Dentons Canada and venture studio AXL team up to co-develop AI ventures, reimagining legal services and driving innovation from Canada to the world.
Dentons has entered into a strategic partnership with Canadian venture studio AXL to co-develop AI ventures aimed at redefining the legal industry. The collaboration marks a significant step in accelerating the pace of legal innovation, from outdated workflows and pricing models to access and delivery of legal services.
Under the agreement, Dentons becomes the exclusive legal partner to AXL and the preferred provider to its portfolio of ventures. The partnership integrates Dentons’ legal expertise into the early stages of AI commercialization, ensuring startups are built on solid legal and regulatory foundations.
“This partnership reflects our ongoing commitment to staying at the forefront of legal innovation and AI,” said Tim Haney, CEO of Dentons Canada. “By collaborating closely with AXL, we will unlock new models for how technology can enable us to provide exponential value to our clients through innovation.”
AXL, led by University of Toronto professor and entrepreneur Dr. Daniel Wigdor, is on a mission to launch 50 AI-powered companies over the next five years. Its model merges cutting-edge AI research with real-world industry validation through its AI Catalyst program, which partners with corporations to accelerate breakthrough ideas.
“We’re proud to partner with Dentons, a firm with global scale, legal sophistication, and an AI innovation roadmap that’s moving legal innovation forward,” said Dr. Wigdor, Co-Founder and CEO of AXL. “Together, we’re launching companies that will define what practical and scalable AI applications will look like in practice.”
Dentons will play a role not only in shaping new ventures but also in helping bring them to market, with a focus on aligning products with genuine client needs and industry demand. “With AXL, we are not just offering legal services to startups—we are contributing to the formation of AI ventures from day one,” added Mike Hollinger, Partner and Toronto Leader of Dentons’ Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies Group. “Together, we are reimagining how legal services are delivered.”
Dr. Wigdor framed the partnership as the next major shift in legal services. “The last time legal services fundamentally changed, it was because of a research lab,” he said. “Dentons and AXL are now picking up where that transformation left off, building the next wave of practical, scalable AI applications for law.”
With this collaboration, Dentons and AXL are positioning Canada as a hub for AI-driven legal innovation, shaping tools and ventures designed to impact the global legal services market.