Thomson Reuters today (15 July) announced the launch of CoCounsel Drafting, a new document drafting solution within Microsoft Word that extends the functionality of TR’s generative AI assistant and leverages Practical Law content along the way. These capabilities are available today in the United States, with more on the way this year including litigation drafting capabilities. CoCounsel Drafting will be available in the UK later this year with availability in Canada to follow.
The solution allows legal professionals to find the best starting point from their own databases and/or Practical Law templates; use content from Practical Law alongside their legal department’s or firm’s contract repository to draft or revise clauses; automate deviation analysis using Practical Law contract playbooks; and correct common drafting errors.
In a webinar showcasing the new drafting capability, TR’s chief product officer Kriti Sharma said: “Within the next three years we believe every lawyer will have a gen AI assistant of their own.”
She added: “We know drafting has substantial pain point that need to be solved. 40-60% of a lawyer’s time is spent drafting legal documents or contracts. This is time that could be spent on higher value work or giving people time back.”
Demonstrating the functionality of CoCounsel Drafting, Loryn Limoges, product manager and drafting subject matter expert at Thomson Reuters said that the new tool is powered by Thomson Reuters content, but she added: “We realised that surfacing customer content at the point of review is essential to solve the jobs to be done while drafting.”
When reviewing a contract in Word you can ask CoCounsel to draft a specific clause, leveraging large language technology but grounded in Practical Law. It will show which Practical Law research was considered.
Thomson Reuters has been working with several customers in beta.
Lagerlof dates back to 1908 with lawyers of all seniority and managing partner Joshua Driskell said during the webinar: “Across the board whether new or older in practicing life our lawyers were asking about how we are implementing or thinking about AI, particularly from client perspectives and security perspectives and we were hoping to find a tool we can rely on and that understood the work product we are in and out day in and day out. That’s what caused us to look at CoCounsel Drafting and adopt that type of solution.”
He added in a statement accompanying the announcement of CoCounsel Drafting: “Many of our attorneys – at various stages in their careers – are already using CoCounsel Drafting. Its seamless Microsoft Word integration means they can begin using it with little training and begin realizing ROI almost immediately. Based on our team’s experiences, I know using this tool will save an attorney at least one to two hours overall on a project. And the integration of Practical Law with CoCounsel Drafting, both working from within Microsoft Word, allows for a streamlined workflow with fewer distractions.”
At young UK systems change company Systemiq, legal counsel JJ Ball said in the webinar: “As a young startup company working in numerous different advisory spaces we have so many different legal structures we’re dealing with as a team. We have corporate advisory, contract, alliance and coalition building, philanthropy, grants and transactional spinouts. So we’re not operating on a standard goods and services basis. We’re offering a very bespoke service across many platforms. The idea was to have a tool to integrate drafting and options across all those different legal structures is the first key area. That comes down to not having a set of core templates that we’re constantly operating off and having to adapt to client demand and bespoke legal structures. Thats the first area where we have seen real benefit.
“Secondly, as a young company we’re still finding our feet in developing playbooks and this is a great tool to help us develop those playbooks as we try to form the types of legal agreement that we want to use going forward as company.”
He added in a statement: “There is substantial time savings when using CoCounsel Drafting. When we are operating on an average turnaround time of three to four business days for a response, we can cut that down to one to two business days by utilizing the tool to get drafting work done.”
CoCounsel is an AI assistant underpinned by Casetext, which Thomson Reuters acquired last year. “Lawyers can often spend a significant amount of their time drafting legal documents and reviewing contracts, and based on feedback in our beta testing, CoCounsel Drafting substantially reduces the amount of time spent drafting,” said Jake Heller, co-founder of Casetext and now head of product at CoCounsel. “With CoCounsel’s new drafting capabilities, customers get the benefit of simpler, more efficient processes that increase productivity, streamline drafting, and save huge amounts of time, all without compromising quality. Bringing CoCounsel’s technology to drafting will tackle problems no other solution can.”
More information on CoCounsel Drafting can be found here.