When Mark Doble founded Alexi in 2017, his goal wasn’t to replace lawyers with AI — it was to help firms build lasting competitive advantage through it. Having seen firsthand how inefficiency and fragmentation slowed legal work, he set out to create technology that would empower lawyers, not displace them.
Today, Alexi enables leading law firms to build private, firm-owned AI environments that connect systems, workflows, and teams — transforming collective knowledge into intelligence that compounds with every use. More than 600 firms across North America now rely on Alexi to enhance performance, reduce risk, and drive profitability within secure, compliant infrastructure built for the business of law.
In an interview with LegalTech.ca, Doble shares how Alexi’s private AI architecture is redefining firm-wide adoption, why connected intelligence is the next frontier for legal technology, and how Canada is positioned to lead this shift globally.
What inspired you to launch Alexi, and what gap in the legal industry were you determined to fill?
MD: I became interested in AI and natural language processing while studying law at Queen’s University. I could see that the rapid progress in foundational AI technologies would fundamentally transform how legal work gets done, but few were addressing the technical challenges of actually making that happen in practice.
After working at a law firm, the gap became crystal clear to me. Lawyers were drowning in documents – thousands of them per file – and spending countless hours on research and analysis that should have been streamlined.
That’s what drove us to start Alexi in 2017. We wanted to build technology that empowers lawyers to do their best work. Not replace them, but multiply their impact so they can serve more people effectively. Ensuring AI serves lawyers’ ability to deliver better outcomes for clients, while keeping human lawyers as the bearers of those services, is the core of everything we do. That principle has guided us from day one.
How does Alexi’s technology stand out from other legaltech solutions, and how do you ensure its outputs remain accurate and reliable for lawyers?
MD: What sets Alexi apart is that we’re not another point solution or AI experiment. Most firms started with fragmented tools – a research app here, a drafting assistant there – and they’re finding that doesn’t scale. You get inconsistent quality, ungoverned usage, and shadow AI spreading across the firm.
Alexi replaces that with a unified platform that can handle every workflow in a firm, from research and drafting to review and administrative tasks, all in one place. It’s not just for lawyers. It works across every team in the firm: paralegals, legal assistants, business services, and operations.
On accuracy and reliability, we take a different approach than generic AI tools. Alexi creates structured outputs with clickable citations for instant verification, so lawyers can trace every claim back to source. Our workflows are designed by legal professionals who understand how lawyers work from experience, and they can be tailored to each firm’s standards and precedents. That means outputs reflect your firm’s approach from the start, not generic AI guessing.
We also don’t treat this as a one-time deployment. Every firm gets the opportunity to refine workflows based on real usage and feedback. The platform improves with your firm — that means over time, the system becomes more reflective of your firm’s own standards and expertise: your own way of working, captured in technology. Which is why we’re seeing sustained adoption and measurable ROI across all teams and practice areas, not the typical drop-off you see with experimental tools.
With Alexi Private Cloud now available, what advantages does it bring to law firms and legal departments concerned about data security and compliance?
MD: Private Cloud addresses what’s become a dealbreaker for many firms: data security and control in an AI environment. Most legal AI tools run on public cloud architecture that wasn’t designed for the privacy and governance standards law firms need.
With Alexi Private Cloud, we deploy AI in an isolated environment created exclusively for your firm. We have zero access to your data, documents, or interactions; we don’t host your data, train models on it, or monitor usage. It’s your AI, in your control, within your dedicated, single-tenant environment.
You also recently launched Workflow Library — how does this new feature help lawyers streamline their work, and what feedback have you received so far?
MD: We launched Workflow Library because firms told us they wanted to move faster with AI, but building workflows was slowing them down.
It’s our growing collection of ready-built workflows for high-volume legal work (e.g. summarizing, chronologies, drafting, reviewing) across litigation and transactional practice. Each workflow is designed and tested by real lawyers, and we’ve focused on the areas where we see the greatest need for automation across firms. The result: firms can start getting value right away.
The feedback’s been great. Firms are seeing immediate impact of workflows without the heavy lift of building their own, and because they’re reliable and repeatable, they’re being adopted broadly across teams and practice areas. At the same time, firms still have the flexibility to tailor or extend these workflows over time as their needs evolve. Because it all runs inside your firm’s private Alexi environment, every refinement you make stays part of your firm’s system, not shared or generic.
How do you see AI reshaping the practice of law in the next five years, and what role will Alexi play in that shift?
MD: Over the next five years, AI is going to fundamentally change what it means to practice law. The firms that thrive will be the ones that have embedded AI as core infrastructure across their entire operation.
We’re going to see a shift from lawyers spending most of their time on routine tasks, like summarizing documents, building chronologies, and drafting standard provisions, to focusing on judgment, strategy, and client relationships: the work that requires sharp legal expertise. AI will handle the repetitive, high-volume work that’s been consuming billable hours but not creating proportional value.
Alexi’s role is to be the platform that makes this transition real for law firms. We’re building the infrastructure that lets firms consolidate AI across every workflow, deploy it securely and compliantly, and see sustained adoption across all their teams. Our goal is to help firms transform how they operate while maintaining the standards and judgment that make them trusted advisors.
In five years, the firms using Alexi won’t just be more efficient. They’ll be serving more clients, delivering better outcomes, and building a more sustainable model for legal practice. Over time, those firms will be operating on a shared foundation of firm knowledge and AI – one that continuously improves with every matter and user.
What markets or client segments are you prioritizing next, and how has feedback from Canadian firms shaped your roadmap?
MD: We’re focused on scaling across both the U.S. and Canada, with a particular emphasis on mid-market to enterprise law firms. Our plans for 2026 include deepening our product offerings and enhancing customer experience.
Right now, we serve more than 600 mid-market to enterprise legal firms, including firms like Ontario’s Oatley Vigmond and Vancouver’s MacLean Law. We’re seeing especially strong demand for our private cloud deployment from larger firms that need enterprise-grade security, and that’s a segment we’re investing heavily in. These firms are prioritizing solutions that give them full control over how their AI is deployed and managed.
As CEO, what have you learned about building trust in such a sensitive, highly regulated field like law?
MD: The most important lesson I’ve learned is that trust in legal AI isn’t built on technology alone. It’s built on principle. We strongly believe that AI shouldn’t be making key legal decisions. It can influence the decisions, participate, and help humans make these decisions; but the legal system and rights and liabilities are fundamentally human, and that means humans need to be the overseers of those outcomes.
We call this “professional AI alignment”: ensuring AI serves lawyers’ ability to deliver better outcomes, not replace their judgment. Our whole company exists to build artificial intelligence to help power the law firm.
We’ve also actively sought feedback from our users since day one to ensure the quality, reliability, and consistency of our platform remains unmatched. The continuous feedback loop of listening to what firms actually need and how they actually work has been critical to building trust at scale. In a regulated field like law, trust is a commitment you have to earn every day through how you build, deploy, and support your technology.
Looking ahead, what’s your long-term vision for Alexi and for Canada’s role in the global legaltech ecosystem?
MD: My long-term vision for Alexi is to become the infrastructure layer that powers legal intelligence globally. We see workflow automation for upper-mid-market and enterprise law firms as a race, and we believe we’re going to win because we’re crystal clear about what we’re building and who we’re building it for.
As for Canada’s role in the global legaltech ecosystem, I think we have a massive opportunity. We’re hoping to open a New York office soon but remain headquartered in Canada. We’re showing that you can build a category-defining company from Toronto and compete globally against well-funded American and European players. Canada has world-class talent, strong institutions, and an incredibly supportive innovation ecosystem. We’re proof that Canadian tech can lead, not just compete.
The fact that we’re serving hundreds of firms across North America while growing our team here shows Canadian legaltech can scale and win on the global stage. That’s the future I’m building toward. We’re building the foundation for how law firms everywhere will own and grow their own legal intelligence.