Why Agentic AI Matters

The distinction between AI copilots and agentic AI solutions isn’t just semantic – it’s fundamental to how legal work gets done. While copilots offer suggestions and assistance, agentic AI like CoCounsel Legal takes on complex, multi-step professional work with advanced reasoning, authoritative content integration, and deep subject matter expertise.

The UK launch of CoCounsel Legal represents more than geographic expansion. It’s the convergence of critical innovations: Deep Research capabilities on both Practical Law and Westlaw Advantage, and seamless integration with existing legal technology ecosystems including Microsoft 365, document management systems, and ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê HighQ.

Sam Dixon, chief innovation officer at Womble Bond Dickinson, said: “We knew we needed to bring in a GenAI legal assistant to help us deliver the best possible service we can for clients. For us, the fact that CoCounsel had the ability to lean on the Westlaw content and the Practical Law content was really beneficial. And it already integrates with a lot of the rest of our legal tech stack, such as HighQ.”

CoCounsel Legal’s native integration with existing workflows means legal professionals don’t have to choose between innovation and productivity – they get both.

“We have found the working relationship with ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê very collaborative, transparent and supportive – real partners who go the extra mile to support us in getting value out of our relationship,â€� said Christina Demetriades, global operating officer, Accenture Legal. “CoCounsel is a massive opportunity for our function – we see it as a way of displacing outside counsel spend and augmenting our team in practice – I see it helping build the Future Ready Legal professional. I have already used it myself to prepare advice for our business on an upcoming opmodel transformation. It was a great value add.”

Deep Research: A Global First for UK Legal Professionals

The UK launch introduces several industry firsts. debuts globally in the UK, with its U.S. release set for February. The new brings professional-grade agentic AI research capabilities specifically tailored to UK legal content. Most significantly, both content sets are unified in a single platform, eliminating the need to navigate between systems while delivering comprehensive results across practice areas.

What makes Deep Research genuinely transformative is its ability to reason, plan, and execute comprehensive legal research autonomously. It doesn’t just retrieve information – it generates multi-step research plans, traces its logic with transparent reasoning, and delivers structured reports backed by Westlaw and Practical Law citations. Legal professionals can hand off complete research questions to an AI that understands the assignment, explains its process, sources its answers, and builds argument foundations, all with human oversight.

The Foundation for Professional AI

David Wong, chief product officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, said: “Professional-grade AI is fundamentally changing how legal work gets done, and with CoCounsel Legal, we’re delivering enterprise-ready agentic AI that helps UK law firms and legal departments future-proof their practices. This isn’t just about efficiency – it’s about empowering legal professionals with AI that reasons through complex problems, integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, and scales across entire organizations while maintaining the trusted, authoritative foundation our customers depend on. This isn’t just about convenience – it’s about delivering real value to our clients and their work.”

That foundation – combining advanced reasoning models, authoritative content, deep subject matter expertise, and native integration – represents the essential components needed to complete complex, multi-step professional work. It’s what separates professional-grade AI from consumer-grade tools, and what makes CoCounsel Legal uniquely positioned to transform how legal work happens in practice, not just in theory.

Looking Ahead

The UK launch of CoCounsel Legal signals a broader shift in how professional services will be delivered. As agentic AI capabilities mature and expand, the question isn’t whether AI will transform legal work – it’s whether legal professionals and organizations will embrace tools purpose-built for their needs or settle for generic solutions that promise much but deliver little.

For UK legal professionals ready to explore what professional-grade agentic AI can do for their practice, the opportunity is here. The future of legal work isn’t waiting – it’s embedded in the work itself.

Learn more about .

¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê President and CEO Steve Hasker shared a state of the industry outlook, noting generative AI is as disruptive and transformative as previous technology shifts yet is happening even faster. He emphasized what differentiates ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, including investments the company is making in generative AI to enable professionals to accelerate and streamline entire workflows and deliver more value for clients. ÌýÌý

Hasker said ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê has invested more than $200M in AI in the last year. He discussed the company’s vision to provide each professional it serves with an AI assistant; the launch of CoCounsel 2.0, which generates answers three times faster than the previous version; and new work with Microsoft on autonomous agents to increase revenue, reduce costs, and scale impact for customers. ÌýÌý

Tax, Audit & AccountingÌýÌý

“AI is not just changing the landscape of accounting, it’s reshaping it.â€� That was the message from Elizabeth Beastrom, president of Tax & Accounting at ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê. Ìý

While the profession sees AI as a game-changer to help them work differently, tax and accounting professionals also continue to wrestle with the perennial challenge of a talent shortage. This, combined with escalating complexity and more tax regulations, as well as changing client expectations, leaves tax professionals in need of a critical solution.Ìý

¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê sees the potential of AI to help alleviate these challenges by augmenting human capabilities. Automating mundane, time-consuming tasks will enhance efficiency for tax professionals, helping them reclaim time to channel into higher value tasks. ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is working to bring the power of generative AI, machine learning and automation into its solutions in the following ways:

1. Saving time in tax preparation:

Coming in beta during the upcoming busy season, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê will launch an AI-assisted tax preparation experience to increase firm efficiency. The solution combines the power of CoCounsel, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê professional-grade generative AI assistant, with workflow automation and software integrations. It supports the delegation of data gathering to simplify mundane tasks and automate tax preparation. ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê research shows that customers using this solution will save at least two hours per 1040 tax return on average.Ìý

2. Supporting firms’ growth with advisory: Ìý

As client expectations continue to evolve, they’re increasingly looking to their accountants as trusted advisors. Firms of all sizes are focusing on growing their advisory practices to help bring their clients additional value, as well as supporting their growth. In 2025, the ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê Advisory Solution will combine the power of CoCounsel and Checkpoint content to identify advisory opportunities. Advisory services are integrated directly into a firm’s practice, with technology empowering junior staff to take on higher-value advisory work and seasoned professionals to move beyond technical expertise to value-added synthesis. Ìý

“It helps firms build their advisory practice with confidence to deliver unprecedented value to meet clients’ evolving needs,â€� said Nancy Hawkins, vice president of Product Management, Research.Ìý

3. Transforming audit efficiency:Ìý

Halving sample sizes, boosting efficiency and sharpening the focus on high-risk areas are all at the heart of ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê Audit Intelligence Analyze solution, which launched in October. Further functionality will be coming in 2025 as it expands the Audit Intelligence suite capabilities. ‘Test’ will support with automating substantive testing with dynamic transaction tracing, while ‘Plan’ will harness full data populations with cutting-edge analytics for superior risk assessment. Both will launch with beta programs next year, along with the addition of CoCounsel to the Audit Intelligence suite.Ìý

All three solutions – Review Ready, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê Advisory Solution and the Audit Intelligence suite – will be further enhanced with ²Ñ²¹³Ù±ð°ù¾±²¹â€™s generative and agentic AI capabilities.Ìý

CorporatesÌý

Laura Clayton McDonnell, president of the Corporates segment, shared how enterprise technology, including AI and generative AI, is revolutionizing the profession with innovative and emerging solutions. She emphasized that companies are taking a streamlined and proactive approach to addressing risk and compliance across the enterprise, while driving towards their business goals, will maintain their competitive advantage. Clayton McDonnell also shared how organizations are using solutions including ONESOURCE Pagero, CoCounsel Core, Legal Tracker, Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel and CLEAR to solve challenges and realize value for their business.Ìý

In addition, Ray Grove, head of Corporate Tax and Trade, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, highlighted the company’s efforts to build a seamless, integrated compliance network, and Kevin Appold, vice president of US Public Records, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, shared how the company’s risk and fraud solutions play a critical role in the convergence of compliance and commerce. Also, Valerie McConnell, senior director of CoCounsel Customer Success, discussed how CoCounsel is transforming the general counsel’s office.Ìý

LegalÌý

A highlight from the Legal Professionals segment included an in-depth look at the ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê 2025 AI product roadmap from David Wong, chief product officer; Mike Dahn, head of Westlaw Product; and Valerie McConnell, senior director of CoCounsel Customer Success. They outlined upcoming generative AI features and innovations to support legal professionals, including deeper integration of CoCounsel 2.0 in Westlaw and Practical Law plus generative AI research features including Claims Explorer, Mischaracterization Identification in Quick Check and AI Jurisdictional Surveys.Ìý

Legal SYNERGY attendees also participated in interactive sessions and CLE courses on advanced prompting techniques, the science behind large language models, and optimizing generative AI for tasks like drafting and legal research. Sessions offered attendees a comprehensive view of the future of AI in law. Ìý

SYNERGY 2024 also included several customer panels and executive briefing sessions. Watch the Innovation Blog for highlights from these sessions and for 2025 product and innovation highlights.Ìý

“As fast as it started, it really feels like in the last year, there’s been an even more rapid acceleration, and many companies racing to become leaders in this field, including ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê,â€� said Joel Hron, chief technology officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê.

Hron and David Wong, chief product officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, shared their takes on the most significant advances in generative AI technology, including improvements in accessibility to the technology, with more developer tools alongside reduced costs and more out-of-the-box capabilities.

Wong said he’s most excited about large language models’ ability to have longer context windows, enabling them to keep more information in their short-term memory and answer ever-more complex questions.

“That’s critical for the way ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê uses a lot of these models,â€� Wong said.

“The agentic behaviors of the models have become more robust in their ability to plan and ability to use reason over complex information,� Hron added.

They also discussed balancing the need to innovate and go fast with the need for ethical, responsible and high-quality AI development.

Wong noted how ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is best positioned to develop professional-grade AI, grounded in fact and data. He emphasized customers’ need for measurable solutions, so they can discern tools’ accuracy rates, as well as the need for security and privacy.

Wong said ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê has the scale and infrastructure to understand customers’ needs and develop solutions to solve their biggest challenges, guided by a philosophy and process that ensures the right balance between moving fast and ensuring quality.

Hron said the company’s human-centric approach to AI development is key.

“Our human expertise at ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê and the level of rigor and quality we put behind both our content and our products for many years has really been a cornerstone of our brand,â€� Hron said.

Hron said the iterations between technology and domain experts are crucial to how ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê helps customers streamline their workflows with AI, such as with AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core.

They also highlighted the ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê acquisition of Materia, an AI assistant and platform for accounting and auditing professionals.

“It’s a reinforcement of our belief in AI assistants being in the hands of every professional and a reinforcement of our commitment around AI across our entire product portfolio,� Hron said.

He added that ²Ñ²¹³Ù±ð°ù¾±²¹â€™s strengths have included leaning into the long context and multimodal capabilities of generative AI as well as enabling agentic behavior.

Hear more of Wong and Hron’s insights on Materia as well as the evolution of generative AI in the of the TechConnect series, which brings diverse and dynamic perspectives from all corners of the technology world with thought-provoking questions and conversation.

In April of this year, we shared our vision to provide a GenAI assistant for each professional we serve. CoCounsel embodies our ongoing efforts to augment professionals’ work with GenAI skills, enabling professionals to accelerate and streamline entire workflows to increase efficiency, produce better work, and deliver more value for their clients. Our continued investment in GenAI is driven to enable professionals across industries to accelerate and streamline entire workflows through a single GenAI assistant.

We believe our investment in GenAI – along with our integration to customer data as well as third-party integrations – extends the value customers derive from CoCounsel beyond our connected experience and our verified and trusted content. Our work with Microsoft, for example, includes CoCounsel integrations across Word, Outlook and Teams – meeting professionals where they’re already working.

AI and large language models are proving to be powerful tools that deliver efficiency gains and strengthen research practices for our customers. Yet our efforts to redefine work with GenAI are rooted in our strong foundation of editorial enhancements, authoritative content and technological expertise, alongside our long history of working closely with customers. That’s why we continue to build out AI- and non-AI-powered solutions to help with the entire workflow for legal, tax, and risk and compliance professionals. While AI may not be perfect, it can significantly help professionals reduce the amount of work and manage more complex and substantive work more efficiently. We collaborate with our customers to help them understand that AI is an accelerant rather than a replacement for their own research.

Benchmarking expectations

As a leader in innovation and AI research, we recognize the role that independent benchmarking brings in ensuring the accuracy, transparency, and accountability of evolving GenAI solutions. We believe that benchmarking can improve both the development and the adoption of AI. We also see it as one component in a broad range of ways we consider and understand the benefits AI delivers for our customers. We work with our customers as their trusted partners for change, helping them to confidently understand and adopt new technologies, looking at both their immediate value and role in long-term transformation, and leveraging our deep understanding of their businesses.

At ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, our understanding of the holistic value of our products is based on customers’ usage and the benefits they derive. Our customers have run more than 2.5M searches through AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision since its launch late last year, and they tell us it’s saving time and improving productivity. Similarly, internal testing of CoCounsel’s skills has yielded impressive results, particularly with regards to CoCounsel’s document review capabilities.

Our benchmarking support is reflected in our participation in studies including Vals.ai as well as two consortium efforts – from Stanford and Litig – exploring how to best evaluate legal AI. We are submitting CoCounsel AI skills to the Vals.ai benchmarking study in five areas of evaluation – Doc Q&A, Data Extraction, Document Summarization, Chronology Generation, and E-Discovery.

is a first attempt at establishing a standard, and so we should view this work as the first iteration and an opportunity to learn versus treating it like a gold standard. For example, one limitation of the benchmarking methodology is that each vendor’s results are evaluated based on the text output alone, removed from the interface and experiences of the individual products. This discounts the work each vendor has done to design interfaces and safety features to minimize the harms of errors. This reinforces the need for a holistic evaluation of each product being tested, ideally as designed for the user.

Looking ahead, my expectation is that, while accuracy will continue to improve, no products will produce answers entirely free of errors. And as we’ve shared with our customers, every AI product requires human expertise for verification and review – regardless of the accuracy rate. As the current approach to benchmarking rates an accuracy percentage – we need to be very clear on this point – whether the product produces a score in the low or high 90th percentile, all answers still must be checked 100% of the time.

I look forward to our ongoing collaboration with customers and industry partners as we continue our work towards minimizing inaccuracies and increasing the usefulness of the research outcomes for GenAI tools and all our solutions.

In the latest , Blanchfield shared how the power of generative AI – and the dramatic leap it’s making in how professionals across industries can access large quantities of data – is transforming the legal industry and beyond. Blanchfield credits the more than 1,500 attorney editors on her team, who create and enhance content, with harnessing the power of generative AI for legal research.

Human expertise is just one component of how ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is capitalizing on the potential of generative AI. Three elements are critical, as David Wong, chief product officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, noted in his comments about the launch of CoCounsel 2.0 at ILTACON: “We have the data, the expertise, and the tech. Few have all three in such quantity and depth.â€�

In the new , Wong focused on the role of human domain experts, noting they’re key to the process of creating and validating data used by AI models for professional research.

“There’s a lot of both prompt engineering, fine tuning, and system refinement that’s necessary to get quality to a usable spot,â€� Wong said. “Experts, experienced researchers and experienced lawyers can help to gauge whether or not the systems are correct. We couldn’t have an objective, quantified measure of quality on these systems without the editors, without those experts.â€�

Wong and Blanchfield discussed the importance of human experts in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI.

“Maintaining accuracy is at the heart of what the editorial team does,� Blanchfield said. “It’s the number-one priority across every editorial team. We maintain our content to be accurate and trusted.�

Wong acknowledged it’s challenging for the team to process and update unstructured, constantly changing data in real time. He said that ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê ensures that its AI models are customized and meeting the varying needs of various jurisdictions through a combination of software and algorithms that take advantage of the LLMs.

“So when you ask a question of , for example, we are running an end-to-end algorithm which runs search, retrieves data, re-ranks, interprets and then ultimately passes that information to a large language model to synthesize and produce the answer,â€� Wong said. “It’s a very complicated system which involves multiple types of technology, multiple types of information retrieval.ÌýProcessing unstructured, dynamic data and customizing AI models requires integrating multiple technologies and algorithms to optimize performance.â€�

Hear more of Wong and Blanchfield’s insights on integrating AI into professional tools and ensuring that information is trustworthy in the of the TechConnect series, which brings diverse and dynamic perspectives from all corners of the technology world with thought-provoking questions and conversation.

“When I think about efficiencies in the tax industry, especially given the staffing shortages and the uptick in retirements, efficiencies are so important and a huge driver for the development of our tax tools,� Hawkins said. “We know from our research that customers are prioritizing these efficiency gains and looking to technology to really help them unlock them.�

Wong cited findings from the latest ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê Future of Professionals report that demonstrated a shift in the tax and accounting industry’s adoption of AI tools.

“In contrast to a year ago, where we had the most excitement and the most interest from the legal industry, this year in 2024, we’ve had a much clearer signal from the tax, accounting and audit industry that they are ready and eager to apply some of the AI technology to their work to seek efficiencies,â€� Wong said.

He added that this shift can help the tax and accounting industry address a labor crunch.

“There aren’t enough CPAs or enough people who are willing to jump into the tax and accounting profession, and technology is seen as this sort of savior for this ever-growing pile of work within the industry,� Wong said. “AI is one additional set of tools to help the industry get to a new frontier of automation.�

Wong and Hawkins noted that AI tools must work in conjunction with the other workflow tools tax and accounting professionals already depend on.

“The exacting nature of the tax profession is extremely unforgiving when it comes to inaccuracies or mistakes,� Hawkins said. “As we put our AI-Assisted Research together, we really had that in mind – to help with making research more efficient for the new entrants into the industry.�

“Having an efficient way to research is critical,� Hawkins added. “The AI-Assisted Research that we have in Checkpoint Edge really allows someone to come in and simply ask a question, like you would to a trusted colleague down the hall and get an answer back that is easily digestible.�

Hawkins said she hears customers talk about how senior members of firms want to mentor junior members but don’t have the time. She said firm leaders are excited about how generative AI tools can help “upskill more junior members of a firm quickly to have the mature and robust conversations around tax topics.�

Watch theÌýof the TechConnect series, which brings diverse and dynamic perspectives from all corners of the technology world with thought-provoking questions and conversation.

“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 ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê,â€� Joe Patrice said in . “That’s because it was just last year. Since then, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê has worked to marry Casetext’s tool with TR’s treasure trove of data.â€�

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.

“¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê’ CoCounsel 2.0, which has a ChatGPT-like interface, now also connects with the user’s DMS to offer a more integrated, personal experience,â€� Marathe said. “Additionally, usernames, passwords and other log-in keys will also be standardized across various ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê applications, explained Jake Heller, CEO and co-founder of Casetext, part of ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê.â€�

Marathe added: “Essentially, this brings CoCounsel ‘on the same infrastructure’ as the user’s Westlaw and ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê applications, Heller said, creating a user-centric experience as opposed to a fragmented one.â€�

Richard Tromans David Wong, chief product officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, made during his ILTACON presentation on CoCounsel 2.0 about the strength of ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê data.

“David Wong, CPO, said that ‘this is the most meaningful work I have done at ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê,’â€� Tromans noted. “He then stressed the fact that they have all the three main food groups when it comes to AI tool development:Ìý‘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.â€�

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 ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, and read Innovation Blog posts for more product news, leader insights, and customer perspectives on how ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is paving the way for the future of professionals.

CoCounsel 2.0 draws on its robust set of specialized skills to handle complex, multi-step work, helping professionals quickly pinpoint key knowledge in vast databases, thoroughly communicate sophisticated information, and complete essential work with unprecedented speed.ÌýCoCounsel 2.0 generates answers three times faster than the current version, operates more intuitively, and delivers more thorough, nuanced results.

It also tests combining the unique capabilities and strengths from OpenAI, Google, and ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, such as its industry-leading content and legal technology.Ìý CoCounsel 2.0 will also bring additional and upgraded capabilities for legal professionals.

The just-launched Claims Explorer in Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel simplifies claims research by enabling legal professionals to enter facts and identify applicable claims or counterclaims. , the end-to-end GenAI-enabled solution from ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, accelerates drafting by as much as 50%.

“¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is here for one reason: to ensure our customers reliably and safely realize the greatest possible value from this generational technology—as quickly as possible,â€� said David Wong, chief product officer, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê. “CoCounsel 2.0 is founded upon our ability to combine our data, expertise, and trusted content with cutting-edge technology. Partnering with leading LLM providers is a key part of our strategy and will help us deliver even more for our customers, enabling them to accomplish what they need to evolve their businesses more quickly and more effectively than ever.â€�

Wong will discuss CoCounsel 2.0 with Jake Heller, head of Product for CoCounsel, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, and Kriti Sharma, chief product officer of Legaltech, ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê, in their ILTACON session, “Maximizing Impact and ROI: Harnessing the Full Potential of GenAI in the Legal Profession.â€�

“CoCounsel 2.0 is more powerful than the first generation of CoCounsel and accessible from within ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê products – beginning with Westlaw Precision and Practical Law – plus from within Microsoft 365, beginning with Word, Teams, and Outlook. It’s exactly what our legal customers are looking for,â€� Sharma said. “Debuting CoCounsel 2.0 at ILTACON is the perfect fit, as it’s all about realizing successful legal strategies for transforming the legal industry. I’m thrilled for the opportunity to share our powerful CoCounsel 2.0 vision and discuss how legal professionals can embrace professional-grade GenAI to streamline their workflows and boost productivity while maximizing ROI.â€�

“We’ve always been on the leading edge of emerging technology and it’s incredibly fulfilling to experience our vision – of providing every professional we serve with a GenAI assistant – becoming reality for our customers,� Heller said. “We’re seeing a growing maturity in the adoption of AI, and legal professionals are ready for the practical application and optimization of GenAI. CoCounsel 2.0 enables them to use GenAI to its fullest potential to drive efficiencies and productivity gains – working with the tools they already use every day.�

For more on CoCounsel 2.0, read the press release. Check out more Innovation Blog posts for product news, leader insights, and customer perspectives on how ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê is paving the way for the future of professionals.

They discussed the report’s findings around time-savings, noting that 77% of tax professionals believe generative AI is applicable to their industry, with potential productivity gains of up to five hours per week.

“There’s some pretty big implications of what this means for the tax and accounting space,� Wong said, noting generative AI tools could make tax season and other busy periods “way less painful� for accountants.

The report also found that 83% of tax professionals cited a lack of skilled labor.

“The talent shortage is real,â€� Beastrom said. “It’s been ongoing for the last few years and it’s definitely not going away. 300,000 people have left the industry between 2019 and 2022.â€�

She said the number of students getting bachelor’s degrees in accounting is down and cited Financial Times data on the number of people sitting for CPA exams, which hit its lowest level in 17 years.

“With less people going into the profession and more people retiring and leaving the profession, there’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage GenAI to support tax professionals to help solve that talent gap,â€� Beastrom said. “AI has the power to support increased efficiency, higher quality work, and greater value for our clients and our customers.â€�

She added: “If you’re a junior professional, AI is that springboard that can help accelerate your training and on the job learning, which is going to allow you to transition into higher value roles more rapidly. The work is more challenging and could significantly bolster your future progression within the firm.â€�

Wong noted AI may compress the time needed for accountants to advance in their careers, making the profession more appealing.

“I think there’s this exciting opportunity where the early stages in a career will get compressed,â€� Wong said. “Instead of having to wait five, six, seven years to become a senior, I foresee that with support from AI and the efficiencies you get, just the sheer amount of more work that you can do, you’ll get up to speed a lot faster. It might only take two, three or four years instead to be able to become a senior.â€�

Wong and Beastrom also discussed how the potential time savings from AI adoption could allow tax professionals to shift from transactional tasks to higher-value advisory roles, improving work-life balance and business growth. Overall, they expect the integration of AI will attract a broader range of talent with diverse skill sets to the accounting and tax industry, transforming it into a more dynamic and exciting field.

Watch the of the TechConnect series, which brings diverse and dynamic perspectives from all corners of the technology world with thought-provoking questions and conversation.

They offered advice on evaluating a vendor’s technology expertise, support services, and transparency. Also, they shared how firms and organizations can mitigate the risks posed by acquiring a vendor’s AI services while maximizing their investment in AI. Below are highlights from their conversation.

Keys to choosing AI vendors

To start the process of assessing potential AI vendors, Yaghoubi emphasized the importance of reviewing their experience and expertise “to allow your business to make informed decisions about whether to engage the vendor.�

Wong said that in addition to performance and cost, firms should consider safety and trust factors.

Ramanathan noted it’s important to consider whether you want a consumer- grade model – that’s cheaper – or a more reliable professional-grade model. He emphasized three criteria to focus on when choosing an AI vendor:

1. “What’s your philosophy and principles around how AI should be used?� He said asking a vendor this question allows you to see if your firm’s vision and long-term strategy and roadmap are aligned with the vendor’s approach.
2. Request a vendor’s references and testimonials. Ramanathan explained that firms and organizations should ask vendors how many customers are already using their solutions. “AI is still a game of scale,� he said. “You don’t want to be the first customer training a model.�
3. Clarify the level of support and training a vendor provides. Ramanathan said this is key to ensuring that all levels of staff are trained and can use the AI solutions constructively.

Wong added that the questions he receives from potential clients focus on data, technology, and talent. He warned that some companies simply repackaged existing large language models (LLMs) for legal use cases without adding much.

“Clients that are working with companies that are building AI have a say,� Wong said. “They can contribute, iterate, and build the products.�

Also, he stressed the importance of working with a vendor that knows how to customize solutions and integrate customer feedback into product development.

How vendors use data

Kapoor asked what customers should consider regarding how vendors use their data. Wong said that understanding the data flow and how the data is processed are key, as well as understanding licensing and data rights, including intellectual property usage rights, cyber risk, and data leakage.

Ramanathan noted encryption standards as well as access control are critical as is demanding transparency from vendors: “You have the right to ask how the data your inputting is used.�

Ramanathan added, “Good vendors should have governance systems that answer� details such as where data is stored and who has access to it.

“Look for transparency� on data output

Wong advised firms to “look for transparency� from vendors, making sure they provide qualitative and quantitative information about the quality of their outputs. He said vendors should be guided by a set of AI principles and should follow a data governance and AI model governance process to mitigate hallucinations and potential risks.

Ramanathan noted that good vendors conduct regular model validation on a periodic basis. He also flagged that professional-grade AI solutions – unlike consumer-grade AI solutions – give a sense for the reliability of the answer.

Data output considerations also include encryption standards as well as vendors’ privacy and security policies. Ramanathan said a baseline is compliance with standards such as GDPR and CCPA.

“The privacy and security measures a vendor takes are a result of their philosophy about AI and how to use AI,� Ramanathan said. “It gives you a clue as to what you can expect downstream in terms of execution.�

Ramanathan added that vendors should share their risk management framework and enterprise risk framework as well as disclose how frequently they conduct audits and what mitigating actions they put in place.

Wong added that most firms and organizations have “tried and tested approaches for technology procurement� that they should apply to assessing AI vendors too.

Lack of AI-Specific SLAs

When exploring initial and ongoing training and documentation, Shokoh asked if AI service-level agreements (SLAs) are similar to those offered for SaaS-type platforms.

Ramanathan said there are elements of SLAs similar to cloud software “that you can and should expect,� such as uptime and maintenance. He noted the hard part is the lack of industry standards for AI-specific SLAs to address issues like response time and accuracy.

In the absence of industry standards, Ramanathan recommended asking questions around issues like product reliability controls and internal testing programs.

Going above the legal requirements

Part of assessing an AI vendor involves anticipating it will adapt to new and changing AI regulations, given the lack of a comprehensive federal law in United States and various states implementing their own guidance.

“There’s wide range and little consistency across the market,â€� Wong said. “What ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê has done is look at AI standards in all the markets that we operate in and identify the most restrictive standards. We use a combination of the NIST standards and the EU AI directive as the basis for much of our governance framework.â€�

Wong added that ¶¶Òõ³ÉÄê applies this viewpoint to its risk management framework and to its data and AI model governance framework.

“We projected what the regulation would be rather than look at where the regulation is today,� Ramanathan explained. “We proactively defined what we call our Data and AI Ethics principles, which are very hard-coded guidelines that go into engineering our products as well.�

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