Lawyer-led, tech-driven

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INNOV-8 is redefining legal service delivery by bridging the gap between legal expertise and technology – offering clients strategic, cost-effective, and future-ready solutions, led by a team who understands both worlds

AS A veteran in the space, Marlon Hylton has witnessed technology in the legal industry evolve massively. As he puts it: “I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen legal tech go from cumbersome, frustrating, and unsexy to the thrill of artificial intelligence.” When Hylton launched INNOV-8 five years ago, he brought together fellow Bay Street veterans to build a firm designed to rethink how legal technology supports legal work – from the inside out. That wealth of practical legal experience still forms the foundation of INNOV-8’s approach, shaping how the team builds and delivers its lawyer-led tech solutions.

INNOV-8 was founded by a veteran of major law firms and built around a multidisciplinary team of technologists and data management experts to reimagine how data is collected, analyzed, and used in the information age. We offer a radically different approach to information management that merges deep data expertise and legal experience to help organizations drive transformative business outcomes.

“INNOV-8 was designed from the start to evolve – with the law, with the technology, and with the demands of our clients”

Marlon Hylton, INNOV-8

“I often say: ‘We start with the solution for five years from now and work backwards to the most creative and defensible of what’s possible today,” Hylton says. “INNOV-8 was designed from the start to evolve – with the law, with the technology, and with the demands of our clients.” For Hylton, the future of legal services belongs to those unafraid to bridge the gap between legal expertise and technological capability – a challenge the INNOV-8 team accepts with characteristic passion.

Hylton’s time in Big Law made one thing clear: most lawyers didn’t fully grasp what technology could do in legal proceedings, while most tech professionals didn’t understand the legal obligations their tools were supposed to help satisfy. The result was a dangerous disconnect between legal and technical teams – one that led to inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and spiralling costs. “The two groups spoke different languages,” Hylton recalls. “As a result, the process was magnitudes more inefficient and costly than it needed to be. I thought a link between the lawyers and the tech folks – someone who understood both sides and could communicate fluently with everyone – was key to solving the inefficiency and technology adoption question.”

Hylton believes that legal training gives professionals a unique instinct that’s irreplaceable in his line of work. INNOV-8’s signature approach is to include someone on every project who thinks from the perspective of the substantive legal team, the client, and the end goal. “There’s always one such mind in the mix,” he explains. “That way, the tech tail is never wagging the legal dog.” Chris Hersh, partner and Canadian head of antitrust and competition at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, worked with Hylton at another national firm and learned a lot from Hylton’s approach to data management. “Marlon helped me, as the file lawyer, understand the growing role of e-discovery and AI tools and the importance of having a senior lawyer actively involved in all phases of the discovery process. This includes document collection, review, and data analytics to avoid inefficiencies and missed opportunities.”

Once INNOV-8 was established, Hersh was eager to leverage it in his practice. He appreciated working in tandem with a team that provides informed guidance over more traditional tech providers, who either view the legal aspects of the e-discovery process as not their role or don’t have the capability to contribute in a meaningful way. “The team at INNOV-8 just get that this e-discovery component is part of a much bigger legal piece,” Hersh says. “They exceed client expectations and deliver outcomes that others typically don’t.”

“All e-discovery firms are not created equal. Lawyers involved in the decision-making process need to understand what a provider can offer beyond just churning through data”

The INNOV-8 team goes beyond addressing the immediate need to create resources that are useful on a go-forward basis: for example, using a document review process to also create databases and centralized repositories of documents that clients can reuse for future matters; tools and processes developed during compliance reviews that can support ongoing compliance management; and applications for contract management, showing how the same technology used for document review can serve broader operational needs. Once clients see the technology’s capabilities, they often engage INNOV-8 for standalone projects unrelated to the original mandate, realizing it can support day-to-day business functions – not just litigation or crisis response.

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Published Jun 4, 2025

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DOCUMENT REDUCTION METRICS

100%

Chris Hersh, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP

The tech tail never wags the legal dog

Documents collected

After deduplication

After concept culling

Threaded review set

AL review eligible

49.4%

All e-discovery firms are not created equal

Whenever an e-discovery firm needs to be retained and Hersh is asked for his preferred provider, “INNOV-8 is my first call,” he says. “I’ve had incredibly good results on a very consistent basis whenever INNOV-8 is part of the team. They’ve met incredibly tight deadlines, delivered incredibly cost-effective solutions, and customize their approach to each file. That’s how they achieve synergies and efficiencies that my clients see not just as a cost, but as value creation.” His advice for fellow lawyers? When partnering with a service provider, choose wisely. “All e-discovery firms are not created equal,” he warns. “Lawyers involved in the decision-making process need to understand what a provider can offer beyond just churning through data. Look for firms that create value, not just handle siloed tasks.”

At a base level, these services should help law firms do things better, faster, and cheaper. Delivering on that basic expectation takes more than a standard approach, because these projects aren’t one-size-fits-all. The ability to pivot is critical to create efficiency in handling the immediate need while also leveraging the effort to suit other purposes down the line. And to meet that high bar, bigger isn’t necessarily better. Small enough to be nimble but sophisticated enough to handle large, complex matters, INNOV-8 avoids bureaucracy and makes quick, effective decisions. Hylton highlights a future-facing mindset that constantly challenges the team to think beyond conventional boundaries. “We emphasize creativity, and we aren’t trapped in legacy technology or processes,” he explains. “We pride ourselves on finding the right solution for the matter at hand, whatever that looks like.” This culture of experimentation and responsiveness is a key differentiator, but there’s a caveat: INNOV-8 doesn’t prioritize innovation for innovation’s sake. If it isn’t solving a real issue or satisfying a real need, it’s falling short of its mission: to create iterative legal tech that demonstrably adds value to processes and contributes to business strategy.

Agility and innovation

Looking ahead, collaboration between law firms and legal technology companies will continue – it’ll have to for the former to remain competitive. But further down the road, Hylton predicts a more integrated system. “I see a future where the distinction between lawyers, law firms, and legal tech companies begins to blur, and in some cases disappears altogether,” he says, pointing to early signs of this from large firms with the resources to build out or acquire specialized capabilities that companies like INNOV-8 offer, internally. Machines will do what they do best – analyze massive datasets, surface insights, optimize workflows – and lawyers will focus on what humans do best – judgment, strategy, advocacy, and nuanced problem-solving – in an environment where technology isn’t a tool within the process, but the entire infrastructure. “We’re here to reimagine the legal profession in a way that harnesses technology as an extension of legal thinking,” Hylton says. “Mark my words – it’s the firms and providers that embrace that vision who will lead the way.”

Harnessing tech as an extension of legal thinking

DOCUMENTs by file extension

EML PDF DOCX XLSX HTM PPTX

PNG JPG DOC MSG ICS PPT

1,526,312

1,221,050

1,001,261

794,342

754,625

“All e-discovery firms are not created equal. Lawyers involved in the decision-making process need to understand what a provider can offer beyond just churning through data”

“INNOV-8 was designed from the start to evolve – with the law, with the technology, and with the demands of our clients”

Marlon Hylton, INNOV-8

Published Jun 4, 2025

403,485

Remaining for sampling and validation

Overall cost savings of approximately $680,000 over traditional approaches

69.3% reduction

468,593

AI assisted review eligible

485,982

After email threading

633,367

After advanced analytics

872,078

After deduplication

1,526,312

Documents collected

100%

DOCUMENT REDUCTION METRICS

Documents collected

After deduplication

After advanced analytics

After email threading

Overall cost savings of approximately $680,000 over traditional approaches

69.3% reduction

100%

468,593

485,982

633,367

872,078

1,526,312

AI assisted review eligible

Remaining for sampling and validation

403,485