As immigration policy grows more complex and global competition for talent intensifies, a new generation of legaltech companies is rethinking how cross-border mobility is delivered. Among them is BorderPass, which is using a hybrid model of generative AI and licensed legal professionals to make immigration services faster, more predictable, and significantly more accessible.
At the centre of that effort is Josh Green, whose background in immigration law and startups has shaped the company’s approach to scaling legal services in one of the most complex and highly regulated domains. Rather than replacing lawyers, BorderPass is embedding them into AI-driven workflows—automating high-complexity processes while maintaining human oversight at critical decision points.
The result, Green argues, is a fundamentally different model of legal service delivery—one designed to meet rising client expectations for transparency, speed, and cost certainty, while also helping institutions and employers navigate an increasingly volatile policy environment.
In this Q+A with LegalTech.ca, Green discusses how BorderPass is building a scalable legal infrastructure for global mobility, the challenges of deploying AI in regulated environments, and why he believes legaltech—much like fintech before it—will become a foundational driver of economic growth.
What is the core mission of BorderPass, and how does it differ from traditional legal service delivery?
JG: BorderPass solves a fundamental access problem: legal services can be expensive, lengthy, and complex. Countries compete to attract and retain global talent to fill skills gaps and drive economic growth, but current systems create barriers through cost, time, and complexity. We remove those barriers.
We use generative AI capabilities to handle customer needs at scale. We combine this automation with licensed professionals to deliver expert legal services and products with an additional layer of compliance.
AI automates repetitive, high-complexity workflows, while licensed lawyers review at critical decision points. That structure lets us maintain compliance and quality while charging substantially less.
For learning institutions and employers, this means predictable costs and scalable support. For individuals, it means affordable ongoing access to legal services and guidance.
We see legal complexity as the largest blocker to global and economic expansion. BorderPass breaks down the barrier of legal complexity, allowing the movement of people and capital across borders. Similar to how fintech enabled new levels of growth in the 2010s, we see legaltech as the next massive enabler.
Your career has spanned roles in immigration law and now legaltech. How do these different experiences come together to inform your approach at BorderPass?
JG: They all come down to the same thing: building systems that work reliably at scale.
Scale becomes possible when simple and complex tasks can seamlessly be performed by technology with high accuracy. Whether it’s through understanding large data sets to make sophisticated decision-making, or intelligently reading and ingesting millions of data points to generate documents, we’ve built technology that performs reliably and accurately.
Immigration is an excellent example: one mistake on a 500-page application can mean a refusal or a five-year ban. BorderPass flags such issues before submission.
My legal background allowed me to recognize that a real problem exists within a large and growing market, with individuals and enterprises seeing high value in a new solution. The practice of law trains you to think logically as a problem solver, which translates very well to the startup world.
Co-founding a startup taught me that sustainable growth matters more than hype. BorderPass focuses on creating immediate value for our customers by building products they love. This hyperfocus is a key factor in our high growth story. I’ll always be product- and customer-focused, which allows us to jump into new verticals and spaces with speed.
From your perspective at BorderPass, how are client expectations changing in the legal services space, particularly around immigration?
JG: Clients expect transparency, predictability, measurable outcomes, and speed. They want to know the cost, timeline, and success probability upfront. They also want frictionless processes.
Employers are in a similar position. Immigration has become a strategic risk. Policy shifts and compliance complexity can derail a hire. Everyone wants legal services that work more like software: clear, predictable, and built to solve problems efficiently.
What are the primary challenges legaltech companies face when trying to scale in regulated environments like immigration law, and how has BorderPass overcome them?
JG: We’ve heard a lot of doubt that we can build the technology. We’ve had countless people tell us it’s too complex to build and there are too many barriers. This is music to my ears. The harder the task and the larger the barriers to entry, the bigger the competitive moat we can build (and have). Our technology has allowed us to scale with incredible efficiency.
Another hurdle is creating trust. People need to understand and feel confident that technology is supporting them. Legal mistakes are incredibly high-stakes, so you must create incredibly reliable technology and service so that customers and partners feel secure.
We’ve done a number of things to build this trust and security. Every immigration application on our platform gets reviewed by a Canadian immigration lawyer. Complex AI systems perform tasks like reading documents and flagging errors, but a lawyer is always involved. Clients benefit from the speed of technology and the safety of professional oversight.
Another challenge is keeping up with changing rules and regulations. Legal policy, especially in immigration, shifts constantly. We’ve built systems that update in real time and adapt to new requirements.
BorderPass is profitable and self-funded while many AI companies burn capital. What does sustainable growth look like in legaltech?
JG: It means having rock-solid unit economics and building scalable systems. In other words, you have to be able to scale with the language models. You can ask yourself, as the LLMs get stronger, does that increase or decrease the value of your company? As AI becomes more commoditized, new competitive moats must be built.
We chose this path of sound unit economics and scale efficiency. If you are solving a real problem, people will pay you for it. And if you achieve true product-market fit, you can become a high-growth company, just like we have. With the recent advancements in AI, you no longer need teams of 100+ engineers to build amazing products quickly. But you do need to invest in your internal systems in order to leverage all that AI has to offer.
We also fundamentally believe that everyone in the company must be a product person. We don’t have traditional product managers. All our developers know how to build a product from ideation to design to implementation. We also don’t have a traditional customer support team, as the role is far more expansive than that. We built what we call the Knowledge and Data (KD) Team. This includes customer support functions, but beyond that, it includes understanding our product to be able to build new systems or product improvements based on customer experiences and meeting partner needs. It’s this mindset and practice that allows us to scale with such efficiency, quickly enter new spaces, and adapt to any market changes.
Canada’s immigration system is undergoing major policy shifts, from study permit caps to population targets. How is BorderPass helping clients navigate this uncertainty?
JG: Policy uncertainty creates complexity and uncertainty for our customers, which inherently increases the value of our products.
Because of our internal processes and the systems we’ve built, we are able to keep our platform current, so when policies change, we update immediately so people always know their options and how new rules affect them specifically.
We also reduce risk. When the rules tighten, there’s less room for error. Our AI flags issues based on current requirements and our lawyers review everything to make sure it’s compliant.
From a public sector perspective, smarter immigration policy requires smarter infrastructure. BorderPass enables that by catching errors before submission, reducing fraud risk, and improving approval rates for qualified applicants.
For learning institutions, these shifts mean enrollment instability. We help them improve outcomes and keep their pipelines stable. For employers competing for fewer talent spots, we make the process faster and keep them compliant while they’re fighting for good hires.
Looking ahead, where do you see the intersection of AI, legal services, and immigration policy heading, and what role does BorderPass play in shaping that future?
JG: The global mobility market is massive and will continue to grow. The future belongs to platforms that combine real expertise with AI and those who choose to adopt these new technologies. Clients don’t want tools. They want solutions that understand their situation, guide them through complexity, and actually deliver results at a reasonable price.
In immigration, that’s already happening, but immigration is just the starting point. Global scale needs legal infrastructure that can keep up. That’s where BorderPass is headed. We’re building a centralized platform that handles the legal infrastructure underpinning economic growth at a global scale.
Our role is to keep building systems that make immigration more accessible and transparent while working with regulators to improve the system overall. We’re also looking at how we can expand our legaltech platform into new verticals and geographies. We’re pushing on all fronts, all the time.
One strategy that’s worked really well for me in the past is following my customer. Our customers sell to each other which is a strong indication that they love our products and we create real value for them. We are starting to see many examples of our customers also bringing us into new areas. We have Canadian customers with needs in other countries, and we’ve seen immigration customers with needs in other areas. This is a very efficient and sticky way to enter new markets with champion customers with higher probability of success, without spending millions on new go-to-market strategies.
AI is breaking down legal and regulatory guardrails across borders, and this is inevitable. The AI arms race in this sector will come down to which companies can navigate jurisdictions, scale globally, and build the best AI systems to handle this mass scale. At BorderPass, we are aggressively positioning ourselves as the global winner.