Toronto-based media law firm Hall Webber has spun off a new company that will use AI to speed up the sometimes slow and expensive process of getting scripts and titles cleared. 

No Conflict Clearance Company is open for business and looking to work with producers in the US, Canada, the UK and English-speaking Europe. 

Script clearance is the critical stage of checking for and addressing any potential risks in a script, including copyright/trademark infringements and defamation. Obtaining clearance can help producers avoid costly lawsuits, and most distributors and insurers require reports that prove scripts have been cleared of potential legal risks. 

The process for performing clearance work has remained unchanged for a long time, says lawyer Lon Hall, a founding partner of Hall Webber and one of four founders of No Conflict.  Even prior to the new company’s launch, Hall Webber has been offering script and title clearance services for more than 15 years. 

“The industry, as far as we know—including all of our competitors and ourselves—did this research manually until recently. By that, I mean, you get on the Internet and you start searching databases. That takes a lot of time,” Hall explains. “We now have software that uses AI technology to automatically do that research instead, and it shreds the time involved for accomplishing this down to from hours to mere minutes.” 

But just because the new company uses this latest technology, it doesn’t eliminate humans from the process, says Danny Webber. Like Hall, Webber is a founding partner of the law firm and a No Conflict co-founder. 

Webber explains that the entire endeavor is “human-led” and involves several complicated and time-consuming steps, including having an entertainment lawyer review the script, get permission for any copyrighted/trademarked materials, obtain release forms from any real people whose names and likenesses are used, and make changes to the script to address legal risks. The aim of No Conflict is to use AI to speed up the process and ensure nothing is missed.

While there are often concerns about how AI is trained and used, the team behind No Conflict says its patented software does not store any information about clients’ scripts (which can be submitted online) when they are run through it as part of the review process. 

“Our technology is designed to ensure the highest levels of privacy and confidentiality, safeguarding our clients’ intellectual property while delivering the most reliable reports available in the industry,” says Webber. 

Even though the No Conflict’s software isn’t officially launching until September, the company has already taken on some initial clients, including marblemedia and Blue Ant Media. 

As a fully independent entity, No Conflict will be able to offer reports to anybody who wants them, including other legal firms besides Webber Hall, which represents clients such as Scholastic, Breakthrough Entertainment and Blink49. 

With files from Carolyn Gruske. 

Pictured from left to right: Lon Hall, Danny Webber, Mitchel Fleming and William Cubitt-Smith. Image courtesy of the No Conflict Clearance Company.