📝 Bench IQ raises $5.3M

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Toronto-based legaltech startup Bench IQ has raised $5.3 million to grow its AI platform, which analyzes judicial rulings to help lawyers better prepare for litigation, even as its CEO Jimoh Ovbiagele remains entangled in a copyright battle from his previous company, Ross Intelligence. The seed round, led by Inovia Capital and Battery Ventures, brings Bench IQ’s total funding to $7.4 million USD and will support expansion into U.S. state and Canadian courts, alongside building out its eight-person team. Ovbiagele claims the platform’s proprietary dataset captures judicial reasoning not found in written opinions and is already used by four of the top five AmLaw 200 firms, though he won’t reveal clients or sources. His prior venture, Ross, shut down in 2020 after Thomson Reuters sued for copyright infringement, a case now under appeal, highlighting the legal risks of training AI on proprietary legal databases. The clash underscores both the promise and pitfalls of AI in law, where incumbents like Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis are competing with startups to define the future of legal research amid ongoing industry skepticism around privacy, accuracy, and ethics.

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