Small Law Momentum: TR + Supio Alliance, AAA AI Arbitrator, S+S AI Internship, TLT Hire, Opus 2, and Legal Innovators

Legal AI News Wrap - 19 September 2025

Thomson Reuters partners with Supio to arm Small Law in personal injury

Thomson Reuters has formed a tech-sharing partnership with Supio, bringing Supio's CaseAware system to TR customers. The platform automates key personal injury and mass tort workflows across medical records, billing, and case prep. The US personal injury market is pegged at $61.3B, and this move pushes AI deeper into plaintiff-side work.

Jerry Zhou, Co-founder and CEO of Supio: 'Our partnership with Thomson Reuters means more firms can resolve cases faster and pursue greater justice for their clients.' Aaron Rademacher, General Manager, Small Law Firms, Thomson Reuters: 'This complements our unified solution in CoCounsel Legal by bringing specialized AI for personal injury and mass torts to our clients.'

• Why it matters: Productivity gains for plaintiff firms could compress case timelines and costs.
• Defense practices may see higher claim volumes over time, pushing more work to Big Law.
• Legal information giants serving both Small Law and Big Law stand to benefit from the volume on both sides.

AAA to launch an AI arbitrator for documents-only construction cases

The American Arbitration Association will introduce an AI arbitrator for high-volume, documents-only construction matters. It was trained on 1,500+ construction awards and uses a structured legal prompt library plus conversational AI to produce draft awards.

• Watch points: Transparency of training sources and reasoning, objection/appeal pathways, and human-in-the-loop safeguards.
• Track turnaround times, costs, and consistency across awards once deployed.

American Arbitration Association

Simmons & Simmons launches a two-week AI internship

Simmons & Simmons unveiled an intensive two-week internship offering hands-on exposure to tech-focused and legal AI roles. Peter Lee said the profession is moving fast on generative AI, and Minesh Tanna called it the only dedicated AI internship of its kind in the UK.

• Why it matters: Firms need hybrid talent that understands product, risk, and governance-not just prompts.
• Expect tighter hiring criteria and structured training paths for junior talent.

TLT hires Amy McConnell to expand FutureLaw

TLT appointed Amy McConnell, former Head of Legal Operations at Vodafone Group, as a partner in its FutureLaw team. She brings nearly a decade of legal transformation experience, including the launch of Vodafone's Legal Operations Consortium and GenAI program.

• Impact: GCs get seasoned guidance on operating models, tech stacks, and change adoption at enterprise scale.
• Expect more end-to-end transformation mandates across sectors.

Women in Legal AI roundtable: adoption playbook

A London roundtable hosted by Sabrina Pervez (SpotDraft) focused on practical adoption. Themes included culture, workflow integration, and proof of value.

• Culture & talent: Start small, prove wins, expand. Show ROI early to build trust.
• Integration: Fit tools into existing workflows to reduce friction and shadow IT.
• Measuring impact: Use NPS and simple tracking to quantify usage and outcomes.

Opus 2: AI features for litigation teams

A recent product walkthrough highlighted Opus 2's AI for document analysis, entity extraction, and deposition outline creation. It can summarize transcripts, flag inconsistencies, and run sentiment analysis to support case strategy.

• Use cases: Faster depo prep, targeted cross-examination, and streamlined evidence review.

Live webinars next week

"Adapt or Lag: Are Lawyers Learning AI Fast Enough?"
Tuesday 23 September - 14:00 BST, 09:00 EST
Speakers include Lucía Elizalde Bulanti (Dechert) and Alistair Wye (White & Case). Free to attend; RSVP required.

"AI Agents in Law: What's Next for Legal Judgment"
Thursday 25 September - 09:00 PT, 17:00 UK
With LegalOn's Daniel Lewis and Bärí A. Williams. Discussion spans agent onboarding/supervision, research at scale, and preserving human judgment.

• Up for discussion: What is a legal AI agent? Governance, supervision, and safeguards for high-stakes work.

Legal Innovators conferences - November 2025

Legal Innovators UK: 4-6 Nov (Law Firm Day: 4th; In-House Day: 5th; Litigation Day: 6th).
Legal Innovators New York: 19-20 Nov.
Organised by the Cosmonauts team. Get in touch if you'd like to participate.

Upskilling for legal teams

If you're building internal capability to evaluate or implement AI, structured learning paths help. See curated options by role here: AI courses by job.

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend.