Conflict Analytics Lab

What Conflict Analytics Lab does

Conflict Analytics Lab is an academic research consortium founded in 2018 and housed at the Queen's University Faculty of Law and Smith School of Business. It applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to legal, compliance, and dispute resolution problems, operating across both consumer and enterprise use cases. Its core products include MyOpenCourt.org, which offers a severance calculator, an employment classification tool, and (during 2020) COVID-19 layoff resources for self-represented litigants; an AI-powered trademark dispute resolution platform built in partnership with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO); and a Customer Dispute Resolution Tool for enterprise use. Underlying technology spans NLP, computer vision, and multimodal models trained on a proprietary annotated corpus of more than 3,000 Canadian employment law cases, with published research in venues such as IEEE and the McGill Law Journal and use of third-party components like Facebook's Detectron.

The lab is led by founder Samuel Dahan and draws on a network of more than 30 experts drawn from Queen's, McGill, Columbia, HEC Paris, Di Tella, Brandeis, EDHEC, and other institutions, including a CJEU Advocate General. Its commercial posture blends free consumer tools with enterprise partnerships (Deel, Fasken, BLG, Tyler Technologies, EUIPO) and embedded academic programs such as the Legal Tech Clinic, a 1L Certificate, and the MMAI and MMA degrees. Funding to date is primarily non-dilutive, led by a disclosed $244,562 SSHRC grant (2019-2020) supplemented by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, with an INFORMS award providing additional reputational validation.

The revenue model is not commercially explicit: consumer tools are free, enterprise engagements are disclosed only by logo, and the lab does not publish ARR, seat counts, or contract values. Operationally this functions as a research consortium with selective commercial partnerships rather than a venture-scale SaaS business, which materially constrains conventional revenue and growth benchmarks.

Name

Conflict Analytics Lab

Legal name

Conflict Analytics Lab

Website

https://conflictanalytics.queenslaw.ca

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

The Conflict Analytics Lab is an academic research consortium at Queen's University that applies AI and machine learning to legal dispute resolution, serving self-represented litigants through free tools like MyOpenCourt.org and partnering with enterprises, law firms, and regulatory bodies including EUIPO.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Legal Technology

NAICS

Legal Services (5411), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Legal Services (8111), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYHDAEANAE

Enterprise AI Governance, Risk & Compliance Platforms (Model Risk, Audit, Policies)

Hardware, Technology & Telecom/Enterprise Platforms & Databases/Artificial Intelligence Platforms for Enterprise

SECONDARYHDAAAMAA

AI Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Platforms

Hardware, Technology & Telecom/Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning/AI Ethics & Compliance Solutions

Keywords

• Legal technology
• AI dispute resolution
• Legal analytics software
• Online dispute resolution
• Access to justice

Headquarters

HQ city

Kingston

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Research Grants and Academic Funding: Funded by government research grants (e.g., SSHRC $244,562) and university resources. The lab collects and analyzes legal data to build AI tools.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

The Conflict Analytics Lab builds and operates AI-powered legal analytics and dispute resolution tools, most notably the MyOpenCourt.org platform, which provides free AI-driven tools for self-represented litigants to determine employment status and calculate severance entitlements. It also develops enterprise-grade platforms for trademark dispute resolution (with EUIPO) and online consumer dispute resolution (with Tyler Technologies), combining machine learning, NLP, and computer vision trained on Canadian and international legal case data.

Product overview

The Conflict Analytics Lab operates a multi-layered offering anchored by MyOpenCourt.org — a consumer-facing AI tribunal and access-to-justice portal — which contains two core tools: the 'Am I an Employee or Contractor?' classifier and the 'Severance Calculator / Reasonable Notice Calculator.' Adjacent products include the EUIPO Trademark Dispute Resolution Platform (a deep learning platform for trademark similarity assessment built for the European Union Intellectual Property Office) and a Customer Dispute Resolution Tool for consumer-to-retailer conflicts co-developed with Tyler Technologies ODR. Supporting the product portfolio are educational programs including the Legal Tech Clinic and 1L Certificate Program in Legal Analytics, and graduate programs — Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence (MMAI) and Master of Management Analytics (MMA) — which supply student developers and researchers to the Lab. The Lab itself functions as a research consortium, not a product per se, but underpins all named offerings through its global expert network.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• MyOpenCourt.org Access-to-Justice Platform Free, anonymous AI-powered web platform for Canadian workers and self-represented litigants that provides employment classification analysis, severance/reasonable notice predictions based on 3,000+ Canadian employment law cases, access to similar precedent cases, and referral to partner law firms at no cost when a viable case is identified. Available to the Canadian public except Quebec residents (who are excluded from the reasonable notice calculator).
• EUIPO Trademark Dispute Resolution Platform AI platform built for the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) Boards of Appeal using multimodal deep learning (text and image analysis, including Facebook's Detectron technology) to detect risk of confusion in brand counterfeiting cases. Helps businesspeople research trademark uniqueness and assists judges in reaching faster conclusions in trademark disputes by comparing thousands of brands in seconds across the EU, USA, and Canada.
• Online Customer Dispute Resolution Tool Online dispute resolution platform project co-developed with Colin Rule (founder of eBay and PayPal ODR programs, now VP of ODR at Tyler Technologies) to resolve consumer disputes with large online retailers — such as misrepresented second-hand items or damaged shipped goods — fairly and transparently, compensating both customer and vendor. Originated from eBay and PayPal ODR program lineage.

Quantifiable outcome

• 3,000 cases analyzed for AI training
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration1 record

AI capability7 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

14 partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• DeelcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerDeel offers innovative tools to simplify global work, payroll, and HR matters. Samuel Dahan serves as Chief of Policy at Deel Inc and Chair of the Deel Lab. Partnership focuses on global employment and dispute resolution.
• FaskencoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOne of the largest business law firms in Canada with more than 800 lawyers and agents in ten offices on four continents. Partnership for AI-powered dispute resolution development.
• Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerLeading full-service Canadian law firm founded in 1823 with offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Calgary. Partnership to create AI-powered dispute resolution system.
• DigitadminorGTM or Marketing PartnerInternet marketing agency based in Montreal. Provides digital marketing campaign support, helping reach over 10,000 users in the span of a few months.
• EDHEC Business School / LegalEDHECcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFrance-based business school and its LegalEDHEC research centre. Partnership for AI-powered trademark system development using deep learning for text and image analysis. Students involved in jurisprudence analysis.
• McGill University (Desautels Faculty of Management)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership with McGill to advance Conflict Analytics Lab work. Initial projects include severance calculator application and worker classification tool. Professors Maxime Cohen and Juan Serpa involved.
• Tyler TechnologiescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerColin Rule, founder of eBay and PayPal Online Dispute Resolution programs, now VP of ODR at Tyler Technologies. Partnership for customer dispute resolution tools for online retailers.
• EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSamuel Dahan named to Stakeholders Advisory Board for EUIPO Boards of Appeal. Partnership to develop AI platform for trademark disputes using NLP and machine learning. Supported by Canada's New Frontiers in Research Fund.
• Ingenuity Labs Research Institute at Queen'scoreTechnology or IntegrationResearch institute at Queen's University working with Dahan and Xiaodan Zhu to create trademark dispute resolution platform using AI and natural language processing.
• Columbia Business School (Business Analytics Initiative)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPart of the global network of academic institutions. Daniel Guetta from Columbia directs the Business Analytics Initiative jointly led by Columbia Business School and Columbia Engineering.
• HEC PariscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPart of the global academic network. David Restrepo-Amariles is Assistant Professor of Law at HEC Paris and director of SMART Law research.
• Brandeis UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerJonathan Touboul from Brandeis University (Mathematics Department and Volen National Center for Complex Systems) serves as Associate Director for Research. Partnership on mathematical modeling of legal disputes.
• Scotiabank Centre for Customer AnalyticscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPart of Smith's analytics ecosystem. Yuri Levin is Executive Director of Analytics & AI ecosystem and inaugural Director of the Scotiabank Centre for Customer Analytics.
• Court of Justice of the European UnioncoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerSamuel Dahan is former cabinet member at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Tamara Capeta serves as Advocate General at the CJEU. Partnership for EU trademark disputes and legal analytics.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Evisort: Evisort applies AI to contract lifecycle management, extracting clauses and obligations from legal documents. Directly comparable as an AI-native LegalTech platform serving enterprise legal teams.
• Casetext: Casetext (acquired by Thomson Reuters) built AI-powered legal research and brief analysis tools for attorneys. It is directly comparable for AI applied to case law retrieval, summarization, and legal prediction — overlapping directly with the Lab's predictive case analytics.
• Luminance: Luminance is an AI platform for legal document review and contract analysis, originally spun out of Cambridge. Directly comparable for AI/NLP applied to legal text and high-stakes document workflows.
• Spellbook: Spellbook is an AI drafting and review tool used by practicing lawyers, applying large language models to contract and legal document workflows. Directly comparable as AI for practicing lawyers and contract analysis.
• TrademarkVision (Clarivate): TrademarkVision (now part of Clarivate CompuMark) uses computer vision and ML to assess trademark similarity and image-based brand confusion risk. Directly comparable to the Lab's EUIPO Trademark Similarity Assessment platform on both technology and use case.
• Blue J Legal: Blue J Legal is a Canadian LegalTech company that builds AI-driven tax and employment law prediction tools. It is a directly comparable Canadian AI-for-law platform with overlapping employment-classification and outcome-prediction use cases.
• Harvey AI: Harvey AI is an enterprise LegalTech platform that provides generative AI assistants for law firms and corporate legal teams. It is directly comparable as an AI-native product serving the legal profession with NLP-driven legal task automation.

Others

• Modria / Tyler Technologies ODR: Tyler Technologies' Modria is an Online Dispute Resolution platform used by courts, government agencies, and ecommerce companies. It is directly related through the Lab's Customer Dispute Resolution Tool co-development with Tyler ODR VP Colin Rule, and comparable in ODR platform functionality.

Broad incumbents

• Thomson Reuters (Westlaw): Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw, Practical Law, and Casetext — a broad legal information and AI platform serving law firms and corporate counsel. A broad incumbent that competes on legal research, AI assistants, and enterprise legal workflows overlapping with the Lab's legal AI scope.
• LexisNexis (Lexis+): LexisNexis operates Lexis+, an AI-enhanced legal research and analytics platform for legal professionals. A broad incumbent in legal information services competing on AI legal analytics, case law retrieval, and enterprise legal workflow tooling.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/conflict_lab
• Facebookfacebook.com/ConflictAnalytics
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/conflict-analytics-lab
• Instagraminstagram.com/conflictanalytics

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles8 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Conflict Analytics Lab