Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the legal industry’s efforts to manage growing volumes of digital information. From litigation and investigations to regulatory matters, legal teams must review large collections of documents while protecting confidential data and ensuring that decisions remain subject to professional judgment.
The challenge is not simply processing documents faster. Lawyers also need to understand why information has been classified as relevant, privileged or sensitive, particularly when those decisions can affect the course of a legal matter.
Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault has deployed MARC, a document intelligence platform developed by legaltech company Altorney, to analyze documents across litigation, investigations, antitrust, tax and data breach matters.
The deployment illustrates how law firms are introducing AI into document-heavy workflows, with an emphasis on explainability, data control and the ability to validate automated classifications.
AI is reshaping document review in the legal sector
McCarthy Tétrault has more than 800 lawyers and is using MARC for relevance and privilege review, issue coding, and the identification of personal and confidential information. The platform classifies documents according to categories such as relevance, responsiveness, privilege, personal information and trade secrets, as well as criteria specific to individual matters.
Rather than providing classifications without context, MARC is designed to explain the rationale behind each coding decision. This allows legal teams to examine the system’s results and validate its analysis before applying their own legal judgment.
Susan Wortzman, partner at McCarthy Tétrault and president of MT>3, the firm’s e-discovery division, described the team’s experience with the platform:
“We are using MARC for relevance and privilege review, issue coding, identification of personal and confidential information across general litigation, investigations, and data breach matters,” said Susan Wortzman, Partner at McCarthy Tétrault and President of MT>3, the Firm’s e-discovery division. “The MARC team is highly responsive and works closely with our MT>3 team to develop bespoke workflows for highly challenging and unique matters, working within high pressure deadlines.
“MARC provides detailed rationale for every coding decision, making it easy for lawyers to validate its accuracy and spend their time applying complex legal judgment. Throughout, all data remains secure within our own private environment, giving our clients confidence that their data is securely managed. The cost savings are impactful for our clients.”
Data security is another element of the deployment. MARC can operate in a client’s cloud environment, a client-controlled data center or Altorney’s secure hosted environment. The platform can also be used before documents enter an existing review system or on information already stored within one.
For legal teams, this flexibility creates opportunities to identify potentially irrelevant material earlier in the process and support quality-control workflows on documents already under review.
Shimmy Messing, CEO and co-founder of Altorney, said the deployment reflects the role the company sees for AI in legal workflows:
“We built MARC to give legal teams better intelligence wherever their data resides,” said Shimmy Messing, CEO and Co-Founder at Altorney. “McCarthy Tétrault’s active use of MARC for first-pass review reflects the need to turn large, complex document populations into informed legal action earlier in the workflow. Our goal is not to replace legal judgment; it is to give exceptional legal teams a faster, more explainable foundation for applying it.”
The adoption comes as legal organizations assess how AI can support document analysis without removing lawyers from decisions that require expertise and accountability. In this context, the ability to explain and validate a system’s output is an important consideration alongside speed and efficiency.
For Altorney, the deployment at McCarthy Tétrault places MARC within the workflows of a Canadian law firm handling complex legal matters. More broadly, it reflects an emerging direction for LegalTech: using AI to help professionals navigate large volumes of information while maintaining control over sensitive data and the decisions that follow.
21 c
19 c