Canadian AI legaltech platform Clio has hired former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack as general manager of its judiciary business.
In her new role, which begins next month, she will lead the market and commercial strategy for Clio’s judiciary business and help spearhead the company’s growth across courts, judicial officers and dispute resolution organisational partners.
She will work alongside senior vice president of judiciary Pablo Arredondo, who joined earlier this month as part of Clio’s efforts to grow its judiciary team.
Clio’s newly launched judiciary business is seeking to assist courts with technological change and rising caseloads, while expanding Clio’s product offering beyond law firm-focused legaltech.
McCormack said: “Courts have been operating under structural pressure for years, and technology now gives us a chance to rethink what support can look like.
“Millions of people rely on courts at moments when the stakes are highest, often without meaningful legal support. The opportunity now is to give those institutions better tools to meet that responsibility. If we do this well, the impact won’t be about efficiency. It will be the strengthening of the public justice system’s service to the people who depend on it, and the corresponding growth in public trust.”
Jack Newton, CEO and founder of Clio, said: “Bridget understands this market at a level very few people do. She has led courts, worked across the justice system and knows what it takes to earn the confidence of the institutions we want to serve.
“This is part of a much bigger vision for Clio to help shape the infrastructure of modern legal work, across the profession and the institutions that support it.”
Clio says that it has created a robust foundation to serve courts following the acquisition of vLex in November last year, which added to the company’s capabilities with an expansive online legal research database containing a billion documents. Its platform is used by more than 400,000 legal professionals in 130 countries, the company said.
McCormack was chief justice for the Michigan Supreme Court for just over four years, in the latter part of a 10-year tenure with the highest ranking court in the US state. Following her departure from the court, she became the president and CEO of dispute resolution body the American Arbitration Association, a position she has held for more than three-and-a-half-years.
In June, Clio announced it had acquired Canadian AI legal data start-up Jurisage to increase its footprint in the Canadian legaltech market, further signalling the company’s intent to expand on several fronts.
The deal will bring together Clio’s AI-powered legal work platform with Jurisage’s Canadian-based legal data. That transaction followed the firm declaring in May that it had grown its annual recurring revenue to $500m, principally because of the release of its Intelligent Legal Work Platform last year alongside the purchase of vLex.
Earlier this month, private capital-focused AI-native firm Carta Law made two senior hires. Noah Levine joined as legal director from real estate investment firm Madison International Realty, while Karin Porstendörfer was appointed as compliance director and head of inbound KYC based in Luxembourg.
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