Robert Ambrogi Blog
Alexi Technologies has filed its answer and counterclaim against Fastcase, vLex, and Clio, accusing the newly merged legal technology giant of manufacturing breach-of-contract allegations as a pretext to eliminate a competitor in the AI legal research market.
In December, Fastcase, now owned by Clio, sued Alexi in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging breach of contract, trademark infringement and trade secret misappropriation, all relating to Alexi’s use of data licensed from Fastcase.
But in a 65-page filing submitted late Friday, the Toronto-based AI legal research company not only denied Fastcase’s breach of contract and intellectual property claims, but launched its own offensive with a counterclaim listing six causes of action.
These include allegations that Clio’s $1 billion acquisition of vLex/Fastcase, which closed Nov. 10, violates federal antitrust law, and that Clio engaged in tortious interference with Alexi’s business relationships.
From Partnership to Litigation
The counterclaim tells a story of what Alexi characterizes as a dramatic reversal, from years of a productive partnership to sudden and aggressive litigation – all triggered by Clio’s acquisition of vLex/Fastcase.
Alexi’s filing argues that it and Fastcase operated under their data license agreement without incident for nearly four years, with Fastcase providing daily caselaw updates that Alexi used to develop its AI-powered legal memo service.
The relationship was collaborative enough, Alexi says, that in 2023, vLex (which had merged with Fastcase earlier that year) named Alexi CEO Mark Doble a Fastcase 50 honoree, specifically citing his creation of an AI tool that “swiftly delivers answers in a clear, concise memo format.”
But everything changed, Alexi alleges, once Clio gained control over the Fastcase database through its acquisition.
The ‘Backfile’ Purchase Right
Central to Alexi’s counterclaim is a provision in the original 2021 data license agreement that purportedly guaranteed any acquirer of Alexi the right to purchase the Fastcase backfile with no restrictions for a sum that is redacted in the court filing but described as nominal.
This right, Alexi argues, “is a unique asset in the legal tech world” and “the only realistic foothold for a competitor to create a new comprehensive primary-law database.”
“It’s really a safeguard,” Doble told me in an interview Saturday. “We built this technology around this data and it’s a safeguard for any acquirer to be able to purchase the data. So any change-of-control transaction triggers this option for an Alexi-affiliated party to purchase the entire backlog.”
The backfile, Doble told me, refers to Fastcase’s complete database of U.S. caselaw – not just what Alexi had been licensing, but everything. “The full Fastcase backfile of all the case law,” he said.
According to Alexi’s filing, Clio discovered this provision during due diligence ahead of the closing and immediately moved to eliminate it. Alexi’s counterclaim alleges that in an Oct. 20, 2025, phone call, former Fastcase CEO Ed Walters (then vLex’s chief strategy officer) demanded Alexi relinquish the backfile purchase right without compensation. When Doble asked what would happen if Alexi refused, Walters allegedly warned, “there would be trouble.”
“Nobody outside of Clio or vLex presumably knows what value they ascribe to the backfile in that transaction,” Doble said in our call. “But presumably it was very problematic for them in diligence to discover this option to purchase it at this rate that was probably very different from the rate that they had booked in their financials.”
Seven days after that phone call, vLex sent Alexi a notice claiming breach of contract, which was the first such allegation in the parties’ four-year relationship, Alexi alleges.
Significantly, Doble noted that “the right to purchase this backlog survives termination of the agreement and termination for any reason” – suggesting that even if Fastcase’s termination of the license agreement were upheld, the backfile purchase option would remain.
A ‘Clog on Competition’
In its counterclaim, Alexi goes beyond the licensing issues to contend that Clio’s acquisition of Fastcase and vLex constitutes an antitrust violation under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which prohibits mergers that may substantially lessen competition.
“The anticompetitive effects of Clio’s acquisition of Fastcase and vLex are demonstrated by its ability and incentive to foreclose rivals and stifle innovation and competition, reduce quality and worsen terms, reduce consumer choice, and increase prices in the legal AI services market,” the filing argues.
Alexi identifies two relevant markets in which competition will be lessened: the “comprehensive legal database market” and the “AI legal-analysis services market.” In the database market, Alexi notes, there are only three comprehensive primary-law databases worldwide: Westlaw (Thomson Reuters), LexisNexis, and Fastcase/vLex (now Clio).
Fastcase, Alexi alleges, was the only one of the three that licensed its database programmatically to independent AI legal research companies.
“Before the vLex acquisition, Fastcase eagerly licensed its data, on a programmatic basis, to such AI legal-analysis providers,” the counterclaim states, citing Fastcase founder Ed Walter’s statement of the company’s mission as being to make law “like electric power: nearly ubiquitous, inexpensive, reliable, and useful for powering other things.”
(Although not attributed in the court filing, that quote is from a 2017 interview I did with Walters.)
By contrast, neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis licenses their databases for programmatic use by third-party AI providers. Westlaw has “aggressively prevented AI tools from accessing that data,” Alexi notes, citing the publisher’s high-profile lawsuit against now-defunct ROSS Intelligence.
LexisNexis entered into what Alexi describes as an exclusive arrangement with Harvey AI in January 2025, but does not license programmatically to other market participants.
The filing quotes Clio’s CFO describing the post-merger competitive landscape: “There’s really three datasets like this on the planet. It’s what we have, what Thomson Reuters has, and what LexisNexis has. We think a lot of competitors are going to find it increasingly difficult to compete against that database.”
Alexi argues that Clio now has both the ability and incentive to foreclose rivals in the AI legal research market from accessing essential caselaw data.
“Clio’s control over the only programmatically licensable database for legal AI service providers will act as a clog on competition and result in substantial market foreclosure,” the counterclaim says. “ … If not enjoined, Clio’s foreclosure will stifle innovation, reduce quality and worsen terms, reduce consumer choice, and increase prices in the legal AI services market.”
Alexi is represented in this matter by Joshua Hafenbrack, a Winston & Strawn partner who, as a lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in 2023, represented the United States in its 2023 antitrust case against Google.
Evidence of Shared Understanding
Throughout Alexi’s counterclaim, it argues that there is extensive evidence that both parties understood and accepted how Alexi was using the Fastcase data throughout their four-year relationship.
“There’s what we believe to be a preponderance of evidence that Fastcase/vLex themselves had full understanding of the scope of the license,” Doble said. “And we’ve always understood that we’ve operated within that scope. And over four years, we’ve got lots of extensive documentation to fully demonstrate that and corroborate that.”
After vLex and Fastcase merged, he said, senior vLex executives did trials of Alexi’s product, giving them full insight into how it worked. “We don’t use the data in any different way now than we did two years ago,” Doble said.
The counterclaim details several examples of Fastcase and vLex executives being fully aware of and supportive of Alexi’s AI-powered memo service, including partnership discussions in 2022 and the 2023 Fastcase 50 award.
Contract Interpretation Dispute
Alexi strongly disputes Fastcase’s breach-of-contract allegations. Those allegations centered on two main contentions: that Alexi improperly used Fastcase data for commercial purposes competitive with Fastcase, and that Alexi improperly distributed Fastcase data by providing links to cases.
Alexi characterizes these allegations as resting on “a tortured reading of isolated, undefined terms that are untethered to the Agreement as a whole and the Parties’ clear intent.”
Regarding the “internal research” restriction, Alexi argues that the agreement “draws no distinction between human researchers and software agents carrying out internal research.” It contends that when the parties formed the contract, Fastcase described the license restrictions as prohibiting “bulk sale” and preventing content from being “made available through [a] traditional legal research product like Fastcase,” but it did not prohibit AI-generated memos.
“If Clio’s new sweeping interpretation of the ‘commercial’ and ‘competitive restrictions’ were correct, the entire Agreement would be nonsensical, because Alexi is and always has been a for-profit commercial business offering AI-generated legal memos,” the filing argues.
Regarding the linking allegations, Alexi asserts that Fastcase’s chief product officer expressly told Doble in January 2022 that he had Fastcase’s approval to provide public links to Fastcase cases. Fastcase later provided technical support to facilitate this feature through its API.
“Fastcase cannot endorse and facilitate Alexi’s linking feature; never object to – and in fact benefit from – that feature for nearly four years; provide technical assistance to implement that feature; and then claim the conduct violated the contract all along after a merger produced a new owner that viewed Alexi as a competitive threat,” Alexi argues.
Forced to Layoff Staff
The counterclaim details what Alexi characterizes as severe and immediate harm to its business following the lawsuit and termination of data updates.
According to the filing, immediately after litigation was filed in late November 2025, Alexi suffered multiple setbacks. One potential acquirer whose board had approved a letter of intent for a full acquisition went cold after the lawsuit became public. Other acquisition discussions similarly stalled. Customers cancelled or failed to renew subscriptions. The company’s “growth trajectory, revenue, fundraising prospects, and valuation all have been materially impaired.”
Most drastically, Alexi says, it has been “forced to lay off two-thirds of its staff” in recent weeks due to the damage caused by the litigation and loss of daily data updates.
On Dec. 6, 2025, Fastcase stopped providing the daily caselaw updates provided under the agreement – updates that are “critical to Alexi’s ability to provide customers with reliable and accurate legal analyses.”
Doble: ‘We’re Very Resilient’
In our brief interview Saturday, Doble acknowledged the significant toll the litigation has already taken on his business but emphasized his team’s determination to weather the storm.
He said that 2025 had been the company’s best year ever and that the company had been involved in discussions about being acquired about raising a Series B financing. “And then all of those trends have certainly changed,” he said.
Despite the setbacks, Doble struck a note of resilience: “We’re very resilient. We’ll get through it. We’ve got an amazing team around us, including of investors and financial backers, and we’re confident that we’ll at least weather this and get through it, but not without significant damage to the company.”
He sees the case as having implications for the entire legal tech industry, he said.
“It speaks to the importance of having an open, competitive legal technology industry. All working collaboratively, but competitively, is really important for the industry to succeed. … Competition is important, it’s good, but we should be collaborative at the same time.”
Regarding Alexi’s current operations, Doble said the company has made cuts but retained “a core group” that remains “really motivated.” The company still has “full teams across product sales, marketing, engineering – still doing a lot of the critical work that we have to do for our existing customers and new customers.
“We’re still planning on growing, we’re still building. Our roadmap has not been impacted.”
A ‘Maverick Competitor’
In its counterclaim, Alexi positions itself as a “maverick competitor” in the legal research market in that it offers AI legal analysis on a standalone basis at much lower cost than the vertically integrated offerings from Westlaw, LexisNexis and now Clio.
While those companies bundle AI services with expensive database subscriptions, Alexi provides AI memos independently, making the service more affordable.
The company also distinguishes itself from general-purpose AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, emphasizing that its AI is grounded in comprehensive caselaw, less prone to hallucination, and offers private cloud environments that protect attorney-client privilege – features essential for legal practice.
As I have mentioned before, the case has echoes of Thomson Reuters’ long-running lawsuit against ROSS Intelligence. The litigation represents a high-stakes battle between a startup that built its business on what it viewed as a legitimate use of caselaw data and an industry giant that appears determined to protect its strategic position, at any cost.
The case is Fastcase, Inc. v. Alexi Technologies Inc., Case No. 1:25-cv-04159, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.