Legal leaders who participated in the Thomson Reuters’ SYNERGY Sydney program in March shared their top legal tech tips.
The shift towards a digital future has accelerated the search for ways to stay ahead of the curve. Four legal leaders at SYNERGY Sydney shared technology insights based on their professional experiences.
Tip 1: Co-design tech solutions with your clients
For Susannah Wilkinson, Director, Generative AI (Digital Change), Herbert Smith Freehills, helping clients reach strategic business objectives means building cooperative partnerships, co-designing solutions, and harnessing innovative technology to address client needs.
“When we’re looking to deploy technology to solve client problems, obviously the clients know their business best,” said Susannah.
Susannah, in conversation with Catherine Roberts, Senior Director, AI and Legal Tech Asia & Emerging Markets, shares her observations on successful digital transformations within existing legal frameworks and advisory structures.
“We’ve got very high standards of how we vet and implement the technology, and that can be beneficial to clients because they know that we can deliver those trusted legal services with the support of trusted technology,” said Susannah.
Susannah has seen how emerging technology has evolved to support the delivery of legal services over the past decade. Based on her extensive experience, it takes specialised expertise to identify the right combination of legal services and technology that supports business outcomes.
“It’s so important to us that we keep our clients at the heart of what we do and also their objectives in delivering the best legal services with the best combination of technology,” said Susannah.
“We have the expertise in the selection of the technology,” Susannah concluded.
Tip 2: Look for “one solution that will solve all”
Dennis Tuan-Mu, General Counsel at The Ascott Limited, Australia, spoke about the positive experience he has had working with Thomson Reuters. Speaking with Tyrilly Csillag, Director of Legal Transformation, Asia & Emerging Markets at SYNERGY Sydney, Dennis explained how digital transformation has impacted the customer experience at The Ascott Limited, Australia.
“One of the things we’ve enjoyed working with you [Thomson Reuters] on is the full suite of legal solutions from Practical Law, CoCounsel, and HighQ,” said Dennis.
Thomson Reuters has been actively working on integrating its legal tech solutions and addressing potential challenges. The acquisition of HighQ in July 2019 has sped up the integration process. The focus is on creating workflow-centric LegalTech solutions to improve customer experiences.
Dennis is looking forward to the upcoming integration that will improve the existing Thomson Reuters LegalTech solutions that support The Ascott Limited Australia’s business processes.
“Like most in-house teams, [we’re] looking for one solution that will solve all,” Dennis added.
Tip 3: Identify the right partner for your specific needs
Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) offer specialised expertise, cost-efficiency, and the ability to manage high-volume tasks. According to Thomson Reuters’ Alternative Legal Services Providers 2025 report, law firms and in-house legal teams are increasingly finding value in using ALSPs to improve business operations.
“I think the traditional relationship of law firms and in-house as trusted advisors remains very strong. But what I see is that the ecosystem around that traditional relationship changes a lot,” said Priya Lele, Co-founder & Chair of She Breaks the Law.
In-house teams can leverage the evolving ecosystem, according to Priya, by identifying the right partners for specific needs. For example, ALSPs can handle high-volume work, legal tech providers can offer innovative solutions to business challenges, and consultants can assist with strategic and enterprise-wide initiatives.
Tip 4: Apply Agentic AI systems to process-driven work
Thomas Sander, Senior Director of Product Management at Thomson Reuters, believes the advent of agentic AI is the next big thing in LegalTech. Speaking with Jen Lee, Senior Proposition Manager at Thomson Reuters at SYNERGY Sydney, Thomas’ forecast is that Agentic AI will become more integrated in LegalTech from 2025.
“Users want more from a single task, to being able to do an entire workflow,” said Thomas.
Thomas predicts the rising impact of agentic AI applications in legal technology will further reshape processes and workflows this year. Agentic AI systems have the capability to automate multi-step workflows and handle working with real-time data.
The transformative influence of GenAI software development on manual workflow processes has been a major focus in recent years. The emergence of AI agents with autonomous capabilities can significantly enhance and continually improve professionals’ productivity.
Notably, human intervention is still an essential part of the process; no AI model can replace human intelligence. Agentic AI is designed to work autonomously through a step-by-step process within a dataset. Human oversight is required to fact-check the AI work and make the decision on the final output.
“I think that what’s important as we look at agentic AI is that the user needs to be guided and able to verify the work of the tool,” Thomas concluded.
VIDEO: SYNERGY Sydney 2025 | SOURCE: Thomson Reuters
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