Continued climb in law firm productivity��

I joined �������� in February, and a notable way we’ve seen the impact of generative AI solutions is the uptick in lawyer productivity. For the first time in years, Q2 saw a majority of law firms experience productivity growth. By Q3, an astounding 64% of law firms reported productivity growth, building on the gains made in Q2.����

This uptick underscores how technology is key to boosting law firm profitability. Law firms that invest in new technology as well as adopt AI and generative AI solutions to streamline workflows and improve the efficiency and quality of their work are best positioned to improve client satisfaction and drive sustainable productivity growth.��

Build, buy, partner strategy��

I’m pleased with the progress �������� has made on our vision to provide all the legal professionals we serve with a professional-grade GenAI assistant to augment their work. We’ve committed to investing $100 million annually in AI over the coming years, including investing more than $200 million to incorporate responsible AI into our solutions in the past year alone.������

This year we continued investing in the latest technology through our build, buy, partner program. On the buy side in the legal space, our acquisition of Safe Sign Technologies – a UK legal large language model (LLM) startup – in August is proving a great fit. We’re incorporating Safe Sign’s tech and talent into our industry-leading content and expertise to bring customers even greater quality and performance from our AI solutions. ��

On the build side, we introduced 19 legal generative AI solutions in 2024. Highlights include CoCounsel 2.0, the professional-grade GenAI assistant; Claims Explorer, a generative AI skill available in ; CoCounsel Drafting, an end-to-end drafting solution that streamlines and improves the drafting process for legal professionals within Microsoft Word; and Mischaracterization Identification in Quick Check and AI Jurisdictional Surveys – two generative AI research features that help customers save substantial time and deliver greater confidence that legal research is accurate, thorough, and complete. We also delivered deeper integration of CoCounsel into Westlaw and Practical Law.��

On the partner side, we’re working with Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and others on plugins and integrations to enhance the generative AI-powered capabilities in our solutions. Every aspect of our build, buy, partner strategy is geared toward helping our customers automate their workflows, provide powerful insights to their clients and drive efficiencies.  ��

A maturing market����

2024 saw the implementation of legal generative AI solutions as well as efforts to benchmark these solutions. Our benchmarking support is reflected in our participation in studies including Vals.ai plus two consortium efforts – from Stanford and Litig – exploring how to best evaluate legal AI.����

I believe that benchmarking can improve both the development and the adoption of AI, but it’s just one component in how we consider and understand the benefits AI delivers for our customers. I look forward to our ongoing collaboration with customers and industry partners as we continue working to minimize inaccuracies and increase the usefulness of the research outcomes for generative AI solutions.��

To date, 15% of law firms have adopted and implemented legal-specific generative AI solutions. I anticipate we’ll soon see a wave of fast followers – eager to be perceived as innovative – that will dramatically strengthen generative AI implementation.��

I can’t think of a more exciting time to have joined a business. Where our industry is at now mirrors the early internet era: initial excitement, followed by strategic integration.����

We’re fast approaching a maturing market where legal professionals will not just desire but require AI capabilities for their workflows. We’ll see more implementation of generative AI solutions among legal professionals as they increasingly realize the tangible benefits.  ��

For more on how generative AI is shaping the future of the legal profession, please check out my interview.����

This is a guest post from Raghu Ramanathan, president, Legal Professionals, ��������.��

The generative AI-driven solution enables UK legal professionals to find the best starting point from their own databases or Practical Law templates, use content from Practical Law alongside their legal department’s or firm’s contract repository to draft or revise clauses, leverage Practical Law contract playbooks, and correct common drafting errors. It uses AI to refine and review documents, producing more accurate, higher-quality work – without leaving Microsoft Word.

I recently shared a CoCounsel Drafting demo with ’s Richard Tromans.

“The offering has been especially shaped for legal needs here and will directly engage with TR’s contract data in Practical Law,” Tromans said in .

I highlighted CoCounsel Drafting capabilities and features for Tromans, and we discussed how “LLM-supported drafting could be truly transformative.” We talked about how users will be able to use the large language model (LLM) to modify a clause, for example, and how CoCounsel Drafting uses generative AI grounded in retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to access��Practical Law content and notes.

We also discussed how CoCounsel Drafting delivers a level of detail similar to what a junior associate may produce when asked to draft a contract. I noted that CoCounsel Drafting allows customers to use their own playbook to draft a preferred set of terms for any contract type or use a Practical Law playbook for a range of popular contract types.

Finally, Tromans and I discussed integrations – with HighQ and with document management systems (DMS) including iManage – as well as security.

On the other side of the pond, U.S. customer feedback on CoCounsel Drafting, which we introduced earlier this year, has been overwhelmingly positive. I hope that UK legal professionals are equally pleased with the time savings and productivity increases CoCounsel Drafting offers.

As a former lawyer turned AI product leader, I’ve lived the pain of tedious legal tasks firsthand. That’s why I’m passionate about harnessing generative AI to transform legal drafting. I know how much time and energy gets wasted on repetitive tasks, taking away from the work that really matters. Now, I’m excited to help lawyers reclaim that time and focus on what they love – whether that’s helping clients, developing strategy, or simply enjoying a better work-life balance.

You can learn more about CoCounsel Drafting , and check out Tromans’ blog .

This is a guest post from Rawia Ashraf, vice president of Product Management, ��������.

“It seems like just last year we were talking about CoCounsel 1.0, the generative AI product launched by Casetext and then swiftly acquired by ��������,” Joe Patrice said in . “That’s because it was just last year. Since then, �������� has worked to marry Casetext’s tool with TR’s treasure trove of data.”

Patrice noted CoCounsel 2.0 draws on “the experience gained over the last year and a mélange of multiple LLMs under the hood” and includes Claims Explorer – an AI skill in Westlaw Precision – plus CoCounsel Drafting.

In , Isha Marathe highlighted CoCounsel 2.0 as “a much faster, more polished chatbot” that offers more personalization.

“��������’ CoCounsel 2.0, which has a ChatGPT-like interface, now also connects with the user’s DMS to offer a more integrated, personal experience,” Marathe said. “Additionally, usernames, passwords and other log-in keys will also be standardized across various �������� applications, explained Jake Heller, CEO and co-founder of Casetext, part of ��������.”

Marathe added: “Essentially, this brings CoCounsel ‘on the same infrastructure’ as the user’s Westlaw and �������� applications, Heller said, creating a user-centric experience as opposed to a fragmented one.”

Richard Tromans David Wong, chief product officer, ��������, made during his ILTACON presentation on CoCounsel 2.0 about the strength of �������� data.

“David Wong, CPO, said that ‘this is the most meaningful work I have done at ��������,’” Tromans noted. “He then stressed the fact that they have all the three main food groups when it comes to AI tool development:��‘We have the data, the expertise, and the tech. Few have all three in such quantity and depth.’ And that’s a key point. If you look at some of the challengers out there, there are few that have all of that lovely, rich data.”

Tromans added. “… Wong is right, having genAI skills and having a smart team is great, but a ton of authoritative legal data is the cherry on the cake if you want to offer a really broad genAI platform.”

Watch the Innovation Blog for more on the one-year anniversary of Casetext joining ��������, and read Innovation Blog posts for more product news, leader insights, and customer perspectives on how �������� is paving the way for the future of professionals.

Now generally available in the United States, Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel helps tax firms leverage the transformative capabilities of GenAI by using large language models (LLMs) to provide an intuitive interface for tax professionals to pose questions to in everyday language.

Two thirds of customers that took part in the beta program expected Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel to become their primary method for starting federal tax research upon launch.

“Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel is an innovative tool that allows the use of a question to get a specific response, plus it provides citations without having to search multiple responses to find an answer to a query,” said Gary Brown, owner and principal at Gary Brown CPA, who was among the customers that took part in the beta program. “This saves significant time by providing a focused response versus a list of multiple responses that need to be sorted through to find the desired result, providing significant time savings for research.”

“Trying to read an entire document for up to 30 minutes and trying to really understand those very minute differences and paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel will now give us the opportunity to receive this answer in a more simplified and relatable format where we can read it and understand it, see the citations as we need, and provide that answer to a client or internally to our own staff,” said Brent Forbush, managing partner, Forbush & Associates.

Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel is the latest milestone in the �������� expanded vision for CoCounsel – the professional-grade GenAI assistant – to enable professionals to seamlessly complete complicated work involving multiple products through a single generative AI assistant. The launch follows last week’s rollouts of Claims Explorer, a new generative AI skill in Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel, and CoCounsel Drafting, an end-to-end drafting solution that streamlines and improves the drafting process for legal professionals within Microsoft Word.

For more on Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel, visit , check out , or read the press release.

With CoCounsel Drafting, users can easily and quickly move through the phases of contract creation. The solution allows them to find the best starting point from their own databases or Practical Law templates, use content from Practical Law alongside their legal department’s or firm’s contract repository to draft or revise clauses, automate deviation analysis using Practical Law contract playbooks, and correct common drafting errors. This solution uses AI to refine and review documents, producing more accurate, higher-quality work – without leaving Microsoft Word.

“Many of our attorneys – at various stages in their careers – are already using CoCounsel Drafting. Its seamless Microsoft Word integration means they can begin using it with little training and begin realizing ROI almost immediately,” said Joshua R. Driskell, managing partner at Lagerlof LLP. “Based on our team’s experiences, I know using this tool will save an attorney at least one to two hours overall on a project. And the integration of Practical Law with CoCounsel Drafting, both working from within Microsoft Word, allows for a streamlined workflow with fewer distractions.”

“There is substantial time savings when using��CoCounsel Drafting,” said J.J. Ball, legal counsel for Systemiq. “When we are operating on an average turnaround time of three to four business days for a response, we can cut that down to one to two business days by utilizing the tool to get drafting work done.”

“Lawyers can often spend a significant amount of their time drafting legal documents and reviewing contracts, and based on feedback in our beta testing, CoCounsel Drafting substantially reduces the amount of time spent drafting,” said Jake Heller, head of Product, CoCounsel, ��������. “With CoCounsel’s new drafting capabilities, customers get the benefit of simpler, more efficient processes that increase productivity, streamline drafting, and save huge amounts of time, all without compromising quality. Bringing CoCounsel’s technology to drafting will tackle problems no other solution can.”

CoCounsel Drafting is the most recent milestone in the �������� vision to provide every professional it serves with a generative AI assistant. For more information on CoCounsel Drafting, read the press release or visit .