About
Biographies in three lengths for programmes, introductions, and press; the appointments and education behind them; and the argument that runs through the work. Press materials and reviews are under Media & speaking; what I am thinking about this month is under Notes.
Biography
Benjamin Alarie is co-founder and CEO of Blue J, an AI-powered tax research platform serving more than 6,000 firms as of September 2026. He holds the Osler Chair in Business Law at the University of Toronto.
He has spent more than a decade applying artificial intelligence to tax and law. In 2016 he coined the term "legal singularity" in the University of Toronto Law Journal, arguing that artificial intelligence would eventually make legal reasoning far more predictable, coherent, and accessible. He has since developed the thesis in two books and put it into practice at Blue J.
Superjustice (Oxford University Press, July 2026), co-authored with Samuel I. Becher, examines how AI can reshape public legal systems. The Legal Singularity (University of Toronto Press, 2023), co-authored with Abdi Aidid, won the 2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in Legal Studies and Criminology and was shortlisted for the Donner Prize.
He has held the Osler Chair since 2016 and has been a full professor since 2018. He holds an LLM from Yale Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada for the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Arbour.
Academic availability: Currently on leave from the University of Toronto and not accepting new graduate students for supervision.
Benjamin Alarie is co-founder and CEO of Blue J and holds the Osler Chair in Business Law at the University of Toronto. He is co-author of Superjustice (Oxford University Press, 2026) with Samuel I. Becher, and of The Legal Singularity (University of Toronto Press, 2023, with Abdi Aidid), which won the 2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in Legal Studies and Criminology.
Benjamin Alarie is co-founder and CEO of Blue J, an AI-powered tax research platform serving more than 6,000 firms as of September 2026. He holds the Osler Chair in Business Law at the University of Toronto.
He has spent more than a decade applying artificial intelligence to tax and law. In 2016 he coined the term "legal singularity" in the University of Toronto Law Journal, arguing that artificial intelligence would eventually make legal reasoning far more predictable, coherent, and accessible. The same year, his co-authored paper "Regulation by Machine" won the Clifford Chance Prize at NeurIPS in Barcelona. Since then he has developed the thesis in two books and put it into practice at Blue J, which began as a commercialization of his academic work on machine prediction of legal outcomes.
Superjustice: Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press, July 2026), co-authored with Samuel I. Becher, examines how AI can reshape public legal systems. The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better (University of Toronto Press, 2023), co-authored with Abdi Aidid, won the 2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in Legal Studies and Criminology and was shortlisted for the Donner Prize. He also co-authored Commitment and Cooperation on High Courts (Oxford University Press, 2017) and was a co-author of Canadian Income Tax Law through its sixth edition. His peer-reviewed scholarship on tax law, judicial decision-making, and the computational future of legal reasoning has appeared in the University of Toronto Law Journal, the Canadian Tax Journal, the British Tax Review, and the American Business Law Journal, among others.
He has held the Osler Chair since 2016, has been a full professor since 2018, and previously served as Associate Dean of the First Year Program from 2011 to 2015. He holds a BA in economics from Wilfrid Laurier University, an MA in economics from the University of Toronto, a JD from the University of Toronto, and an LLM from Yale Law School. He clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada for the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Arbour.
He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto. He lives in Toronto.
Appointments and education
- Blue JCo-founder and CEO of Blue J, founded 2015. It began as a commercialization of his academic work on machine prediction of legal outcomes.
- University of TorontoOsler Chair in Business Law, Jackman Law, since 2016; full professor since 2018; associate professor with tenure, 2009 to 2018; assistant professor, 2004 to 2009; Associate Dean, First Year Program, 2011 to 2015. Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Currently on leave and not accepting new graduate students for supervision.
- ClerkshipLaw clerk to the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Arbour, Supreme Court of Canada, 2003 to 2004.
- EducationLL.M., Yale Law School, 2003. J.D. with honours standing, University of Toronto, 2002. M.A. in economics, first in class, University of Toronto, 2002. B.A. in economics with high distinction, Wilfrid Laurier University, 1999.
- Honours2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award in Legal Studies and Criminology and the Donner Prize 2023 shortlist, both for The Legal Singularity; Clifford Chance Prize, NeurIPS 2016, for “Regulation by Machine”; Alan Mewett QC Prize for teaching excellence, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, 2009. The complete list is in the CV.
- RecordsCurriculum vitae (PDF, July 2026) · Publications · SSRN · Google Scholar · Faculty profile · LinkedIn · Wikipedia · Wikidata. The last two are third-party records he does not edit; corrections are requested on their talk pages.
The arc
- 2016The paper names the legal singularity.
- 2023The Legal Singularity, with Abdi Aidid, argues prediction can make law complete and knowable.
- 2026Superjustice, with Samuel I. Becher, asks how legal systems should be redesigned as legal reasoning becomes abundant.
- NowIn practice: Blue J applies AI to tax research for professional use.
- NextBeyond Superjustice, a collection of scholarly responses to Superjustice edited with Samuel I. Becher and Kwan Ho Lau: a Hong Kong workshop and a Toronto symposium in 2027, then the University of Toronto Law Journal and University of Toronto Press. Contributors are listed at superjustice.com/beyond.
What I believe
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i.
Legal reasoning is becoming abundant. Judgment and responsibility are not.
AI is turning the searching, synthesis, and drafting that consumed expert time into cheap, fast work that can be checked against sources. It can also analyse competing positions. That capability does not, by itself, confer legitimate authority or settle who is accountable for the answer. Law assigns accountability to people and institutions, and abundance changes where judgment is spent, not whether it is needed.
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ii.
AI can make law radically more knowable, accessible, and responsive.
The argument I have made since naming the legal singularity in 2016: computation can make legal reasoning more predictable, coherent, and available to the people law governs, so that competent guidance stops being a luxury good.
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iii.
Institutions should be redesigned around what computation now makes possible.
Systems built for scarce expertise, slow process, and inconsistent outcomes should not merely be automated. Superjustice makes the institutional case; Blue J tests the abundance thesis in production.