Continued climb in law firm productivityÌý

I joined ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ 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.ÌýÌý

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.Ìý

Build, buy, partner strategyÌý

I’m pleased with the progress ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ 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.ÌýÌýÌý

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. Ìý

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.Ìý

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.  Ìý

A maturing marketÌýÌý

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.ÌýÌý

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.Ìý

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.Ìý

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.ÌýÌý

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.  Ìý

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

This is a guest post from Raghu Ramanathan, president, Legal Professionals, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ.Ìý

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 ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ, 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.