This interactive webinar, hosted by Legal IT Insider’s editor Caroline Hill and featuring Ben Firth and Tim Coles from Thomson Reuters, dives into one of the most pressing questions in legal tech today: Should lawyers rely on general purpose AI tools like ChatGPT, or do they need professional grade, legal-specific solutions?

The webinar explores the practical, ethical, and strategic implications of AI adoption in law, with plenty of real-world data, candid opinions, and a live demo. Firth is director of sales and customer success at Thomson Reuters and Coles, a former solicitor at Fieldfisher, is legal knowledge and development advisor for CoCounsel.

We looked at what is meant by ‘general purpose’ versus ‘professional grade’ AI and whether/why it matters. Firth and Coles ran through some key points as to why they say professional grade AI is necessary and important, including the ability to verify sources and have the right security in place, as well as effectively indemnifying law firms in terms of output – a hot topic given the conversations that law firms are currently having with insurers right now.

We looked at the latest case law, as well as adoption data and statistics, and the session concluded with a live demo of CoCounsel. Coles demonstrated how CoCounsel uses retrieval-augmented generation to pull content from Westlaw and/or the likes of Chitty on Contracts rather than the general internet. Thomson Reuters is continuously updating its data and this data is not available or accessible to the public, Coles stressed.

This discussion, which comes at a time that people are asking serious questions about whether we need ‘legal tech’ over mainstream tech, was frank, practical, and full of insights for anyone navigating the evolving legal tech landscape.

To watch the replay, click HERE