When Zain Kalson BS’22 and his dad initially set out to solve the problem of high-conflict divorces—situations where one party drives the conflict—their original vision was a support group. Kalson says these divorces make up roughly 15 percent of all divorces. “It seemed to be a space where there’s a lot of people that are going through some of the toughest moments of their life, and generally there’s just not a lot of support for them,” he adds.
Through their first iteration, Kalson says he and his dad “were having hundreds of people tell us how challenging it was to separate fact from fiction in their divorces.” The partner who is the source of conflict in a high-conflict divorce might spread misinformation, hide assets, or undervalue their business to minimize alimony or child support payments.
In January 2022, the father-son team pivoted to another idea: using artificial intelligence to uncover hidden assets that might otherwise take countless billable hours to find. Kalson is now CEO and his father is CTO of Etheia (named for Alethiea, the Greek goddess of truth). The company sells its tech-enabled service to family law firms so that the firm has the information they need to negotiate a better settlement for their clients.
After extracting financial data from the disclosures provided by the other party’s lawyer (credit cards, bank statements, and so on), Etheia can uncover things like an out-of-state utility bill tied to an undisclosed real estate property or safe box deposit containing gold. It also visualizes financial data and creates reports that family lawyers can use in court.
Law firms have long-established processes, so developing the market and encouraging innovation was Kalson’s biggest challenge. “We just worked through that through a lot of deep customer discovery,” he says. “It was dozens, if not hundreds, of calls with family attorneys trying to understand what are their pain points? What are the challenges they’re experiencing? And what are some avenues where we might be able to support them better?”
While earning his Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Systems at UTD, Kalson participated in the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurships’ venture coaching opportunities, took the Startup Launch class, and matched with an industry expert through the Venture Mentoring Service of North Texas. “The biggest insight for me was to stay lean,” Kalson says. “I realized we didn’t need to raise capital, hire a team, or seek out investors. Staying lean meant focusing first on building a product that solves the challenges of our target market.” He also worked with the alumni office to make connections in the legal tech space.
That hard work seems to be paying off. Etheia was named a semifinalist for the American Bar Association’s Techshow in 2023 and was featured in Family Lawyer Magazine. They also participated in an event with the Dallas Bar Association Family Law Bench Bar and had several law firms sign up for trials.
