on our clients and give them dedicated service; we only take on a handful of mandates at a time and bring a concentrated effort to our clients with transparency and integrity throughout the process,” explains partner Emily Lee.
The core elements of their success include:
working with the top companies in Canada
applying diversity and inclusion best practices
being objective and selective in sourcing candidates to find the right fit
removing competition and subjectivity from their process
Many of the firm’s successes have resulted from overcoming recruitment challenges in finding highly specialized candidates, where the factors include:
language skills
location
practice specialization
ALT Recruitment Partners’ proactive and honest approach, well-connected network, and persistence have given them a competitive edge.
“We work together for our clients, so it’s a seamless experience; we’re truly an extension of them when we are recruiting for every aspect of what they want,” notes Lee.
Many of this year’s legal service providers are Readers’ Choice favourites, such as six-time winner ADR Chambers, whose approach to mediation and arbitration has put it on the leading edge.
The quality of its neutrals and the strength of its administrative team have garnered the organization praise and client loyalty.
“We have an extensive roster of neutrals and people with expertise in many different areas; even in an obscure area, there are many senior members with substantive expertise,” explains president Allan Stitt.
“That’s combined with the fact that we have people willing to do mediations at roster rates or arbitrations on an expedited basis for much lower rates than regular arbitration, providing a cost-effective way to go to arbitration.”
ADR Chambers’ internal continuing education programs also set it apart in a competitive field. Through the Canadian Arbitration Association and the Canadian Mediation Association, which it manages, the company offers annual conferences to discuss mediation and arbitration issues and how they might be dealt with effectively.
It is also excelling by:
having staff lawyers who assist arbitrators and the parties through the arbitration process, ensuring the arbitration awards have clarity
rendering arbitration awards in a timely manner
“What we’ve prided ourselves on through the years is trying to be ahead of the curve in anticipating what the market wants and needs,” reflects Stitt. “That’s why we came up with the expedited rules of arbitration, and that’s become very popular in that people want a fast and inexpensive arbitration process and an expedited mediation process.”
Like other winners, ADR Chambers seeks to leverage AI.
“Companies are going to develop models that will change how the law is practiced and disputes are resolved, and we want to be on the leading edge of that,” he adds. “We’re not afraid of growth and change, and we want to embrace it and figure out how it can improve user experience, reduce cost, save time, and produce a better outcome.”
In the 2023 Readers’ Choice awards, Canadian Lawyer once again recognizes outstanding products and services related to the legal sector. From July 10 to August 4, Canadian Lawyer’s research team surveyed readers and gathered thousands of votes from them.
The ballot consisted of categories encompassing areas such as ADR mediation chambers, financial services and consultation, legal research, legal technology, litigation support and consulting, recruiting, staffing and outsourcing, and real estate.
In total, 573 product and service providers were listed on the ballot. Voters could also write in any businesses not listed. The team has named the top three vote-getters in each category and listed them in alphabetical order. Categories with more than three winners indicate a tie.