The combination of AI into authorized follow has reached a essential inflection level, and the dangers of selecting the incorrect answer prolong far past easy inefficiency.
For authorized professionals, the stakes are uniquely high: accuracy considerations, moral implications, {and professional} requirements hold within the steadiness with each AI-assisted process.
On the coronary heart of those challenges lies a essential distinction many corporations are solely starting to grasp: the elemental distinction between consumer-grade AI and professional-grade AI.
Because the hole between “utilizing AI” and “utilizing AI successfully” continues to widen, authorized professionals who acknowledge and act on these variations shall be positioned to ship higher outcomes, keep aggressive benefit, and uphold the professional standards their clients depend on.
Right here, we’re sharing some key distinctions, primarily based on a current webinar sponsored by our pals at Thomson Reuters. (View the full recording here. Registration is required, and CLE credit is available.)
Belief Begins on the Supply
There are lots of sensible use circumstances for consumer-grade generative AI, from streamlining every day communication duties to enabling artistic experimentation, and these instruments have introduced AI capabilities to thousands and thousands of customers.
“Shopper AI does produce assured sounding outcomes,” says Thomson Reuters’ Maddie Pipitone. “And that may be nice for artistic functions, however not for skilled functions.”
For professionals who must make assured, defensible selections, the supply of AI-generated info turns into essential.
Drawing from the overall web, shopper AI instruments introduce uncertainty and will hallucinate knowledge or fabricate circumstances, requiring in depth validation. ChatGPT, for instance, has usually cited community-edited publications like Reddit and Wikipedia as info sources, Pipitone notes, referring to current research.
Sure legal-specific instruments, in contrast, will draw on their very own curated physique of knowledge, she says, rising the reliability of their giant language fashions.
“When you’ve got a software like CoCounsel Authorized from Thomson Reuters, it’s grounded in Westlaw and Sensible Legislation, which ensures that extra degree of accuracy and recency,” she says. “The information is updated and never a weblog submit.”
CoCounsel will cite to each supply, permitting you to validate all of its statements instantaneously.
AI is Right here to Keep
In Thomson Reuters’ 2025 Generative AI for Professional Services Report, 42% of authorized professionals anticipate that GenAI shall be central to their workflow within the subsequent 12 months, and 95% say throughout the subsequent 5 years.
On if AI will make an impression on workflows, Pipitone says: “It’s probably not a query of if, at this level, it’s of how we try this responsibly and the way we incorporate the best workflows into our follow to verify we’re nonetheless fulfilling these moral obligations and doing proper by our purchasers.”
Doing so will be completed by inspecting the capabilities of a Giant Language Mannequin. The timeline ability in CoCounsel, for instance, lets you create a chronology of occasions described in paperwork. What would normally take a considerable period of time to finish manually can now be completed in minutes, including worth to you and your purchasers’ time and making processes extra environment friendly.
Privateness and Privileges
Utilizing AI additionally creates complexities round knowledge privateness and attorney-client privilege, and key variations emerge between shopper {and professional} merchandise on this house.
Some shopper instruments can retailer your knowledge and use it for mannequin coaching, Pipitone notes, and you must affirmatively choose out to keep away from this.
Importing confidential shopper information into the sort of system may violate confidentiality obligations, and even waive attorney-client privilege.
Authorized-specific instruments, in contrast, “are particularly constructed for that confidentiality and safety goal.”
These concerns about data privacy and privilege are important issues for any authorized skilled evaluating AI instruments.
When corporations choose AI options designed particularly for authorized follow with strong safety measures, zero-retention insurance policies, and built-in privilege protections, the trail ahead turns into clearer. The secret’s approaching adoption thoughtfully quite than avoiding it fully.
“Constructing that belief each with your self and with others in your agency is essential to adoption,” Pipitone urges, “So beginning small, verifying that output after which constructing from there to see the place the AI matches naturally into your workday.”
View the Webinar
For extra on sensible methods to implement AI and speaking AI use to purchasers, see the full conversation here. (Registration is required, and CLE credit score is accessible.)
