“The saying goes, the best time to start was yesterday, the second-best time to start is today. The technology is rapidly increasing. If you’re not starting on this, you do risk being left behind”

Zach Warren, Thomson Reuters

“I treat it as something that would be submitted by a student or an intern, that needs to be reviewed again. It ultimately produces a better product for me in the end”

Rikin Morzaria, Kinara Law

“We’re very interested in how we get a strategic advantage. What arguments were used, what makes for a successful pleading – that’s something we can leverage”

David Cohen, McCarthy Tétrault

“When we talk about efficiency, it’s the idea of not only giving the lawyer more time but empowering them to do things that just weren’t possible before”

Valerie McConnell, Thomson Reuters

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Generative AI’s legal revolution

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Valerie McConnell

Thomson Reuters

Zach Warren

Thomson Reuters

David Cohen

McCarthy Tétrault

Rikin Morzaria

Kinara Law

Industry experts

Thomson Reuters’ Future of Professionals Report identifies trends that impact the legal industry – the economy, different generational cohorts, impending regulatory changes – but generative AI is the front runner by a significant margin. Over three-quarters, or 77 percent, of the lawyers surveyed say it will have a significant or high impact on the future of law. “What that tells me is no matter where you’re situated in the legal industry, you should be paying attention,” says Zach Warren, technology and innovation content lead at Thomson Reuters. “This has the potential to change how lawyers work – it’s just a question of how exactly it’s going to do that.”

Valerie McConnell, senior director of CoCounsel customer success at Thomson Reuters, identifies an increasing number of firms deploying AI across large data sets in discovery productions, drafting legal documents, and for predictive analytics, a marked shift to aiming the tools at “more sophisticated, complex workflows.” Cohen confirms this on the ground at McCarthy Tétrault, where there’s ramped-up AI involvement in higher-value work. One example is using it in a litigation matter to scan a trove of data and identify where the firm has been successful in the past. “We’re very interested in how we get a strategic advantage,” he notes. “What arguments were used, what makes for a successful pleading – that’s something we can leverage.” Rikin Morzaria, principal at litigation boutique Kinara Law, says he’s both “experimenting with and finding solutions that work long term.” As his own ability to effectively wield the tools ramps up, he leverages AI for more detailed and advanced tasks such as drafting memos or reviewing his own work to identify potential areas for improvement. “I treat it as something that would be submitted by a student or an intern, that needs to be reviewed again,” he says, noting the expectation from AI isn’t perfection but to save time on early versions and elevate his output. “It ultimately produces a better product for me in the end,” Morzaria notes, and Warren calls that approach critical. There’s a tendency to “promise the world” about how these solutions will “revolutionize how lawyers practice” but in the end, gen AI is a tool – which implies it’s only as good as the person using it. “It’s not going to do the reasoning a lawyer does,” he explains. “Yes, it can do a lot, but you can’t treat it like the end-all-be-all.”

There’s also the common concern that “robot lawyers” will replace humans, which Warren stresses is unfounded. The success of AI comes down to lawyers adding legal reasoning and strategy, not simply regurgitating, and as the technology is more widely adopted and available, the value a firm offers comes down to the lawyers under its shingle. “The lawyer of the future is not doing those low-level, repeatable tasks but the actual, active lawyering,” he says, and McConnell echoes this. She points to a client who called CoCounsel “a force multiplier” – not a replacement, but an augmentation.

David Cohen, senior director, client service delivery, McCarthy Tétrault, sees firsthand the appetite for AI. He points to the firm’s response when a year ago it rolled out CoCounsel, an AI-powered legal productivity tool from Thomson Reuters. “We put a call out for people to sign up and get a license, and the 175 seats were immediately filled,” Cohen recalls. “There was a wait list where people were pleading to get access to the tool – there’s certainly a lot of interest and excitement at our firm.”

“AI doesn’t have human insight or instincts, it doesn’t know the client, it can’t read a room,” McConnell says. “How lawyers allocate their time will shift: the hope and expectation is when we clear their plates, they’ll have the space to think about strategic angles.” This underscores the important role firms have in talent management, Cohen notes. When new lawyers are trained, some foundational skills are evergreen – problem solving, advocacy, negotiation – while basic legal research and memorization of facts are now less important, and emerging competencies like how to work with technology and prompt engineering are increasingly critical. McCarthy Tétrault recently revamped its training program before welcoming its newest cohort of articling students and first-year associates, and it’s indicative of the sea change when it comes to integrating AI into firm workflows and processes. “Having best-in-class prompts that are shared and available to our lawyers is something we certainly weren’t discussing a couple years ago,” Cohen adds. For Morzaria, these tools provide an agency that overall makes the work more enjoyable. When he looks ahead to growing his firm, that point is central. AI allows him to remove the most mundane parts of a workflow: a law clerk will be much more engaged by an existing chronology to improve upon, for example, than building one themselves via rote data entry.

evidence, while on the transactional side it’s being used to great effect for contract review. McConnell highlights the compelling use case where Thomson Reuters’ large law firm customer represented a client in a merger, and 48 hours before it was set to close, the client discovered information that made them reconsider the entire deal. The client asked the firm to review 2,000 contracts written in seven different languages that were collected in due diligence to evaluate the potential liability that could impact them if they went through with the merger. Gen AI’s sophisticated understanding of language, including tone and nuance, helps it zero in on information that eludes more traditional machine learning software – and they completed the task with time to spare. “When we talk about efficiency, it’s the idea of not only giving the lawyer more time but empowering them to do things that just weren’t possible before.”

There are legitimate concerns when it comes to the technology, such as accuracy, privacy, and hallucinations, and firms are focusing now on “achieving the right balance where we’re generating benefits for our clients but also managing and mitigating the risks,” Cohen says.

While there’s a lot of information out there about different products, McConnell urges people to keep it simple and points back to the fact that AI is no replacement for a lawyer’s oversight. Create an AI policy, use a secure software platform that allows lawyers to easily verify output and doesn’t train on firm data, and ensure there’s training on responsible use. Depending on where they are on their AI adoption journey, firms can deploy the technology on low-billable work that clients push back on, its most valuable work where clients are expecting not just the correct answer quickly but for them to outshine the competition, or anything in between. But while it’s prudent to proceed with caution, lawyers still must proceed, Warren stresses.

“The saying goes, the best time to start was yesterday, the second-best time to start is today,” he says. “The technology is rapidly increasing. If you’re not starting on this, you do risk being left behind.”

Freeing up the commodity of time

Future of Professionals Report highlights

Almost one-third (31%) of respondents reported they believe their firm or department is moving “too slowly” in terms of AI adoption, and they fear this may lead to a loss of competitive advantage and cost implications Almost 40% of respondents said they are most excited about the potential of new technology to not just help do the current work faster but also add value to the work they do

In times of constant change, the world looks to professionals to lead. But as complexity grows, even professionals risk being overwhelmed. Thomson Reuters clarifies today’s complex landscape with AI and technology, deep subject-matter expertise, and content the world has trusted for over 150 years – giving professionals the confidence to know today, navigate tomorrow, and lead a fast-evolving world. We empower professionals to reduce inefficiencies so they can do more of the work that matters, act decisively to add greater value for critical stakeholders, and anticipate future challenges to face the unexpected. As the future arrives faster than ever, we’re standing alongside professionals, ready to fulfill our purpose: to inform the way forward.

Find out more

Valerie McConnell is the senior director of CoCounsel customer success at Thomson Reuters, where she uses her litigation and computer science background to advise legal professionals on how to leverage artificial intelligence in their practices. Before joining Thomson Reuters, McConnell served as the vice president of customer success at Casetext, where she worked on the testing and development of CoCounsel. Previously, she was a litigator; she spent the first seven years of her career at Jones Day and then joined a small firm of three lawyers in the Los Angeles area, where she handled intellectual property and litigation matters. 

Thomson Reuters

Valerie McConnell

Zach Warren leads technology and innovation content for the Thomson Reuters Institute. Warren has been writing and speaking on tech and innovation for more than a decade; at Thomson Reuters, he charts the future of professional services industries, including legal, tax, and risk & fraud, through writing, podcasts, speaking engagements, and more. Before coming to Thomson Reuters, Zach was the editor-in-chief of ALM’s Legaltech News and featured on Law.com, The American Lawyer, and ALM events such as Legalweek. Warren lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two dogs, and has a bachelor’s from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Thomson Reuters

Zach Warren

David Cohen leads McCarthy Tétrault’s client service delivery team, a national group of professionals that develops creative legal solutions and pricing arrangements to deliver optimal value for clients and help solve their pain points. Cohen and his team are responsible for the firm’s initiatives related to pricing and legal project management, the development of novel client-focused legal solutions, knowledge integration across all practice groups, and generating actionable insights from the firm’s data sets. Cohen is also actively involved in embedding technology, including sophisticated AI tools, into the firm’s legal workflows to achieve efficiencies, enhanced work product, and new insights for the firm’s lawyers and clients.

McCarthy Tétrault

David Cohen

Rikin Morzaria is a litigator and the principal of Kinara Law where he handles a wide variety of civil and commercial litigation cases. Before founding Kinara Law, Morzaria was a partner at a nationally recognized leading litigation boutique and then served as senior litigation counsel at the Ontario Securities Commission, where he prosecuted complex securities cases. Morzaria has written and published more than 25 papers and chapters in leading textbooks in civil litigation and personal injury law. He has been counsel in more than 30 reported tribunal and court decisions, and he is regularly invited to give lectures to other lawyers about litigation.

Kinara Law

Rikin Morzaria

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Fighting for the customer

The customer owned a bank saw a huge boost after the Hayne Royal Commission. One year on and their market share is growing as customer continue to see their value.

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Christopher Lee

MFAA head credit adviser, Finsure Finance and Insurance

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Heritage Bank

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Beyond Bank

Fernando Lemos

Bank Australia

Industry experts

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Bank Australia

Fernando Lemos

Beyond Bank

Darren McLeod

Heritage Bank

Stewart Saunders

MFAA head credit adviser, Finsure Finance and Insurance

Christopher Lee

In Partnership with

Fighting for the customer

The customer owned a bank saw a huge boost after the Hayne Royal Commission. One year on and their market share is growing as customer continue to see their value.

Read on

Christopher Lee

MFAA head credit adviser, Finsure Finance and Insurance

Stewart Saunders

Heritage Bank

Darren McLeod

Beyond Bank

Fernando Lemos

Bank Australia

Industry experts

Beyond Bank

Darren McLeod

Heritage Bank

Stewart Saunders

MFAA head credit adviser, Finsure Finance and Insurance

Christopher Lee

Bank Australia

Fernando Lemos

Aiming AI at more sophisticated workflows

Published November 21, 2024

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Gen AI also changes how lawyers bill clients. For example, litigators can lean into block or flat-fee billing because they know they’ll be able to handle certain aspects of a matter more quickly. “Your time in a discovery, trial, or mediation won’t change, but a lot of that time leading up to it will,” Morzaria says. “That allows you to work more efficiently and take on work that may not have been feasible before.” When it comes to elevating services, McConnell sees particularly high returns for law firms and corporate legal departments when it comes to document review. In the litigation space, it’s used to surface “hot documents” or key evidence, while on the transactional side it’s being used to great effect for contract review. McConnell highlights the compelling use case where Thomson Reuters’ large law firm customer represented a client in a merger, and 48 hours before it was set to close, the client discovered information that made them reconsider the entire deal. The client asked the firm to review 2,000 contracts written in seven different languages that were collected in due diligence to evaluate the potential liability that could impact them if they went through with the merger. Gen AI’s sophisticated understanding of language, including tone and nuance, helps it zero in on information that eludes more traditional machine learning software – and they completed the task with time to spare. “When we talk about efficiency, it’s the idea of not only giving the lawyer more time but empowering them to do things that just weren’t possible before.”