College Student Uses Artificial Intelligence To Build A Multimillion-Dollar Legal Research Firm

Lawyers spend years in school learning how to sift through millions of cases looking for the exact language that will help their clients win. What if a computer could do it for them? It's not the kind of question many lawyers would dignify with an answer. But Jimoh Ovbiagele isn't a lawyer, and as a budding computer scientist studying at the University of Toronto a couple of years ago the idea made perfect sense. He and his colleagues combined it with IBM's Watson artificial intelligence platform to co-found ROSS Intelligence, a multimillion-dollar legal research firm that has lined up global law giant Dentons as a backer and customer, along with other prominent customers including Baker & Hostetler and Latham & Watkins.