About Jurilingua: A Legal Translation Agency Built for the Canadian Bar
Jurilingua is a Canadian legal translation agency founded in 2013, headquartered in Toronto’s Financial District. Our practice is dedicated exclusively to legal translation for law firms and corporate legal departments — not a general translation business with a legal team, but a specialized agency in which legal translation is the entire scope of work. 300+ certified legal translators across 60+ languages, offices in eight Canadian cities, and 500+ law firms served since inception.
Our Practice
Legal translation is not a subset of general translation. It is a discipline that requires fluency in two legal systems, mastery of terminology that changes with jurisdiction and practice area, and procedural awareness — a misnamed pleading or a mistranslated quantum meruit does not just read poorly, it changes the legal effect of the document.
We built Jurilingua around that reality. Every translator we work with is accredited by a recognized professional body — OTTIAQ in Quebec, ATIO in Ontario, ATIA in Alberta, STIBC in British Columbia, ATIM in Manitoba — or by an equivalent international authority. Every translator works exclusively into their native language. Every translation is reviewed by a second legal translator before delivery. For Canadian work specifically, we maintain dedicated bijural drafting teams familiar with both common-law tradition and the Code civil du Québec, because federal legislation and many commercial matters routinely bridge the two within a single file.
The result is a service designed for clients who already know what a legal translation is supposed to look like — and who notice when it does not.
A Member of the Ellipse World Group
Jurilingua is part of Ellipse World, an international group of legal and technical translation agencies founded in France in 2013 and now operating across three jurisdictions. The group structure provides Jurilingua with capabilities that are uncommon in independent Canadian translation agencies:
- A 300+ translator network, recruited and qualified across the group rather than sourced ad hoc.
- Cross-jurisdictional capacity for European matters, particularly for Canadian law firms with French, German, Italian, or Iberian commercial work.
- A continuous-investment R&D function on legal-translation methodology, terminology management, and CAT-tool integration.
- A consolidated quality framework applied identically across all group agencies.
At the same time, Jurilingua operates as a fully Canadian entity, with Canadian project management, Canadian client billing, and a translator network qualified to Canadian provincial standards. Our work is shaped by the Canadian regulatory and legal environment — Bill 96, PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, the Official Languages Act, the Hague Apostille Convention, federal bijural drafting — not by frameworks imported from elsewhere.
What Sets Us Apart
A practice limited to legal translation
We do not translate marketing brochures, websites for tourist boards, or technical manuals. Legal translation is our entire scope. The discipline imposes its own demands — terminological precision, procedural awareness, certification requirements, confidentiality protocols — and we have organized the agency around those demands rather than around general translation logistics adapted for legal occasions.
Translators with documented legal expertise
Many of our translators hold a law degree, practised law before transitioning to translation, or have spent their career embedded in legal translation departments of large firms. Each is assigned to projects matching their documented area of legal expertise — corporate, securities, intellectual property, litigation, energy, insurance, regulatory, tax, or administrative law. The generalist legal translator does not exist in our model.
Bijural fluency for Canadian Work
Canadian legal translation is structurally bijural. Federal legislation is drafted simultaneously in English common-law tradition and French civil-law tradition, with both versions carrying equal legal force. Quebec proceedings draw from the Code civil du Québec; the rest of the country operates under common law. Our French legal translation team is calibrated to both registers, with dedicated translators for federal bilingual drafting, Quebec civil-law work, and Bill 96 compliance for Quebec-facing commercial agreements.
Confidentiality and PIPEDA-aligned infrastructure
Every engagement begins with a signed non-disclosure agreement. Our servers are hosted in Canada, under PIPEDA at the federal level and the provincial privacy regimes that apply (Quebec Law 25, PIPA British Columbia, PIPA Alberta). Every translator in our network is bound by a contractual confidentiality clause. For sensitive M&A, regulatory, and litigation files, we deploy reinforced transmission channels — SFTP, dedicated client portals, named-team access controls.
Accreditations and Memberships
Jurilingua’s translator network is accredited by the relevant provincial professional bodies and the agency holds memberships in recognized industry associations.
Provincial translator accreditations
- OTTIAQ: Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec
- ATIO: Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario
- ATIA: Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta
- STIBC: Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia
- ATIM: Association of Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters of Manitoba
Industry memberships
- CLIA: Canadian Language Industry Association
- GALA: Globalization and Localization Association
These accreditations are not decorative. A certified legal translation issued by an OTTIAQ, ATIO, ATIA, STIBC, or ATIM member is accepted directly by Canadian courts, federal departments, the CRA, CIPO, provincial regulators, and foreign authorities through the Hague Apostille process — without further administrative authentication.
Our Offices Across Canada
Jurilingua operates from Toronto with dedicated teams in seven additional cities. Each office serves the legal market specific to its region — corporate work in Bay Street and Howe Street, federal bilingual practice in Sandy Hill, mining and energy in Stephen Avenue, civil-law work in downtown Montreal.
Montreal
Quebec civil law, OTTIAQ certification, Bill 96 compliance for Quebec-facing commercial agreements.
Toronto
Bay Street corporate and securities work, OSC submissions, M&A and capital markets.
Vancouver
Cross-Pacific M&A, mining and NI 43-101 technical reports, BCSC submissions, insurance, real estate.
Ottawa
Bilingual drafting, Federal Court matters, government procurement, Official Languages Act compliance.
Calgary
Energy law, oil and gas joint operating agreements, AER submissions, mining transactions.
Winnipeg
Insurance and reinsurance translations, Indigenous law, agricultural and resource transactions.
Edmonton
Industrial Heartland documentation, provincial regulatory submissions, employment and labour.
Mississauga
GTA West corporate and commercial work, Peel Region tribunal practice, multilingual transactional support.
The Clients We Serve
Our client base spans the full range of Canadian legal practice. National full-service firms with offices across multiple provinces, regional boutiques with deep specialization in a single practice area, in-house legal departments of federally regulated financial institutions and insurance carriers, corporate counsel of publicly listed companies, and intellectual property firms filing across CIPO, USPTO, EPO, and PCT.
We work with clients on three engagement models:
- Project-based engagements, for one-time or occasional translation needs
- Ongoing accounts, with dedicated translator teams, maintained glossaries, and monthly billing, typically for federally regulated insurers, financial institutions, and multinational employers with continuous bilingual contract flow
- Litigation and transaction support, with project managers coordinating parallel teams to deliver large files (litigation discovery, M&A data rooms, multi-language regulatory rollouts) within tight deadlines
Confidentiality and Data Protection
Confidentiality is treated as an operational requirement, not a marketing line.
- NDA before document transfer. A non-disclosure agreement is signed at the start of every engagement, before any document changes hands.
- Canadian-hosted infrastructure. Our servers are hosted in Canada under PIPEDA and the applicable provincial privacy frameworks (Quebec Law 25, PIPA British Columbia, PIPA Alberta).
- Translator-level confidentiality. Every translator in our network is contractually bound to confidentiality. Translator access is scoped to the specific files assigned.
- Reinforced channels for sensitive files. For M&A, regulatory, and litigation files, transmission goes through SFTP, dedicated client portals, or named-team access controls.
- Encryption in transit and at rest. All documents are encrypted on receipt, during translation, and on delivery.
- No machine-translation routing. Files are not routed through public machine-translation engines, including for triage or quotation.
Get In Touch
For a quote on a specific document, send the file directly to our quote desk and receive a transparent fixed-fee quote within 30 minutes during business hours.