WHITE PAPER
How GenAI improves efficiency and accuracy in court systems
The takeaway
State and local courts face increasing strain. Even routine legal processes can overburden staff and delay critical judicial outcomes. The right generative AI (GenAI) assistant can transform how courts operate.
Today’s state, county, and municipal courts suffer from heavy caseloads that often result in backlogs and hearing delays. Part of the challenge is the sheer amount of information that legal staff must read, process, analyze, and interpret for every case.
“There is a massive volume of information that judges, lawyers, clerks, and other court staff need to analyze to ultimately give people access to justice,” says Valerie McConnell, a former litigator and now the Senior Director of Customer Success for Thomson Reuters. “The amount of time spent on this paperwork can contribute to and even exacerbate delays in the judicial process.”
Generative AI technology can drastically reduce the time court staff spend on a variety of tasks, from reviewing motions to preparing questions for potential jurors.
The right GenAI solution:
- Reduces court process delays
- Eases burdens on court staff and legal teams
- Helps ensure accuracy and consistency
However, not all GenAI assistants are created equal. An assistant like CoCounsel from Thomson Reuters provides courts with a secure tool to help staff complete legal processes quickly and reliably.
“The keys to having fair trials are following all necessary procedures and carefully considering evidence and arguments,” McConnell says. “CoCounsel helps courts move through this work more efficiently and more thoroughly.”
What is CoCounsel?
CoCounsel is the professional-grade GenAI assistant that helps legal professionals complete their work — including research, document analysis, and more — quickly, accurately, and precisely.
Answers grounded in reliable sources
Unlike other GenAI chat tools that pull information from across the internet, CoCounsel delivers answers from content thoroughly vetted by legal experts.
CoCounsel uses retrieval-augmented generation, meaning it provides answers to queries based on a restricted set of information. Depending on the task at hand, the GenAI assistant uses content from Westlaw and Practical Law databases or content that users themselves supply, such as case files. This method ensures any content the GenAI tool provides is based only on information from approved sources.
Documents backed with trusted citations
Every output CoCounsel generates — whether it’s a timeline, a summary of a transcript, an answer to a legal research question, or any other information — comes with a list of cited sources that staff can review to verify accuracy and gain deeper insights on a particular topic.
“Legal staff can do their own due diligence, reviewing provided citations and conducting any follow-up research,” says Eliza Fisher, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Thomson Reuters.
Data protected by privacy and security
CoCounsel ensures that the data courts use remains private and secure. It never shares data or uses it to train models. That means legal staff can safely input sensitive information — trusting the solution just as they would a reliable colleague.
How CoCounsel transforms legal work
CoCounsel helps courts complete critical but burdensome tasks, including:
Legal research. Judges, lawyers, and other legal staff can submit complex legal research questions to CoCounsel. The solution will then draw on trusted Thomson Reuters content to quickly synthesize case law and other relevant information, cite relevant sources, and deliver trustworthy answers.
Document search. Looking for a specific piece of information within hundreds or thousands of documents can frustrate staff and add significant delays. Rather than spend hours poring through documents, staff can upload entire databases and have CoCounsel swiftly and thoroughly mine the data to find what they need.
“Previously, legal staff might have needed to read through numerous boxes of papers to find the information they were looking for,” says Fisher. “What legal teams once did over a period of weeks, CoCounsel can now do in minutes, and can even find details that a person might miss.”
Document analysis and content generation. Court employees often need to make sense of numerous dense documents in a short amount of time. CoCounsel supports staff in this analytical work. For example, the tool can review motions, filings, and other court documents word by word to offer substantive answers to complex questions.
Timeline creation. Users simply upload a series of documents and CoCounsel gathers the necessary information to generate an annotated timeline for legal staff to review.
GenAI best practices
Choose the right tool and the right company
When procuring a generative AI assistant, select a technology built specifically for legal professionals. Doing so will ensure the tool meets necessary legal privacy and security standards and that it only pulls information from vetted, relevant sources.
Look for a solution from a trusted, established company — one with expertise in both generative AI and the legal space. This partner should also provide resources and training to support your team as they adjust to using the GenAI tool.
Look for integrative technologies
Staff will be more likely to use a GenAI solution if it integrates seamlessly with tools they already use. CoCounsel integrates not only with Thomson Reuters tools, but also with third-party products like Microsoft Word.
Provide the right training for your staff
A GenAI chat tool is only as helpful as the queries entered. Make sure you and your staff receive appropriate training on getting the most thorough answers from the technology.
“Just as when you communicate with a person, you have to provide a GenAI tool with enough context and specifics about what you are looking for,” says Fisher. “The right questions make the tool even more accurate and efficient. That’s when you start to see its wow factor.”
The bottom line
With CoCounsel serving as a trustworthy, efficient colleague, legal staff can focus on helping more people get justice quickly and reliably.