Clio Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Watson will join Toronto Metropolitan University’s Legal Innovation Zone for a fireside chat on what it takes to build, scale, and sustain legal technology in Canada.
The event, Building Canadian Legal Tech: A Fireside Chat with Clio CTO Jonathan Watson, is being hosted by the Legal Innovation Zone, Clio, and Toronto Tech Week at TMU’s Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto. The session is part of Toronto Tech Week, which runs from May 25 to 29 and brings together founders, investors, builders, and community-led events across the city.
Watson will speak with Dr. Sasha Saunders, Director of the Legal Innovation Zone, in a conversation focused on legal innovation, the Canadian legal tech ecosystem, and the future of law as AI and software continue to reshape how legal professionals work.
The discussion is expected to explore the opportunities and challenges of building legal technology in Canada, lessons in scaling software companies, and the importance of product development, user experience, and customer retention in a sector where trust and workflow adoption are critical.
Watson brings more than 20 years of leadership experience across AI transformation, large-scale SaaS, and engineering teams. As CTO of Clio, he has helped guide product growth at one of Canada’s most prominent legal technology companies, with a focus on connecting product development, design, user experience, and engineering.
Saunders leads the Legal Innovation Zone at Toronto Metropolitan University, a legal tech incubator that supports entrepreneurs building solutions for the legal services market and justice system. Her background includes more than a decade of experience building innovation ecosystems in the United Kingdom and Canada.
In addition to the fireside chat, the event will include audience Q&A, networking, and refreshments, with organizers positioning the session for legal professionals, innovators, students, and others interested in the future of law and technology.
The event comes as legal AI continues to move from experimentation to adoption, with Canadian companies and institutions playing a growing role in shaping how law firms and legal departments evaluate, deploy, and scale new tools.
Clio, founded in Burnaby, B.C. and now serving legal professionals globally, has become one of Canada’s flagship legal technology companies. The company describes its Intelligent Legal Work Platform as combining legal AI, practice management, and secure workflows for law firms in more than 130 countries.
For Canada’s legal tech community, the conversation offers a timely look at how homegrown companies can build for a global market while responding to the specific needs of lawyers, firms, and legal innovators at home.