As carriers deploy AI across underwriting, claims, and fraud detection, the attorneys who defend them face a new imperative: meet your clients at the pace of the technology.
Highlights
- AI leaders in insurance generate six times the shareholder return of laggard peers.
- Lawyers using professional-grade AI work 20-30% faster with higher quality output.
- Insurance defense firms must meet carrier clients operating at AI speed with matching capabilities.
As carriers deploy AI across underwriting, claims, and fraud detection, the attorneys who defend them face a new imperative: meet your clients at the pace of the technology.
The insurance industry has moved well past the question of whether to adopt AI. Carriers are deploying it across the full insurance lifecycle — using machine learning models to price risk, automate claims routing, flag fraud, and generate customer communications at scale, often before a human adjuster reviews a single document.
The results are concrete. UK insurer Aviva deployed more than 80 AI models across its claims operation, cutting liability assessment time for complex cases by 23 days, improving claims routing accuracy by 30 percent, and reducing customer complaints by 65 percent — saving more than £60 million ($79.3 million) in 2024 alone. One large carrier now generates approximately 50,000 claims-related communications daily using AI. According to a recent study, AI leaders in the insurance sector have generated more than six times the total shareholder return of their laggard peers over the past five years.
For policyholders and litigants, the implications are still registering. For the lawyers who defend those carriers, the implications are immediate — and the expectation is clear: clients operating at AI speed expect the attorneys they retain to keep pace.
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The new standard for insurance defense counsel
Choosing your AI tool is a professional responsibility question
The new standard for insurance defense counsel
Insurance defense attorneys have always been asked to move fast. Their carrier clients operate at volume, under cost pressure, with expectations of speed and precision that leave little margin. Generative AI is not just changing what those attorneys can deliver — it is changing what their clients will expect from every firm they retain.
At AIDA’s recent 2026 Insurance Law Forum: Global Perspectives, presenters demonstrated what an experienced insurance defense attorney can now execute in a single, integrated workflow: analyze a plaintiff’s expert report and contrast it with opposing counsel’s position; surface the strongest support from thousands of pages of discovery; build targeted deposition questions to challenge a public adjuster’s methodology and conclusions; and research complex apportionment doctrine across jurisdictions — tasks that would have collectively consumed days, now completed in hours.
Research validates the scale of that shift. Randomized controlled trials led by Professor Daniel Schwarcz at the University of Minnesota Law School found that lawyers using professional-grade AI worked 20 to 30 percent faster and produced work rated 20 to 30 percent higher in quality. Critically, the largest gains accrued to experienced practitioners — those best positioned to evaluate AI output critically, course-correct when needed, and apply results to sophisticated analytical work. AI doesn’t replace legal judgment. It amplifies it — most powerfully in the hands of those who already know what good looks like.
That is not a marginal efficiency gain. It is a fundamental expansion of what outside counsel can deliver to a carrier client who is operating at AI speed.
What good looks like
Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, a 53-attorney Philadelphia insurance defense firm, is a clear proof of concept. After adopting Thomson Reuters® CoCounsel with a deliberate focus on security, confidentiality, and governance, the firm reported compressing full-day document review tasks into under 30 minutes — translating that speed directly into faster client turnaround and stronger case outcomes.
“What CoCounsel has allowed us to do is efficiently manage massive amounts of data and become more responsive to our clients’ needs, in a timelier fashion,” said Ted Schaer, Chairman of Litigation. In one matter, a CoCounsel-generated case analysis was so clear and well-structured it gave a carrier the confidence to exceed its initial settlement recommendation — a better result for all parties.
Nobody went to law school to comb through 3,000 pages of records. We went to critically think and be zealous advocates. These tools help us do exactly that.
Chairman of Litigation, Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy
Ross DiBono, a shareholder on the firm’s insurance defense team, put it plainly: “CoCounsel levels the playing field and gives us a huge competitive advantage, especially against other defense firms that aren’t using technology like CoCounsel.”
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Choosing your AI tool is a professional responsibility question
Not all AI tools are built the same — and in a practice governed by strict confidentiality obligations, the choice of AI platform is itself a matter of professional responsibility.
As AI regulation matures globally, scrutiny is shifting upstream: from whether a decision was correct, to whether the system that produced it was adequately governed, transparent, and auditable. For insurance defense attorneys, this translates to a clear standard of due diligence: Does your AI platform protect client data? Does it operate with documented accuracy and transparency? Is it built to the same governance standards your carrier clients are increasingly being held to?
“Data privacy, security, and the prevention of hallucinations are non-negotiable,” said Mitchell Kaplan, Managing Director of Zarwin Baum. His firm’s evaluation went deep — assessing not just features, but architecture, data handling, and governance standards before committing.
After evaluating several tools, the firm chose Thomson Reuters® CoCounsel for its robust safeguards and closed-system architecture.
As lawyers, we have strict confidentiality obligations set by our state courts and by our clients. Thomson Reuters delivered on that.
Chairman of Litigation, Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy
Integration was another deciding factor. “The nice thing when we looked at Thomson Reuters,” said Lisa Slotkin, Managing Shareholder of the firm’s Jersey City office, “was that we could combine CoCounsel with Westlaw and have the drafting in one place.” The tools also connect with the firm’s document management system, creating a seamless end-to-end workflow.
That is the right bar. And it is the bar the profession now demands.
The firms that will lead
Insurers that fail to deeply integrate AI risk being outpaced by AI-native competitors. The same logic applies, with equal force, to the firms that serve them.
The insurance defense attorneys best positioned for what comes next are those who meet their clients at the pace of the technology — synthesizing discovery instantly, responding to carrier questions in hours, and delivering the quality of insight that clients operating at AI scale now expect.
The firms that emerge strongest will be those that approach AI the way savvy insurance litigators already leveraging it do: rigorously, intentionally, and with the right safeguards in place. In today’s landscape, that is not merely a competitive advantage. It is what competent, client-centered insurance defense practice looks like.
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