Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has hit the market at the perfect time for busy legal teams. According to the 2024 State of the Corporate Legal Department report, there is a “growing emphasis on driving department efficiency, updating technology, improving risk management, and enabling corporate strategy.”
This growing emphasis certainly requires more powerful tools to get the job done. Enter GenAI. But what tech should you implement first? And how?
Here’s how you can get started with GenAI and make real strides this year.
Jump to:
| Focus on efficiency |
| Your department prioritizes cost control |
| When strategic enablement is top of the list |
| Trusted answers and turnkey GenAI |
Focused on efficiency? Start here
In-house legal teams spend a tremendous amount of time working on large datasets – analyzing contract libraries, for instance, or preparing for depositions and negotiations. Combing through all those documents eats away at efficiency and leaves little time for strategic work.
Consider using a GenAI tool and go beyond simple keyword searches. The new CoCounsel Core from Thomson Reuters can look across your dataset to find insights and summarize trends or documents for faster comprehension and application.
CoCounsel Core includes eight GenAI-powered core legal skills, including Prepare for a Deposition, Draft Correspondence, Search a Database, Review Documents, Summarize a Document, Extract Contract Data, Contract Policy Compliance and Timeline. It connects other Thomson Reuters applications like Westlaw Precision and Practical Law to provide deep insight into a business problem or legal issue quickly and efficiently.
CoCounsel users have found significant time savings, with individual contributors able to free up 60% of their time. Putting CoCounsel to work for your department is a great way to get the team used to GenAI and save significant time.
 | White paper Generative AI for legal professionals: What to know and what to do right now |
Your department prioritizes cost control – try keeping more work in house
Reducing outside counsel spend helps manage the legal department budget. Analytics tools like Legal Tracker Advanced can help you understand where you have opportunities to negotiate timekeeper rates or ensure compliance with invoicing rules. They may also surface types of matters that you could keep in house.
Once you’ve identified work to handle internally, the team may need to learn on new types of matters. Practical Law helps legal departments keep more work in house, with know-how, checklists, and guides. The new Ask Practical Law AI feature shrinks the learning curve even further by helping users home in on specific issues or nuances of a matter.
For example, a traditional search could deliver everything you need to know about handling, say, indemnification provisions. That could be hundreds of results. Your team could use Ask Practical Law AI to find resources that help them understand specific elements of indemnification provisions. The tool will look across the dataset and summarize the considerations that the user should address. The summary includes links to full documents for the user to verify the guidance and learn more.
It’s hard to take on new matters when you feel like you’ll be spinning your wheels getting started or worried that you won’t have the expertise to make the right call in a negotiation. Ask Practical Law AI can mentor and guide the legal team through new challenges and help them serve the business more cost effectively.
When strategic enablement is top of the list
The lawyers in your department serve the organization best when they are applying their knowledge and wisdom to help solve problems and enable growth. Reading through dozens of cases to find the answer they know must be there leaves little time for strategy and drafting.
If the lawyers on your team conduct a lot of legal research, a research tool that applies GenAI capabilities to a trusted body of cases, statutes, and documents can be a game changer. For instance, AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision enables legal professionals to complete high-quality research faster and free up more time to focus on strategic problem solving.
AI-Assisted research not only delivers relevant documents, it analyzes them to deliver an answer to specific questions. Users can take advantage of more conversational search prompts that mimic the natural back-and-forth between colleagues. And the system shows its work:
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Trusted answers and turnkey GenAI
GenAI experts agree that the possibilities of technology to streamline and elevate work process and product are tremendous. They also agree that human expertise and security practices are essential. Choosing tools from trusted providers is essential to realizing the benefits of GenAI.
Thomson Reuters has built its solutions on top of more than 150 years of legal expertise and trusted content. User data stays secure and confidential within the applications, and customer information is never used to train the model or stored in any way owned by a third party.
Elbow grease and dedication might not be enough to reach your cost control, efficiency, and business enablement goals this year. Set your team up for success with GenAI tools like CoCounsel Core, AI-Assisted Research and Ask Practical Law AI. They all provide focused environments for you to do great legal work in less time and with confidence you’re finding the right answers.
GenAI tools from Thomson Reuters can help your legal department hit your strategy and efficiency goals. Find out how
 | GenAI tools for corp legal Help your legal department hit your strategy and efficiency goals. |
