Colin Lachance says academy is attracting curious lawyers and those who feel the need to catch up
The Ontario Bar Association has recently launched a hands-on AI learning platform tailored for lawyers. Called the AI Academy, the initiative is designed to help legal professionals explore, experiment with, and adopt AI tools relevant to their practice.
Colin Lachance, OBA’s innovator-in-residence and the lead designer of the platform, says that although the AI Academy was built for practising lawyers, it is also well-suited for law students.
With free OBA memberships for students, the program offers full access at no cost and does not need to be formally integrated into law school curricula, Lachance says.
One of the initial testing groups included a class from the University of Ottawa. Lachance sees the academy as a scalable, zero-cost solution that can complement legal education.
“They’ll always need to learn a lot about legal practice and process… and I think we have the potential for merging learning about AI with AI.”
Lachance says the AI Academy is attracting a mix of curious legal professionals and those who feel the need to keep up with change.
He says that lawyers generally fall into two broad groups: those who are already tech-savvy and inquisitive and those who resist adopting new tools.
“The curious are definitely there… That second group, I think you could break up into two subgroups – one is, ‘Don’t make me engage with another novelty tool,’ and the other is, ‘I know I can’t fight forever’… We definitely have that second subgroup participating,” he adds.
Lachance says the second subgroup knows that they need to learn, and they like that the platform doesn’t demand big changes in their workflows right away.
Lachance says the platform enables users to interact with AI tools directly rather than passively consuming content such as articles or webinars.
He adds that a beta version launched in late 2024, and since then, the Academy has been updated and redesigned to keep pace with rapid advancements in AI.
“The technology itself has been ready and locked in place for quite a while… The real challenge was around identifying the correct content to prioritize.”
The platform currently features four modules – basics, intermediate skills, building with AI, and governance – with new content added weekly. More modules are in development.
“Each of these tracks has lessons, and lessons have resources… Presently, there are 35 resources in there with more added frequently.”
He says the Academy focuses on teaching transferable skills that can be applied across various platforms rather than offering tutorials for specific tools. However, specific tool teaching is also on the way.
“We think it’s better to teach fundamentals, transferable skills than to prioritize teaching tools, but we will add tracks for specific legal AI tools as well.”
Lachance says that the Academy was designed flexibly, allowing learners to move at their own pace, focus on topics that matter most to them, and revisit content as needed.
“It’s a self-directed, highly customized [experience],” says Lachance. “Participants can choose how deep they want to go into any of the individual lessons.”
He adds that specific curricula will soon be available to help users identify the most relevant tracks and resources. The platform, Lachance says, accommodates both users who prefer open-ended exploration and those who want more structured learning.
“Some people love the open-ended nature [of the academy]… while others say, ‘Please just tell me the ten things I need to know so I don’t feel lost,’” he says.
The OBA partnered with Praxis AI on the platform’s technical foundation. Praxis had previously created an AI-powered learning assistant used in US universities.
“They were recently featured by Anthropic as one of their advanced AI partners,” Lachance says, adding that the AI Academy is hosted on AWS infrastructure, which allows for near-limitless scalability, including usage by all Ontario law students if needed.
