JD Durkin: Now, Ben, co-founder and CEO of Blue J, alongside David Eckstein, CFO of Legora, the two companies teaming up at this point to make it easier, among other things, for lawyers to research very complicated tax questions. Ben, David, grateful to both of you. Ben, let’s kick things off with you. Tell us all about this Blue J-Legora partnership and the timing behind this decision. Why was this the right time?
Benjamin Alarie: Well, JD, tax questions come up all the time in all sorts of different legal matters. And we believe that tax professionals shouldn’t have to leave, you know, where they’re doing the work in order to respond to those questions. The fact is, our joint customers have been asking us for the ability to put Legora and Blue J together. And so it’s a simple matter of listening to the customers and delivering this integration for them.
JD Durkin: David, you already have a lot of legal pros on. What problem are you solving by adding the Blue J component?
David Eckstein: Yeah, JD, we surveyed the entire tax research landscape, and there is no question that Blue J is the best of the best. We have 140,000 legal professionals that use Legora to answer their most complex questions. And in a multi-step, multi-agent world, it’s really important that lawyers are able to tap into this tax advice in the platform where they do that work. And so through an MCP protocol, we can work with Blue J to leverage their tax advice on their infrastructure, to then provide answers to our lawyers in the same platform.
JD Durkin: Ben, let’s pop things back over to you. You know better than anyone, artificial intelligence is powering elements of tax research, more so today, really, than ever before. What does that mean for trust? What does that mean for accuracy in this new-look world?
Benjamin Alarie: Look, trust and accountability are central to what we’re doing at Blue J. It’s one of the major reasons that more than 6,500 firms are trusting Blue J for tax research today. You know, we’ve addressed more than 14 million tax technical questions to date through Blue J. And the reason is, people can come to Blue J. They can get a really strong tax technical research answer, as well as the supporting analysis, the supporting citations to the source materials, through Blue J. And so it gives tax professionals superpowers when it comes to cutting through really complex tax technical analysis, as well as the, you know, underlying, authoritative support that they demand in order to rely on their own judgment in delivering advice to their clients.
JD Durkin: Sure. Folks, I’m about out of time, but David, we’ll wrap things up with you. What is next for the partnership from here?
David Eckstein: Today is about Blue J. Today is Blue J’s day in the sun, and we’re super excited about this partnership and what it could mean for both companies. Today, it’s going live to a number of joint customers of both platforms, and then it’s going to go GA in November. And so we’re super excited about this partnership and powering this agentic world.
JD Durkin: Ben, David, very grateful to both of you guys for making this work. Congratulations on the partnership. We’ll have to do it again soon. Appreciate you being on the broadcast.
