Today Thomson Reuters announced the “Buy Now Program” which will enable law firms and legal departments to lock in pricing before the official rollout of their new CoCounsel Drafting solution.

 Rawia Ashraf, VP, Product, Legal Technology at Thomson Reuters provided a product walkthrough. She described the product as an end-to-end workflow solution for both transactional lawyers and litigators. The beta version of the transactional tool is currently available to 20 law firms and legal departments.

According to  a recent Thomson Reuters survey,  lawyers spend 40 to 60% of their time drafting and that 96% are dissatisfied with their drafting tools.

The CoCounsel Drafting tool is grounded in Practical Law content and will also allow firms to access their own Sharepoint document. The tool does not currently integrate with document management systems but that linkage is being developed.

Integration with Other TR products – the full functionality of the Drafting Tool  requires customers to also have subscriptions to Practical Law, Deal Proof and Westlaw when the litigation drafting tool is launched. WestKM, Thomson Reuters knowledge management solution was not mentioned as a potential component. Since many law firms still have not built workable KM solutions, is there an opportunity to address the KM gap by creating an AI enabled version of WestKM?

The Knowledge Management Gap.  many firms have not yet developed their own playbooks or curated precedent repositories, TR is prepared to help firms develop their own playbooks. As AI is integrated into the DMS products these new features should help firms identify and tag their precedent documents.

How it works.  Workflow is driven by CoCounsel drafting tool.Continue Reading Thomson Reuters announces the “Buy Now Program” for New CoCounsel Drafting end-to-end Solution.

Today Thomson Reuters is announcing the release of a new platform Westlaw Precision which promises to dramatically cut research time and improve the quality of research results. Westlaw Precision will be sold as an upgrade to Westlaw Edge. Westlaw Precision is tackling the gnarly and perennial problem of language ambiguity by doubling down on taxonomy. At launch, Westlaw Precision covers 8 topics (Commercial law, Federal Civil Procedure, Federal Discovery and Evidence, Federal Remedies, Federal Class Actions, Employment, Securities, and Anti-trust.) Fifteen new topics will be released through 2023. Only the most recent 12 years of caselaw in each topic are included in search results.

Westlaw Precision includes 6 new features at launch. Precision Research is the “Star of the show.” The other 5 features offer cite checking or workflow enhancements.

“Our customers tell us difficult legal research can often take more than 10 hours per case,” said Mike Dahn, head of Product Management, Westlaw, Thomson Reuters. “It’s time consuming because they are often looking for something very precise, but traditional
Continue Reading Westlaw Precision Launches With Promise to Cut Lawyer Research Time in Half

On Friday, I learned about two major legal publishers who are posting Ukraine related content outside their paywalls. ALM is offering a “special report hub”  on Law.com, which provide ongoing international coverage related to the war in Ukraine in and it implications for the legal industry. Thomson Reuters is tracking Russian embargo regulations on their Practical Law platform in a Russia Sanctions and Related Considerations Toolkit,

American Lawyer Media: Special Report Hub

Gina Passarela, Editor-in-Chief, Global Legal Brands (The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal, Law.com International, China Law & Practice) provided the following statement:

“ALM has created a special report hub to house all of its continuing coverage related to the war in Ukraine and its implications for the legal industry. This content, led by our global team of reporters at Law.com International and leveraging our reporting team from ALM’s legal, insurance, financial and
Continue Reading Ukraine Special Alert: ALM and Thomson Reuter Offer Free Ukraine Resources for Legal Professionals

Several months ago there was a “soft” release of a new  legal industry  news product–Reuters Legal News (RLN).  Today Thomson Reuters released several new features enabling lawyers and legal business professionals to create a customizable reading and alerting experience. Reuters which employs 2,500 journalists around the globe,  now has a team dedicated to writing, curating and tagging legal news so it can be easily customized for the busy lawyer. The RLN content is organized into four broad categories: Litigation, Transactional, Government and Legal Industry. There is a columnist dedicated to each of the four categories of legal news.  In addition to news from Reuters, the site includes selected content from Westlaw Today, The Thomson Reuters Institute, and Practical Law Updates.

Law Firms in the News

Account Setup. Accounts can be set up on the desktop at  www.reuters.com/legal or by downloading an ios or adroid app on your
Continue Reading Reuters Legal News – No Paywall! No Onepass!  Customizable Legal News

Better late than never. Here is my retrospective of top 2021 Dewey B Strategic posts.  The top stories reflect a wide swath of issues including rebranding, mergers, innovation, service disruptions, product realignments, launches, workflow and analytics. In looking at the list I am shocked to see that there is no reference at all to COVID-19.

Thomson Reuters Institute and the Center for Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown University have released the 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market: A challenging road to recovery. Law firms are throwing a lot of money at the talent problem and it may not be paying off… in fact history suggests that it may destroy some firms.  The report underscores the fact that many lawyers value “intangibles more than money” — and yet law firms continue succumb to the compensation “arms race.”

Are you at a “Stay Firm or a “Go” Firm? The report indicates that some law firms may lose almost 25% of their legal talent in a year. Ironically “stay” firms may pay less and have associates that work longer hours. Here is an enlightening chart comparing talent issues at
Continue Reading 2022 Report on The State of the Legal Market – Stop Throwing Money at the Talent War!

Only two days after I reported the end of evening and weekend Reference Attorney coverage, a representative from Thomson Reuters     reached out to me to report that the policy was being reversed. This was no doubt the result of the sputtering disbelief and outrage expressed by the law librarian community across the US.

Here is a statement from Thomson Reuters:

On Jan. 3, 2022, we adjusted how the Reference Attorney service is offered. We studied the issue and felt this adjustment of
Continue Reading Breaking News –Thomson Reuters To Reinstate 24X7 Research Helpdesk January 18th