Benjamin Alarie
Benjamin Alarie (born 1977) is a Canadian jurist, law professor, and entrepreneur. He serves as Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he also holds the Osler Chair in Business Law. He is an author of many publications in the domain of taxation and constitutional law with respect to issues of taxation and fiscal federalism. Alarie is co-founder and CEO of Blue J Legal, a legal software company based in Toronto, Canada. Education. Benjamin Alarie attended Wilfrid Laurier University, a public university in Waterloo, where he received his B.A. in 1999. In 1999, Alarie  entered the University of Toronto, where he was a junior fellow at Massey College. In 2002, he graduated from the University of Toronto with an M.A in economics and a J.D. with honours. Continuing his graduate studies at Yale Law School, he received his Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 2003. Career. Law practice and academic career. Alarie's research and academic interests include taxation law, judicial decision-making and practical use of artificial intelligence in the field of jurisprudence. In 2003, Alarie began his legal career as a law clerk for Madam Justice Louise Arbour at the Supreme Court of  Canada. In 2004, Alarie joined the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law as a full-time professor. He was awarded the Alan Mewett QC Prize for excellence in teaching by the law school's graduating class of 2009. Alarie is an affiliated faculty member of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He is a coauthor of a textbook on tax law, "Canadian Income Tax Law", including the most recent 6th edition published in 2018. Blue J Legal. In 2015, Alarie co-founded (along with Brett Janssen, Anthony Niblett and Albert Yoon) Blue J Legal, a Toronto-based legal tech  startup company specializing in legal analysis for tax and employment law experts. According to a number of sources, the company's software uses AI and machine learning algorithms to assist with legal research by analyzing large amounts of data to predict a court's likely verdict in various kinds of legal cases. The company's AI software program "Tax Foresight" was used in 2018 in a pilot program organized by The Department of Justice in Canada and has subsequently been adopted. The Canada Revenue Agency has also adopted Blue J's software.