TORONTO, ON – October 8th, 2020 — ThinkData Works, Inc. (ThinkData), the Toronto tech company behind the end-to-end data management platform Namara, has brokered a partnership agreement with the Legal Innovation Data Institute (LIDI) that aims to make the administration of justice more transparent.
LIDI takes inspiration from the global free access to law community as well as many other public interest legal technology innovators and university research labs. LIDI lowers the barriers and expands the circle of innovation in Canadian legal data beyond the small and closed group of legal publishers that currently possess extensive primary law collections.
The LIDI was founded in September of 2020 through the initiative and support of the following founding members, initial collaborators and advisors:
| Founding Members | Initial Research and Development Partners | Founding Advisors |
| • Compass • Justia • vLex • AltaML • BG Communications | • Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute xAI Lab • Legal Technology Lab | uOttawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society • The Conflicts Analytics Lab at Queen’s University • ThinkData Works • Private AI • CiteRight | • Dr. Randy Goebel • Meredith Brown • Noel Corriveau • Sarah Glassmeyer • Cory Janssen |
“ThinkData had the perfect platform for helping us meet our objective with LIDI,” says the Founder and Executive Director, Colin Lachance. “Building a data trust is complex. We needed a partner who was leading the space and could support our growth in datasets and collaborators. Partnering with ThinkData is very exciting.”
Bryan Smith, co-founder and CEO of ThinkData, says, “At first glance, it seems like offering more data to more people is incompatible with maintaining privacy and security; but transparency in how data is collected, maintained, and shared is key to realizing the value of data. LIDI is moving the chains in a big way, and hopefully setting a precedent not just for the legal world, but for any entity looking to provide fair and transparent access to data.”
LIDI lowers legal data access barriers in Canada and facilitates innovation on an unprecedented scale. Through collaboration, we aim to make the administration of justice and technology more transparent and less costly.
About LIDI
Legal Innovation Data Institute (LIDI) in an Ottawa-based and federally incorporated not-for-profit founded in 2020 to overcome the challenge of open courts and closed data. Through the LIDI Data Trust, LIDI operates as a steward of sensitive court and tribunal rulings and other legal data. LIDI Data Trust content is cleaned, normalized and enriched by LIDI and its supporters to accelerate the research, development and innovation efforts of members and collaborators in a manner that places a premium on privacy considerations and advances access to justice in Canada.