Thomson Reuters invited legal tech enthusiasts to participate in an ‘AI Skills Challenge’ earlier this year. The group of in-house lawyers put CoCounsel, the professional-grade artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to the test. Participants instructed the AI model to perform tasks that would enhance providing legal advice to the business.
According to Tech, AI and the Law 2024, most in-house counsel (82%) believe AI tools can alleviate them of drudge work. Could CoCounsel lift the burden of drudge work for corporate counsel? In this article, we share participants’ first impressions and observations during the challenge.
How can CoCounsel support in-house counsel?
Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel is a professional-grade generative AI assistant for legal professionals. It comprehends legal queries at a postgraduate level. For example, CoCounsel delivers precise answers with source citations side-by-side for efficient accuracy checks.
It saves time for lawyers by processing content at superhuman speeds. This may include testimonies in legal documents, transcripts, to complex contracts.
The AI Skills Challenge demonstrated that CoCounsel can:
- Intelligently analyse documents
- Conduct sophisticated document search
- Summarise documents
- Produce accurate timelines
- Perform contract policy compliance
Lydia Albright-Le Page, Corporate Counsel at Nine Entertainment Co discovered novel use cases for AI in legal.
“The AI Skills Challenge provided a comprehensive overview of the different AI skills and products that lawyers, particularly in-house lawyers can use,” said Lydia.
“Then we had an opportunity to put them into more practical effect, through different workshops.”
Supercharged data synthesis and the ‘draft skill’
Legal counsel taking part in the AI Skills Challenge found that CoCounsel was highly efficient at synthesising data. It also offers a drafting capability that could unlock time for legal teams to do more.
The CoCounsel drafting skill can help legal counsel with creating, reviewing and refining documents. CoCounsel analyses large volumes of documents in minutes, and this enables lawyers to skip the heavy lifting.
Helen Zhang, Legal Counsel at SunRice, said that CoCounsel’s summarise skill was user friendly and reliable.
“I think for me, it was the ability to synthesise really large amounts of information in such a short amount of time, and it did it quite well” said Zhang.
“It was fairly comprehensive, a summary that you could sort of just tweak a little bit and then get across to your client as a final response.”
Miki Prochazka, Paralegal at Paypal Australia, also took part in the challenge. She found CoCounsel’s drafting skill to be the best use case CoCounsel that would support her at work.
“I was surprised by how well the CoCounsel was able to draft emails,” said Miki.
“I think that would be a massive time saver and a tool that I didn’t think would be so advanced.”
Integrating CoCounsel into the LegalTech stack
The AI Skills Challenge demonstrated how well CoCounsel integrates with existing LegalTech stacks.
Roderick Smith is Senior Legal Counsel at Novartis. The AI Skills Challenge helped him discover how AI could fit into his department’s legal technology stack.
“It was a great opportunity for me to get hands-on with Practical Law, Westlaw and also CoCounsel where you’ve got the integrations with Office 365,” said Roderick.
He also put CoCounsel and the integration of Westlaw to the test.
“…It was good for me to throw out a few curly questions that I’ve had recently and see what it comes back with.
“To see it returning answers that are not only familiar with the legislation, but addressing my question directly was quite amazing to see because it showed me how a tool like that could potentially return on its investment almost within the first question.
“To have that as a part of the toolkit would just be amazing for any in-house counsel,” he added.
CoCounsel’s integration with Practical Law will be welcome news for those who have the legal guidance solution. Katrin O’Sullivan, General Counsel at The Fred Hollows Foundation, is an existing Practical Law customer. She believes that the integration of both legal products is beneficial for her team.
“We’re already using Practical Law and it’s very useful for us because we work in 25 jurisdictions overseas,” said Katrin.
Access to knowledge overseas has reduced costs and increased capacity for the Fred Hollows Foundation in-house legal team.
“They’re very excited about the AI function and being able to ask more specific questions and just sort of get to the point more quickly,” Katrin concluded.
Stay informed on LegalTech and genAI technology trends at Thomson Reuters Legal Insight. Download the Tech, AI and the Law 2024 report: Australian edition for more insights on AI in legal.