Leveraging GenAI for Efficient Legal Operations
Corporate legal departments are changing the way legal professionals work by adopting Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). This technology streamlines routine tasks, improves output quality, and enhances compliance, leading to more efficient and effective legal teams. One notable solution is CoCounsel by Thomson Reuters, which meets key needs for in-house counsel.
Understanding GenAI
Generative Artificial Intelligence combines AI's ability to generate content—such as text, images, or videos—with large language models (LLMs) trained on extensive textual data. In legal work, where vast volumes of case law, regulations, and guidance exist, GenAI can provide valuable support by quickly processing and generating relevant information.
The Impact on Corporate Legal Departments
Research from the Thomson Reuters Institute shows that 81% of professionals see GenAI as applicable to their work, while 76% of in-house legal teams expect it to boost efficiency and help meet their goals. This reflects growing confidence in GenAI as a practical tool for legal tasks rather than just a new technology.
Quick Adoption and Increased Productivity
GenAI tools are designed for easy adoption. Legal teams can start using them quickly thanks to intuitive interfaces, without the need for lengthy training. This means legal professionals can deliver more work faster and focus their time on complex, higher-value activities.
Practical Applications of GenAI
Contract Review
Contract review is a critical process for in-house legal teams. GenAI can speed this up by creating redlines and risk assessments. For example, a GenAI assistant can compare a third-party contract against your company’s preferred terms and suggest specific amendments. This approach saves time and ensures contracts comply with internal policies.
CoCounsel supports this by comparing contracts to your company’s playbook, highlighting inconsistencies or risky clauses, so you can address them early. This helps maintain legal soundness and alignment with company standards.
Due Diligence
In mergers and acquisitions, due diligence often involves reviewing large volumes of documents. GenAI can handle stacks of data efficiently, providing detailed outputs and summaries. This process is faster and more accurate, helping legal teams focus on strategic decisions rather than manual review.
For instance, a general counsel at a home builder in Colorado reported reducing a task from weeks to just a couple of days by using CoCounsel to extract answers and summarize findings.
Compliance
Keeping up with new regulations is a constant challenge. GenAI can summarize lengthy rules and highlight key points. When a new regulation arrives, you can use a GenAI assistant to create concise summaries that support updating company policies.
CoCounsel can compare existing policies against new regulations to identify gaps that need attention. This is especially helpful for areas like data protection, ensuring your company stays compliant with current legal requirements.
Trust, Security, and Compliance
Using GenAI requires careful consideration of trust and security. Outputs should be verifiable, with links or references to original sources to confirm accuracy. Data confidentiality is crucial; your information must not be used to train AI models without permission.
CoCounsel is built with strong security features that protect your data and comply with legal standards. It provides current and accurate legal insights tailored to tasks like contract review, compliance, and risk assessment.
Embracing the Future
GenAI is changing how corporate legal teams operate by simplifying tasks, improving work quality, and supporting compliance. CoCounsel by Thomson Reuters offers a solution that integrates quickly and boosts workflow efficiency.
With the right tools, in-house counsel can shift focus to higher-value work and deliver better outcomes for their organizations.
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