Legal teams handling litigation, investigations and data breaches can face large volumes of documents that must be reviewed for relevance, privilege and confidential information. AI tools can help classify those records, but explaining why a document receives a particular classification remains important when lawyers must validate results and apply legal judgment.
Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault has deployed MARC, a document intelligence platform developed by Altorney, to support document review and analysis across litigation, investigations, antitrust, tax and data breach matters.
The platform has so far been applied at the firm to privilege, personal information and relevance analysis, supporting general litigation, investigations and data breach response. According to Altorney, MARC provides a rationale for its coding decisions, allowing lawyers to assess the results rather than rely solely on automated classifications.
Platform targets document review and quality control
MARC classifies documents according to criteria including relevance, responsiveness, legal privilege, personal information and trade secrets, alongside categories tailored to individual matters. It can be deployed before documents enter a review platform, potentially reducing the volume of irrelevant material, or used on documents already hosted in review systems for analysis and quality control.
The platform can run in a client’s cloud environment, a client-controlled data center or Altorney’s secure hosted environment.
McCarthy Tétrault has more than 800 lawyers serving Canadian and international clients. The firm’s deployment of MARC extends its use of technology in legal service delivery.
“We are using MARC for relevance and privilege review, issue coding, identification of personal and confidential information across general litigation, investigations, and data breach matters,” said Susan Wortzman, partner at McCarthy Tétrault and president of the firm’s e-discovery division, MT>3.
Wortzman said the platform’s detailed rationale helps lawyers validate coding decisions and focus on complex legal judgment. She also highlighted its ability to keep data secure within the firm’s private environment and said the cost savings benefit clients.
Shimmy Messing, CEO and co-founder of Altorney, said the deployment reflects demand for tools that help legal teams analyze large document collections earlier in the review process.
“Our goal is not to replace legal judgment; it is to give exceptional legal teams a faster, more explainable foundation for applying it,” Messing said.
