The Canadian legal tech innovator on how his product streamlines client engagement for law firms
Legal technology is shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach, thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence. That’s the core message from Jody Glidden, founder and CEO of Postilize, which helps law firms use technology to anticipate client needs. “We thought, what if we could find a way to predict legal matters or legal projects before they occur?” he says. Traditional client relationship management (CRM) tools left firms waiting for the phone to ring, but he says proactive relationship management (PRM) is changing the game.
Originally from New Brunswick, Glidden has built a career in technology both in Canada and internationally, including founding Introhive, a company recognized for its work in relationship intelligence and enterprise relationship management (ERM).
Glidden traces the evolution of legal tech from early CRMs, which were rarely used by lawyers, to ERM, which predicted client churn but still kept firms reactive. The real breakthrough, he says, came with AI: “With AI, it’s like we just discovered an island with…10 billion people that are willing to work for free.” Postilize now sifts through “millions of stock filings, databases, news articles, and so on, to find the needles in the haystack,” flagging key events like lawsuits or acquisitions before clients even call.
Traditional CRMs failed because they demanded too much from lawyers. “You can't be wasting their time having them sort … data, and try to glean the things that they need.” PRM flips the model, using AI to deliver only the most relevant opportunities tailored to each lawyer’s clients and practice area. “We make it extremely easy, way easier than traditional software,” he says.
Relevance is everything. Glidden compares CRM’s evolution to the shift from Yahoo’s endless lists to Google’s targeted search – if lawyers have to hunt for information, the tool fails. They need relevant insights delivered to them, or it’s useless.
He gives a clear example: If a firm represents Meta, getting 200 news articles a day isn’t helpful. What matters is surfacing the one early rumour – like Meta developing Lama 4 with a unique feature – that’s relevant to an IP lawyer. The value lies in filtering information to deliver targeted, practice-specific insights.
Manual data entry is a non-starter. “We require zero data input. I think that as soon as you require attorneys to enter data, you're probably going to have a problem,” Glidden says. Even output is minimized: “You need to be absolute zero on data input and almost zero on data output, just to the absolutely relevant things. And if you do a good job at that, then you'll be successful in legal tech.”
For small and mid-sized firms, PRM is a necessity. Large firms can afford business development teams, but “the small firm, maybe 10 [or] 50 attorneys, they don't have those. So, they were missing out entirely and were entirely reactive. So I think this is the game changer to level the playing field as well,” Glidden says.
The system acts as a virtual team, scanning social media, news, and filings to surface only actionable insights. “They will just either receive an email or they'll get a notification in there, look, and they can just take the action. And actually, we even draft the email on behalf of the attorney in their voice. If they want to pick up the phone, they can, but if they want to just send the email, they can do that as well,” Glidden says.
Privacy and security are fundamental. Glidden says prioritizing these efforts from the start earned the trust of major clients, such as PwC and top law firms. “We aren't actually doing any drafting of legal documents or anything like that. We're really just helping them find the opportunities using publicly available data,” he says.
Glidden’s company is working with many of the top US firms, but he believes Canadian legal tech companies are poised for global success. Canadian law firms are large enough to require sophisticated solutions, yet small enough for tech companies to engage with and win clients quickly – making Canada an ideal launchpad for legal tech innovation.
For innovators, timing is everything. “With any startup in general, but particularly with legal tech, you have to push the boundaries a little bit, right?” Glidden says. He notes, however, that going too far, too soon can mean missing the market. He recalls how connecting to a mail server was once seen as “crazy,” yet soon became the norm.
The future of legal tech, Glidden says, is about more than shrinking the size of matters. “There are a lot of legal matters in every company that are just not being handled right now. And so what's happening is that a lot of firms, the best law firms, are getting more efficient, matter sizes are shrinking a little bit, but the volume of matters is actually going up,” he says. The real opportunity for AI, he argues, is helping firms identify and win new work – keeping them competitive and delivering greater value to clients.
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