The most important skill new lawyers will need to thrive isn’t encyclopedic knowledge of case law, razor-sharp logic, or the ability to tolerate long hours 鈥� it’s adaptability. But what does that actually mean for a first-year associate starting their first job at a law firm? It means approaching the role as a continuous learner rather than someone who has “arrived” with their JD in hand.

Building An Adaptability Toolkit

Developing adaptability isn’t about becoming a generalist who can do everything 鈥� it’s about becoming someone who can quickly learn what each situation requires. Start by cultivating core habits and building your adaptability toolkit by:

Embracing technology: View legal technology as a collaborator, not a threat. The associates who thrive will be those who become fluent in leveraging the latest tools to produce higher-quality work more efficiently. According to a recent study, 28% of law firms are already using generative AI (GenAI) in their practices and 93% say GenAI will be a central part of their organization鈥檚 workflow within the next five years. So next time your firm introduces new research platforms or AI tools, volunteer to part of the beta test rather than waiting for mandatory training. This positions you as someone who embraces innovation rather than fears it.

Seek feedback on efficiency, not just accuracy: An adaptable associate might ask: “I completed this document review in eight hours 鈥� what would help me provide the same quality analysis in six hours next time?” This mindset shifts from time-based to value-based thinking, positioning new lawyers for success in an evolving market 鈥� and AI can help make this a reality by completing select tasks that take valuable time.

Participating in new experiences early in your career: Volunteer for cross-practice projects, client secondments, or firm innovation initiatives. The broader your exposure to different ways of practicing law, the more adaptable you’ll be when change inevitably happens. For example, if you’re a corporate associate, volunteer to help the litigation team with a discovery project 鈥� you’ll learn how the contracts you draft might be evaluated in disputes.

For first year associates to prove their value in this new world, it will require more than just hard work. You should put your energy toward higher-value tasks that put an emphasis on soft skills like adaptability, creativity, leadership, curiosity, and tech fluency. The work is no longer just about the volume of output produced; it is about leveraging all available resources 鈥� including technology 鈥� to achieve successful outcomes.

Lead Change, Don鈥檛 Just Follow It

To that end, adaptability remains the thing that will quickly separate the future leaders from the rest of the pack of first-year associates entering the legal workforce. While versatility as a skillset is not as easy to quantify as billable hours, it is a far more accurate measure of how well new attorneys are able to recognize new opportunities, embrace creative problem-solving, and adopt new approaches focused on achieving the best end result. This is the factor that will help law firms navigate the next decade of transformation 鈥� and the individuals prioritizing adaptability early in their careers will set themselves up as key drivers of the firm鈥檚 overall success.

Clients are demanding more value, transparency, and efficiency. Legal technology 鈥� from AI-assisted research tools to automated contract analysis 鈥� is redefining how law firms deliver services.

Today鈥檚 most effective legal professionals are those willing to rethink entrenched practices, test new technologies, and collaborate in ways that break down traditional silos. Adaptability in this context means not just keeping up with change but leading it. Start building your adaptability toolkit today, and you’ll be positioned to lead tomorrow’s legal innovations rather than scramble to catch up with them.

However, not using GenAI for work at all is a non-option. 77% of professionals believe AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work over the next five years, and 78% call AI a 鈥渇orce for good鈥� in their profession. In fact, 50% of law firms named AI among their top five strategic priorities for the next 18 months. If there were still doubt, there definitely isn鈥檛 anymore: GenAI is here to stay.听

So how can conscientious 鈥� and forward-thinking 鈥� professionals make the most of this generational technology while guarding against its drawbacks? How do you know if the GenAI solution you鈥檙e considering will live up to your professional obligation to work ethically and ensure your clients鈥� data is securely handled? Is any GenAI product trustworthy? Is it even possible for tools built on large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o from OpenAI and Google鈥檚 Gemini, all of which are known to hallucinate, to be safe enough to use professionally?听

Yes, it is possible. 鈥淏uilt on鈥� is the key. When we launched our GenAI assistant, CoCounsel, our product and engineering teams delivered on the challenge of creating a product that could take advantage of LLMs鈥� tremendous raw power while eliminating as many of their serious limitations as possible 鈥� like hallucinations 鈥� that curb the professional utility of models when used on their own. What makes the current generation of LLMs truly extraordinary, then, is not what they alone can do, but what they enable.听听听听听听

Using a model directly should be done with great caution and exposes users to risk if they use the output professionally. CoCounsel, on the other hand, harnesses that power and has engineered robust, well-tested accuracy, privacy, and security controls around it. In short: LLMs are the world鈥檚 most incredible engines. CoCounsel uses that engine to take you incredible places 鈥� places you couldn鈥檛 reach without these LLMs 鈥� safely.听

Why can professionals trust CoCounsel?听

We鈥檝e applied our technical and domain expertise to leading LLMs in creating and continuing to optimize CoCounsel, a first-of-its-kind product that both does more than LLMs can and corrects the problems that make them unsuitable on their own.听

In short, CoCounsel is a professional-grade GenAI assistant. And no professional should use a GenAI solution that isn鈥檛.听

What does it take for a GenAI assistant to be professional-grade? At a bare minimum 鈥� without which it should not be trusted for your work 鈥� it must be:听

1. Built for domain-specific use and grounded in reliable sources of data relevant to that use.鈥疉 professional-grade solution, such as CoCounsel, harnesses the power of LLMs but limits the source of knowledge to known, reliable data sources 鈥� such as profession-specific domains or professionals鈥� or their clients鈥� databases 鈥� which rigorously limits the possibility of inaccuracies.
2. Built to make verifying its output easy. CoCounsel was not designed to replace the role of the professional, but rather to help them accomplish more and higher-quality work in less time. So just as lawyers review all work delegated to a junior associate or paralegal, they must validate CoCounsel鈥檚 output. We鈥檝e made it easy to do so: all answers link to their origin in the source documents, so it鈥檚 simple to 鈥渢rust, but verify.鈥�听
3. Developed by technical teams with deep GenAI expertise.鈥� Though GenAI has only been broadly talked about since 2022, it鈥檚 been around since 1961. 成人VR视频 AI engineers and research teams have worked with LLMs since their invention, were among the first to build with GPT-4, and have invented patented approaches to applying LLMs to professional use cases.鈥�听
4. Continually and consistently tested and authenticated by a dedicated team of domain experts.鈥� 成人VR视频听AI engineers and Trust Team attorneys together filter, rank, and score CoCounsel鈥檚 responses to a daily battery of thousands of tests developed to simulate real-life legal use cases and ensure the assistant鈥檚 answers are consistent and accurate. To date we鈥檝e run more than 1,000,000 such tests against CoCounsel.鈥�听
5. Secure and private, because it interacts with third-party LLMs the right way. 成人VR视频 GenAI solutions access third-party LLMs through dedicated, private servers, and through an 鈥渆yes off鈥� API. No LLM partner employees can see customer queries or documents, and our LLM access is contractually 鈥渮ero retention.鈥� Our LLM partners cannot store customer data longer than it takes to process the request. Our product data is never used to train any third-party models. And all product data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and subject to 成人VR视频 rigorous security policies and practices. 听

Why 鈥渕akes minimal mistakes鈥� isn鈥檛 enough听

As important as the above five characteristics are, they鈥檝e become price-of-entry criteria for professional-grade GenAI. And given how rapidly the technology is evolving, what you expect from a professional-grade solution should, as well. Remember: GenAI has the power to do so much more than help you complete jobs. It can transform what it means to be a professional, freeing you for more strategic, creative, valuable work that a machine just cannot do 鈥� which can transform not only how you do business, but also how much business you do.听听

To take full advantage of this potential, you need a GenAI assistant that fulfills two more key requirements:听

1. Professional-grade means intelligently and seamlessly handling workflows, not just completing a series of tasks. A true GenAI assistant goes beyond responding to your requests, instead guiding you through the steps required to finish long, complex, even open-ended projects. Only this kind of product, such as CoCounsel, can truly unlock the full potential of GenAI.

Through an expanding set of capabilities and deep connections with both your documents and the tools you use every day 鈥� e.g., Microsoft 365 鈥� a professional-grade GenAI assistant can traffic an entire deliverable from task to task, program to program, in a continuous stream, prompting you forward through the next steps and simultaneously handling multiple pieces of the work itself.

CoCounsel is built for workflows. It鈥檚 accessible across multiple 成人VR视频 products, bringing together both fundamental capabilities such as summarization and document review with specialized functions such as legal research, for a smooth transition from one type of work to the next. And it鈥檚 integrated with both Microsoft 365 and document management systems, available for you literally wherever you鈥檙e working, from client communication to research to document drafting and beyond.

2. Professional-grade means providing partnership, not just product. Without in-depth, sustained support, you鈥檙e unlikely to get the most possible value from your investment. A professional-grade vendor offers a success and support team that will be there for you long after you鈥檝e signed a subscription agreement. They work with you to deeply understand your most prevalent use cases and how their solution will help you tackle them, and of course are available when something鈥檚 not working the way it should. They keep you informed about product changes and improvements and continue creating content you can use to increase your knowledge, such as videos, webinars, and written materials. A truly professional-grade team has a vision for their GenAI assistant, ensuring it will increase in power and capability as the technology advances. And most important, they are as invested in you as you are in them.

Upon adopting CoCounsel, legal professional users are trained by the 成人VR视频 Customer Success team, made up of licensed attorneys, many still practicing, with dozens of years of combined experience in both litigation and transactional law. And many of these trainers are prompting engineer specialists, who in addition to being licensed attorneys have a background in computer science. After onboarding, we ensure everyone using CoCounsel has the opportunity to attend live trainings and watch recorded webinars, get individual help through live chat and email, and access dozens of video tutorials鈥攁 resource pool that will only keep growing.

This is a guest post from Jake Heller, head of CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters, and Erin Nelson, CoCounsel content strategist, 成人VR视频.听听