StrongSuit is an AI-powered litigation platform that helps attorneys with case law research, discovery analysis, and drafting motions/briefs (and related legal workflows), while keeping lawyers in control of the final strategic decisions. Pulse 2.0 interviewed StrongSuit CEO Justin McCallon to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Justin McCallon’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? McCallon said:
“I practiced law as a commercial restructuring and M&A attorney. I later gained consulting experience at McKinsey & Co., prior to spending 12 years at AT&T and its subsidiaries (Xandr and DIRECTV). At AT&T, I supported the Time Warner merger and co-led the transformation of the AT&T legal organization, which netted >$100M in favorable YoY cash flow impact. I later led a data science & engineering org that produced the first generative AI product for DIRECTV. The potential to use that same technology for legal organizations was immediately apparent, which led to the creation of StrongSuit (formerly known as Callidus).”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come about? McCallon shared:
“The idea for StrongSuit came from the convergence of my experiences in law, consulting, and AI. I started my career as a commercial restructuring and M&A attorney before moving into strategy consulting at McKinsey. I then spent over a decade at AT&T and its subsidiaries, where I supported the Time Warner merger and co-led a legal transformation initiative that delivered over $100M in annual cash flow impact. Later, I led a data science and engineering organization that built the first generative AI product for DIRECTV. Seeing how that technology could simplify complex workflows, it was immediately clear to me that the same approach could revolutionize legal work. That realization is what led me to co-found StrongSuit.”
“The very first task we took on was the task I most disliked as a junior attorney: searching endlessly for legal precedent. I would never know whether I had found all the key cases, so I’d switch between searching endlessly or risking looking completely unprepared.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? McCallon reflected:
“When we started StrongSuit, we knew there would be high competition and many difficulties gaining traction in a space where our ICP wasn’t very tech-forward. We thought it was 50/50 whether we would be able to hit $1M ARR.”
“We crossed that bridge at a time when we had just pushed some major releases (like our case database) that took a great team effort.”
“And then, over that next quarter, we doubled in size and landed a new, much larger round of fundraising.”
“Announcing all of that to the team that worked so hard to put that together was perhaps my favorite memory.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? McCallon explained:
“As AI transforms industries, legal work is emerging as one of the most ripe for disruption. However, more than a third of litigation hinges on deep legal understanding, especially in research and drafting, where shallow, chatbot-style AI falls short. Compounding the challenge, legal case data is notoriously locked down. Westlaw and Lexis, each valued at around $60 billion, built their dominance by employing armies of attorneys over decades to annotate cases with detailed metadata, like material facts and legal holdings, essentially creating cliff’s notes for every ruling. They aggressively protect this data, making it nearly impossible for startups to compete due to the necessities of comprehensiveness and accuracy in legal research.”
“That’s where StrongSuit breaks new ground: Leveraging partnerships to gather over 10 million U.S. legal cases, StrongSuit has spent the last year building specialized agents to enrich this database with detailed metadata, case summaries, and issue-based tagging in a way that is purpose-built for high-precision retrieval and research in an AI world.”
“By building its own case law database and engineering powerful retrieval systems, StrongSuit is able to add the most critical chess piece to its legal research system and can now provide comprehensive and extensive case suggestions for every element in a new matter. The highly visual and interactive StrongSuit research system keeps the lawyer in the loop, with the AI synthesizing robust data and the lawyer making strategic decisions, ultimately condensing a typical week-long task into about 10 minutes for 85% completion. From there, the lawyer can polish the full litigation outlines and extensive litigation draft document outputs with other StrongSuit tools, integrated with Microsoft Word, to prepare final versions for court.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? McCallon acknowledged:
“Automation & insight-generation in the legal industry via AI is a goldmine opportunity. This new tech is incredibly valuable, and it’s a race to secure the goldmine. But out-of-the-box AI models are not nearly sufficient, and there is a ton to build. Our big challenge is to stay ahead of the pace of our competitors that are highly funded.”
“That said, we generally don’t see funding as correlating too strongly with the pace of development. My prior company, AT&T, has among the highest capital expenditures of any company in the world. But, if AT&T tried to create an internal version of StrongSuit, it would take 3X as long and be ~50X as expensive, with a worse final product. We have a culture and company built for speed, from an all-in mission, to top-talent developers, to use of AI tools, to removal of roadblocks.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? McCallon noted:
“Early on, like many companies, our AI was 99% frontier base model and 1% our own engineering. That has changed significantly over time, as we have made huge strides in data, highly visual multi-step workflows (UX), and deep engineering.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? McCallon cited:
“In May 2025, StrongSuit launched its most advanced legal research and drafting system to date, powered by proprietary engineering, agentic AI, and a fully integrated U.S. case law database. After gathering over 10 million U.S. legal cases, StrongSuit built specialized agents to enrich the database with detailed metadata, case summaries, and issue-based tagging for high-precision retrieval and research.”
“In November 2025, we announced our rebrand to StrongSuit, along with major platform updates to support our customers. The core updates include: an enhanced legal research engine, “good law” or Legal Precedent Verification, advanced AI architecture, and overall end-to-end updates across our legal workflows.
Lastly, we were honored to be named the “Overall Legal Research Solution of the Year” in the 6th annual LegalTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by LegalTech Breakthrough.
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? McCallon highlighted:
“One customer is a managing partner of a very large fund and happens to be a lawyer by trade. He was using StrongSuit rather than outside counsel to answer legal questions that came up regularly for him. He loved our tool so much that he offered to buy a substantial stake in our company and sent us a term sheet.”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics? McCallon revealed:
“We just announced $10 million in additional funding led by Cervin Ventures, Myriad Venture Partners and AI Fund. This latest round of capital brings our total funding to date to $13 million.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? McCallon assessed:
“Goldman Sachs estimates 44% of the $1 trillion legal industry will soon be automated by AI. When looking at our roadmap, we definitely think that around half of legal will be substantially automated by AI, if not more. We expect half of that value to go to the AI LegalTech companies, creating a TAM of about $440 billion. Litigation LegalTech should be almost half of that.”
“In the first half of 2025, StrongSuit has tripled its recurring revenue, offering a new generation of legal solutions in its end-to-end AI operating system for litigators.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? McCallon affirmed:
“Unlike competitors that rely on chatbots and generate brief, high-level answers, StrongSuit produces real legal work. These outputs include exhaustive precedent research, element-by-element legal outlines, and fully drafted, citation-rich litigation documents. The highly visual StrongSuit research system keeps the lawyer in the loop, with the AI synthesizing robust data and the lawyer making strategic decisions, ultimately condensing a typical week-long task into about 10 minutes for 85% completion. From there, the lawyer can polish the full litigation outlines and extensive litigation draft document outputs with other StrongSuit tools, including tools integrated with Microsoft Word, to prepare final versions for court.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? McCallon emphasized:
“StrongSuit expects to triple its team size over the coming months, with new hires across product, engineering, customer success, and legal AI research in both Texas and California.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? McCallon concluded:
“As AI companies make legal work more efficient, there are great opportunities for the industry and society.”
“We can bring better representation to those who cannot afford effective legal counsel today.”
“We can, potentially, make it harder for a party to blatantly wrong a counterparty and get away with it, due to the cost of legal services being prohibitively slow and expensive.”
“We can have better agreements that reduce ambiguity to parties and reduce litigation.”
“But we also must be careful to not create a society where legal services are so easily available that you must live in constant anxiety for fear of being sued.”
“Striking this balance will require intelligent public policy decisions to support the tech avalanche that is coming for the legal industry.”
