Improving work-life balance and increasing productivity: is the future of the legal profession already here?
Imagine approaching a routine task with the groundwork done for you. For lawyers who conduct legal research, this can be a reality, thanks to the launch of AI-assisted research on the Westlaw Precision Australia platform by Thomson Reuters.
Typically, legal work, including research, can take days or even weeks, based on the complexities and nuances of the law and facts in any case. In Westlaw Precision Australia, lawyers can ask the AI-assisted tool a legal question, just as they might ask a trusted colleague. The tool reads and responds to the question at superhuman speed, using Thomson Reuters’ trusted content.
As AI technology aids the legal profession by simplifying research, James Jarvis, the vice-president of global legal solutions for Thomson Reuters Asia and emerging markets, says there are enormous implications for lawyer workflow and the profession more broadly.
“This is at the heart of AI-assisted research on Westlaw Precision Australia; less time hunting for relevant information unlocks time to focus on other things, such as the quality of work product and legal strategy,” he says.
If lawyers spend less time finding the law, they have more time to spend on creative advice and strategy to achieve the best outcomes for clients.
Jarvis says Thomson Reuters is developing responsible AI focused on augmenting and accelerating how lawyers work, rather than trying to replace them with technology.
Driven by natural language, generative AI is human centric
Thomson Reuters is synonymous with information. The company has been a provider of legal information in Australia since 1898. Globally, it leads knowledge communities with technology-based solutions across law, news and media, tax and accounting.
For more than a decade, AI has been used in Westlaw to enable information retrieval and document summarisation. The difference with Westlaw Precision Australia is that large language models (LLMs) have improved search responses in unprecedented ways.
Generative AI that uses LLMs is based on transformers trained on massive datasets – this is what the large refers to – enabling the network to learn context and meaning. It’s the learning and language that are key here.
James Jarvis, vice-president of global legal solutions, Thomson Reuters Asia. Photo supplied.
LLMs recognise, summarise, and generate natural language and content. Thomson Reuters’ use of LLMs is specifically focused on the legal information they provide to Australian lawyers.
“When answering the lawyer’s question,” Jarvis says, “we focus the LLM on the exact language of Australian law, and we tell the AI: ‘Don’t just answer the question based on your statistical understanding of language patterns; use that understanding and specifically use it with these Australian cases, legislation and regulations.’
One of the most powerful advances is generative AI’s capacity for understanding context, which makes results customised, adaptive and intelligible.
The rapidly advancing technology is only as relevant as the customers and clients at the centre of these deep learning technologies, Jarvis says. “Generative AI legal search on Westlaw Precision Australia is enabled by a conversational user experience, which humanises and simplifies our sophisticated legal technology, making it easier for lawyers to use every day.”
Unlocking value through the power of generative AI
AI-assisted research on Westlaw Precision Australia analyses and identifies Australian primary law relevant to the lawyer’s often complex and nuanced questions, delivering answers that are synthesised from the relevant passages of the law. Footnotes to the passages in identifiable legal authorities ensure accuracy and confidence, because the AI response is based on Australian law.
This is light years away from keywords and Boolean searches that restricted results to exact matches and required the lawyer to review long lists of cases, statutes and regulations.
“This is Thomson Reuters’ responsible AI at its best, shifting much of the research from the lawyer to the technology,” Jarvis says. “We’re accelerating and augmenting a thorough research process.”
There can be no doubt that AI is exponentially transforming our working lives, but lawyers have a low tolerance for bias, so the tools they use must be trustworthy and authoritative, not just fast.
“What we do know is firms are increasingly actively looking at ways to drive more value from the time they are given back,” Jarvis says.
Time translates to value, but the process must be trusted for it to be useful. Jarvis says the advantages that AI offers are in step with the trusted technological solutions Thomson Reuters has always delivered.
