An access to justice project

A note from the founder

My name is Jared Persaud. I'm a family law lawyer in Ontario.

In 2006, I wrote a thesis paper on the Integrated Justice Project — the Ontario government's early attempt to modernize the courts. I interviewed court operations managers, judges, and the Regional Senior Justice to understand why it never delivered on its promise. Good intentions, good people, but the technology never caught up to the work that lawyers and judges actually do. That stayed with me.

I've been interested in computers and writing software for as long as I can remember. After law school, I built my practice around two things: domestic violence law and access to justice for the most vulnerable people in our system.

For over fifteen years I've sat on Legal Aid Ontario's domestic violence panel. I've worked with four women's shelters. I serve as duty counsel at 361 University Avenue, 47 Sheppard Avenue East, 50 Eagle Street West (Newmarket), and 311 Jarvis Street courthouses. I'm in court three to five days a week.

Outside of court, I serve as a Director of the York Region Law Association and Chair of its DEI Committee. Of my reported decisions, the one I am most proud of is Fahmy v. Ojeda, 2023 ONSC 6287 — kept two infant children with their newcomer mother in a women's shelter against the father's motion to flip primary care; “living in a shelter is only a temporary expedient.”

The team behind FCT

I'm the founder of Family Court Toolbox. The work is shaped by partners — family law lawyers in court regularly:

• Jared Persaud — Founder
• Ali Manavi — Partner at Family Court Toolbox
• Justin Persaud — Partner at Family Court Toolbox
• Vincenzo Ruso — Partner at Family Court Toolbox

The tools family lawyers use should be as good as the work they are asked to do.

Why this matters now

Judges want an evidentiary basis for the decisions they make. Counsel running family files do not always have time to assemble that record — not because they don't want to, but because there are not enough hours in the day. Family Court Toolbox is built to make that work faster.

A lack of clean evidentiary record for the orders sought increases the complexity of cases. It turns a single hearing into multiple wasted appearances. It costs taxpayers. It costs the emotional health of the litigants. And sometimes it costs lives.

Self-represented litigants are arriving at court with more material than ever, and a lot of it now comes from AI tools that don't know what they don't know. Counsel needs equally good tools to do the corrective work.

Where we are

The Toolbox today is calculations, court forms, agreements, and parenting plans. Eight years of work behind it.

We introduced it to the Toronto family bar at the “Show Your Work” CLE for the 47 Sheppard Avenue East courthouse on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. The Integrated Justice Project of twenty years ago aimed at the right thing and missed. We intend to finish what they started — quietly, one tool at a time, with the people who do this work every day.