Cocounsel Legal with Deep Research combines legal research, essential workflow automation, intelligent document management, and AI-powered legal aid. Content and technology vendors said deep research technology is not next to work. It is built into it and is designed to provide support for litigation, transaction work and regulatory analysis.
Cocounsel Legal with deep search is based on Thomson Reuters content and tools, including the Westlaw Advantage Legal Research Platform. In-depth research is built to infer, plan and deliver legal research findings. Agent Tool also keeps human reviewers in a loop, according to the company, by explaining the process, procuring their answers, and building the foundation for the discussion.
Meanwhile, another tool, Agent Guide Workflow, applies Agent AI to high friction legal tasks such as drafting privacy policies, complaints, discovery responses, and employee policies.
Agent AI and Law
This new research tool is due to the popularity of agent AI features in the AI market.
It is also an example of how AI technology is changing many industries.
“Legal professions, like any industry, will have to face the fact that AI can work more often and more and more than we can,” said James Michael Cooper, a professor at law school in Western California. “This new set of innovations will help promote that conversation in Agent AI and the legal field.”
While legal professions are mature in using AI technology, there are challenges to using AI closely in the law.
AI Tools and Legal Challenges
One of the issues is that some lawyers who used AI tools to research and write briefs got into trouble due to hallucinations.
For example, this week, an attorney in Springfield, Illinois was fined after a court found that some of the cases he briefly cited were absent.
According to Bradley Shimmin, an analyst at Futurum Group, more lawyers are facing investigations into the use of AI tools, especially when AI tools are misguided by cases, as many companies are likely to be attracted to tools like Thomson Reuters' Deep Research.
“Companies go with Thomson Reuters [other AI tools]Shimin said. He added that vendors have the experience and expertise to apply to the success of their systems, if they are resilient and adaptable to the environment.
However, providing technology-based legal experts like Deep Reuters could also be risky for Thomson Reuters, Simin continued.
“Cocounsel Drafting 'Stuff' definitely needs to have a robust system,” he said. “A system that allows companies to predict and correct challenges that they may not be able to predict or repair themselves.”
Thomson Reuters said it ensures that the information generated by deep research is validated.
“We ensure that the agent process uses Westlaw's research tools and curated content sets,” said Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw Products at Thomson Reuters. He added that the content set is kept up to date and is being analyzed by lawyer editors.
“Searching the open web is not remote,” Dern said. “Our agents search their curated, annotated, amended collections of laws, and they use Westlaw's tools to find the law very quickly.”
Furthermore, deep research ability works in the same way as how a lawyer does at the beginning of his or her research. Most lawyers learn from the documents they read and use that information to guide them to the laws they need to look up, the company said.
Cooper, Western California, said it remains important for lawyers to remain their own, despite the precautions Thomson Reuters took in deep research.
“We, lawyers, still have a key role,” he said. “We still need to read and reconstruct the output. But increasingly, we rely on automation to drive business decisions, legal opinions and client advice.”
Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget News Writer and Podcast host that covers AI software and systems.
