It’s now been widely reported that @alexi_legal_ai was recently sued by Fastcase/vLex/Clio in US Federal Court.
Their filings contain significant mischaracterizations and factual inaccuracies about Alexi, leading to a lot of confusion in the market.
For the sake of all Alexi stakeholders – especially our incredible team and customers – I need to make it abundantly clear what actually happened and why we're in this situation.
Right from the start of Alexi, our goal was to fully automate the production of research memos: concise, accurate answers to legal questions in a narrative-style format. We were building generative AI at the very beginning of this current Gen AI wave. Anyone that knows anything about us knows this.
In 2021, we entered into a data licensing agreement with Fastcase to get bulk access to a caselaw database that would power our product. The purpose of the license agreement, as stated right on the agreement, was for “Alexsei legal memos” (now Alexi).
Critically, the license also provided an option to purchase the entire backfile of caselaw data, which would remove all restrictions on use. This was an important part of the license that protected the significant engineering effort to build with this data.
By summer '23, we had fully automated the production of research memos with market-leading quality. A huge accomplishment for our team and for which I was awarded a “Fastcase 50” award.
For four years preceding Nov '25, we heard no concerns with our use of the Fastcase data. And while technologies improved, and processes became more and more automated, there has been no meaningful change in our use of the caselaw data: question, retrieval, verification, synthesis, summarization, answer generation.
The folks at Fastcase and vLex had always been fantastic to do business with. Very responsive, helpful, and in my opinion an overall net positive for the industry.
But then Clio bought vLex for $1B, and in diligence they discovered our license agreement and the option to purchase the backfile.
They first tried to get us to remove the purchase option for nothing, but when that failed it was quickly followed up by a demand letter alleging a material breach, then the lawsuit. All in very quick succession.
The thrust of their claim is that we have no right to any commercial uses whatsoever. A very confusing position, one predicated on a tortured reading of the agreement and contradicted by the course of conduct of the parties.
So, here we are. In a position where we have to defend ourselves and fight back. If I thought there was an ounce of wrongdoing on our part, we’d take our medicine and move on quickly. But we have to fight. We have to defend what we know to be true.
We believe an open and competitive legal tech industry is critical to the betterment of law firms and legal services, and we will do everything we can to continue to fight for fair competition. If you’re interested in reviewing our counterclaims, they start at p. 21.
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