AI Unleashed: takeaways from the recent Thomson Reuters event

Innovation continues to be an important topic within the legal sector, with the recent rise of generative AI propelling the conversation into the spotlight. Last week, the firm co-hosted an insightful event with Thomson Reuters to discover how generative AI is impacting and transforming the industry, with a particular focus on knowledge management. 

As well as enabling peers and thought leaders to continue the wider AI conversation and consider practical applications, there were several takeaways that came out of the event: 

Generative AI presents great opportunities, but it isn’t magic! 

• New and emerging technologies will undoubtedly provide efficiency and productivity gains (for example, in legal research, document review, drafting and more), and this will allow legal professionals to focus on complex and strategic work streams. 
• But the message is still to proceed with caution; whilst generative AI and LLMs are very powerful, hallucinations and errors can occur so legal professionals must validate outputs. The real value from all of this will be seen when people and technology work together as one collective system.

Organisations and professionals need to navigate and embrace the oncoming change as AI’s influence on legal could be significant

• Whilst there are a whole host of risks to consider with using generative AI (including confidentiality, insurance implications, ownership over data to name a few), it’s clear that professionals are keen to get hands on with the tech; moving away from theoretical discussions towards wanting to see it in action. It’s now about equipping people with the right skills, frameworks, and environments to sensibly experiment whilst giving individuals space to be curious and identify relevant use cases. 
• Beyond just generative AI though, broader themes in this space remain important, including making sense of our data, understanding the real problems to be solved (to identify where “value” lies for both legal teams and clients), and the need for firms and legal professionals alike to remain flexible in this era of change. 
• Collaboration and knowledge-sharing within law firms will be key, with business professionals - such as Innovation, Knowledge, IT and Risk teams – working together and alongside legal teams to unleash the benefits of AI and ensure we are equipped to make well-informed decisions for the business and our clients. 

Finally, the future looks bright as product teams continue to look at ways in which AI can be integrated into their legal technology solutions. It’s likely that we can expect more vendor partnerships, collaborations, and consolidation of offerings across the legal technology and innovation market in the not-so-distant future. 

Thank you to those who attended, particularly those who participated in the sessions and to Thomson Reuters for co-hosting such a thought-provoking event.

This article was written by Alice Ratcliffe and Emma Sorrell.