The mixing of AI into authorized follow has reached a vital inflection level, and the dangers of selecting the mistaken answer prolong far past easy inefficiency.
For authorized professionals, the stakes are uniquely excessive: accuracy issues, moral implications, {and professional} requirements grasp within the stability with each AI-assisted job.
On the coronary heart of those challenges lies a vital distinction many corporations are solely starting to grasp: the basic 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 can be positioned to ship higher outcomes, keep aggressive benefit, and uphold the skilled requirements their purchasers depend upon.
Right here, we’re sharing some key distinctions, based mostly on a latest webinar sponsored by our associates at Thomson Reuters. (View the total recording right here. Registration is required, and CLE credit score is accessible.)
Belief Begins on the Supply
There are a lot 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 tens of millions 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 choices, the supply of AI-generated info turns into vital.
Drawing from the final 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 latest research.
Sure legal-specific instruments, in contrast, will draw on their very own curated physique of data, 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 Regulation, which ensures that extra degree of accuracy and recency,” she says. “The info is updated and never a weblog put up.”
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 Skilled Companies Report, 42% of authorized professionals anticipate that GenAI can be central to their workflow within the subsequent yr, and 95% say throughout the subsequent 5 years.
On if AI will make an affect on workflows, Pipitone says: “It’s not likely a query of if, at this level, it’s of how we try this responsibly and the way we incorporate the correct workflows into our follow to ensure we’re nonetheless fulfilling these moral obligations and doing proper by our purchasers.”
Doing so could be accomplished by analyzing the capabilities of a Massive Language Mannequin. The timeline ability in CoCounsel, for instance, means that you can create a chronology of occasions described in paperwork. What would often take a considerable period of time to finish manually can now be accomplished 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 data into any such system might violate confidentiality obligations, and even waive attorney-client privilege.
Authorized-specific instruments, in contrast, “are particularly constructed for that confidentiality and safety objective.”
These issues about knowledge privateness and privilege are important concerns 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 hot button is approaching adoption thoughtfully quite than avoiding it totally.
“Constructing that belief each with your self and with others in your agency is vital to adoption,” Pipitone urges, “So beginning small, verifying that output after which constructing from there to see the place the AI suits naturally into your workday.”
View the Webinar
For extra on sensible methods to implement AI and speaking AI use to purchasers, see the total dialog right here. (Registration is required, and CLE credit score is accessible.)
