There’s a common warning in the age of generative AI: “Garbage in, garbage out.”
In other words, there is no quality AI output without quality human input. It’s a message Thomson Reuters has clearly taken to heart.
Thomson Reuters employs more than 650 attorney-editors at Practical Law — all of whom have 10 or more years of experience in law firms or corporate law departments.
Not only are Practical Law’s AI products grounded in proprietary Thomson Reuters content, but their attorney-editors are also integral in the testing, grading, and development of the AI features.
This means that when an AI feature is being tested, there are attorney-editors — not just technology developers — vetting the quality of its outputs and guiding its development.
The Dynamic Tool Set features in Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.
These tools combine document templates, practice notes, and other guidance with generative AI to streamline litigation and transactional work.
If you’d like to try out the product, you can do so here. You can also read on for a tour of the Dynamic Tool Set functionality.
Search & Summarize Practical Law
The Dynamic Tool Set is accessible through a “toolbox” within Practical Law (pictured at right).
“Search & Summarize Practical Law,” the newest feature, leads the group.
As its name suggests, this tool is a generative AI-powered solution that draws on varied resources to provide detailed guidance when searching the Practical Law database.
Its interface begins with simply asking it a question, which will prompt the tool to use a blend of traditional and AI-driven search technologies to run your query through Practical Law.
If you would like to refine your results, you may ask follow-up questions as well. For example, here is a query about defining “confidential information” in an NDA.
And here is the result for the query.
The tool ensures that only Practical Law content is used when the answer is generated, and this allows you to verify the answer against the source content right in the interface.
The Search & Summarize Practical Law results will include a citation directly to a Practical Law document, which can be previewed by hovering over the results with your mouse.
In addition to the answer to your question, the search will return Standard Documents, which are document templates like draft contracts. It will also return detailed Practice Notes from the Practical Law database. The tool searches across all Practical Law resource types to bring together a rich experience from across the content set.
Here are further results for the query about drafting an NDA. They include both Standard Documents and Practice Notes outlining the related legal issues.
When you open a Standard Document, you can simply download it as a Word document and begin customizing it to your matter. Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors are continually refining this content to ensure it’s up to date.
Detailed “drafting notes,” which provide analysis of the matter and related issues, accompany these documents. The drafting notes will often include typical negotiation points that may arise in a contract, along with the standard provisions that are included in similar deals.
It’s a feature that allows attorneys to easily anticipate these issues while gauging the industry standard.
Knowledge Maps
While one benefit of Search & Summarize Practical Law is finding documents that cover the exact niche you’re seeking, it’s not the only way to get that result.
For more visually focused researchers, the Knowledge Map tool provides an alternate way to get to the right topic.
In this view, your search for confidentiality agreements appears at the center of a circle, surrounded by multiple types of editorially curated resources.
Following one of the topics opens ever-expanding fields of related topics.
One particularly popular option is the “Toolkits,” which combine Standard Documents, Checklists, Practice Notes, and Legal Updates in one landing page (as seen at right, above).
Often compared to browsing a bookshelf, the Knowledge Map tool intuitively guides you to the precise information you’re seeking.
Quick Compare
Another popular tool, called Quick Compare, allows you to create custom charts with just a few clicks.
This chart, for example, reflects a search for minimum wage laws in several states.
The tool allows you to quickly get answers to legal questions in multiple jurisdictions.
With one click, you can access further detail as well, and all notes — like the detail on Hawaii’s minimum wage law above — are maintained and kept up-to-date by the team of attorney-editors.
What’s Market Analytics
Although it’s limited to certain practice areas, a tool called What’s Market Analytics also has many devoted users.
This tool allows you to quickly compare a provision of a deal with insights from public documents.
As with its peers, What’s Market Analytics draws heavily on the work of Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors, who ensure its information is accurate and up to date.
Its public merger database, for example, contains a running stream of publicly available merger information.
The attorney-editors summarize the deals, including analysis of specific deal points, while linking out to the related SEC documents.
The documents the editors create can be segmented with several filters, and can then be automatically pulled into a chart.
Here is the data and chart it returns on force majeure clauses in a subset of cases chosen by industry, jurisdiction, and other factors, for example.
One helpful feature: You can look at changes over time to view trends within a given industry, helping prepare you for negotiations.
Interactive Matter Maps
Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors have also put together the Matter Maps framework, which details the step-by-step process for a variety of legal matters while guiding you from beginning to end.
Here, for example, is a Matter Map for a bidder on an auction of a public company.
Each step in the process links to the relevant Practical Law resources.
Law firms can also customize the Matter Maps, including linking out to the firm’s own documents within its document management system, or creating specific Matter Maps unique to a particular team.
Dynamic Tool Set
It’s clear that the Dynamic Tool Set applications provide a seamless portal to help you realize the full benefits of Practical Law.
The tools allow you to better leverage the work of more than 650 attorney-editors in making your practice more efficient — and your research more thorough and effective.
Curious about learning more? You can try the applications out here.
The post Thomson Reuters Editors + Law-Based AI: Why The Sum Is Greater Than The Parts appeared first on Above the Law.
There’s a common warning in the age of generative AI: “Garbage in, garbage out.”
In other words, there is no quality AI output without quality human input. It’s a message Thomson Reuters has clearly taken to heart.
Thomson Reuters employs more than 650 attorney-editors at Practical Law — all of whom have 10 or more years of experience in law firms or corporate law departments.
Not only are Practical Law’s AI products grounded in proprietary Thomson Reuters content, but their attorney-editors are also integral in the testing, grading, and development of the AI features.
This means that when an AI feature is being tested, there are attorney-editors — not just technology developers — vetting the quality of its outputs and guiding its development.
The Dynamic Tool Set features in Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.
These tools combine document templates, practice notes, and other guidance with generative AI to streamline litigation and transactional work.
If you’d like to try out the product, you can do so here. You can also read on for a tour of the Dynamic Tool Set functionality.
Search & Summarize Practical Law
The Dynamic Tool Set is accessible through a “toolbox” within Practical Law (pictured at right).
“Search & Summarize Practical Law,” the newest feature, leads the group.
As its name suggests, this tool is a generative AI-powered solution that draws on varied resources to provide detailed guidance when searching the Practical Law database.
Its interface begins with simply asking it a question, which will prompt the tool to use a blend of traditional and AI-driven search technologies to run your query through Practical Law.
If you would like to refine your results, you may ask follow-up questions as well. For example, here is a query about defining “confidential information” in an NDA.
And here is the result for the query.
The tool ensures that only Practical Law content is used when the answer is generated, and this allows you to verify the answer against the source content right in the interface.
The Search & Summarize Practical Law results will include a citation directly to a Practical Law document, which can be previewed by hovering over the results with your mouse.
In addition to the answer to your question, the search will return Standard Documents, which are document templates like draft contracts. It will also return detailed Practice Notes from the Practical Law database. The tool searches across all Practical Law resource types to bring together a rich experience from across the content set.
Here are further results for the query about drafting an NDA. They include both Standard Documents and Practice Notes outlining the related legal issues.
When you open a Standard Document, you can simply download it as a Word document and begin customizing it to your matter. Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors are continually refining this content to ensure it’s up to date.
Detailed “drafting notes,” which provide analysis of the matter and related issues, accompany these documents. The drafting notes will often include typical negotiation points that may arise in a contract, along with the standard provisions that are included in similar deals.
It’s a feature that allows attorneys to easily anticipate these issues while gauging the industry standard.
Knowledge Maps
While one benefit of Search & Summarize Practical Law is finding documents that cover the exact niche you’re seeking, it’s not the only way to get that result.
For more visually focused researchers, the Knowledge Map tool provides an alternate way to get to the right topic.
In this view, your search for confidentiality agreements appears at the center of a circle, surrounded by multiple types of editorially curated resources.
Following one of the topics opens ever-expanding fields of related topics.
One particularly popular option is the “Toolkits,” which combine Standard Documents, Checklists, Practice Notes, and Legal Updates in one landing page (as seen at right, above).
Often compared to browsing a bookshelf, the Knowledge Map tool intuitively guides you to the precise information you’re seeking.
Quick Compare
Another popular tool, called Quick Compare, allows you to create custom charts with just a few clicks.
This chart, for example, reflects a search for minimum wage laws in several states.
The tool allows you to quickly get answers to legal questions in multiple jurisdictions.
With one click, you can access further detail as well, and all notes — like the detail on Hawaii’s minimum wage law above — are maintained and kept up-to-date by the team of attorney-editors.
What’s Market Analytics
Although it’s limited to certain practice areas, a tool called What’s Market Analytics also has many devoted users.
This tool allows you to quickly compare a provision of a deal with insights from public documents.
As with its peers, What’s Market Analytics draws heavily on the work of Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors, who ensure its information is accurate and up to date.
Its public merger database, for example, contains a running stream of publicly available merger information.
The attorney-editors summarize the deals, including analysis of specific deal points, while linking out to the related SEC documents.
The documents the editors create can be segmented with several filters, and can then be automatically pulled into a chart.
Here is the data and chart it returns on force majeure clauses in a subset of cases chosen by industry, jurisdiction, and other factors, for example.
One helpful feature: You can look at changes over time to view trends within a given industry, helping prepare you for negotiations.
Interactive Matter Maps
Thomson Reuters’ attorney-editors have also put together the Matter Maps framework, which details the step-by-step process for a variety of legal matters while guiding you from beginning to end.
Here, for example, is a Matter Map for a bidder on an auction of a public company.
Each step in the process links to the relevant Practical Law resources.
Law firms can also customize the Matter Maps, including linking out to the firm’s own documents within its document management system, or creating specific Matter Maps unique to a particular team.
Dynamic Tool Set
It’s clear that the Dynamic Tool Set applications provide a seamless portal to help you realize the full benefits of Practical Law.
The tools allow you to better leverage the work of more than 650 attorney-editors in making your practice more efficient — and your research more thorough and effective.
Curious about learning more? You can try the applications out here.
