Legal professionals are going crazy over the power of AI to revolutionize the practice of law, but it can be tough to decide which tools to rely on for your practice.
Man, this is an incredibly exciting time where technology meets professional information, you know? Thomson Reuters CEO, Steve Hasker, wrote for Reuters, saying, “We’re on the cusp of a revolution that brings professionals faster access to the right answers.” Dang, that’s dope!
But yo, Hasker also talks about trust, and he ain’t fooling around with that stuff. He says, “Before we fully trust those generative AI models to do important work, they gotta be trained using comprehensive, authoritative data sets.” And yo, here’s the important part, the training process needs input from human subject matter experts to override inaccuracies and understand the nuances and context. In other words, Humans + AI is the key to success, my friends.
Hasker is dropping some knowledge on us. He’s pointing out three crucial things to consider when choosing AI-powered tools for the legal game: domain expertise, quality data, and AI experts. Man, that’s some good advice right there!
Jump to:
Domain expertise
Yo, AI systems are created and trained by humans, man. Those humans structure the data, come up with test queries, and provide feedback to make the system better next time. When you’re picking AI tools for your legal practice, make sure you check out the expertise behind ’em. You need legal experts in the mix, along with quality data and AI experts. It’s a winning team, baby!
“Domain expertise ensures that an AI solution is built with the right end users in mind. In the legal world, this domain expertise comes from legal professionals imparting real-world subject matter experience and nuanced, peer-reviewed perspectives into the software, as well as human-created metadata, tags, editorial markup, and additional data that provides context and connections.” – From the white paper, “Not all legal AI is created equal.”
– From the white paper, “Not all legal AI is created equal.”
Quality data
Man, let me tell you about hallucinations. In the world of generative AI, a hallucination is when the system gives a response that sounds right but is completely wrong, you feel me? It just looked through the data and picked words that seemed to go together. But that’s dangerous, my friends.
Remember those attorneys who got in trouble for using fake citations from ChatGPT? They cited six fake cases and tried to blame ChatGPT for their mistake. They were like, “We never thought technology could make up cases out of thin air!” Crazy stuff, right? But tools like ChatGPT can make these hallucinations because they don’t have verified and continually updated data, and they ain’t got no human editors keeping an eye on ’em. Plus, they don’t make it easy for you to double-check the stuff they give you. That’s a problem, my friends.
Now, companies like Thomson Reuters, they’ve got your back. They’ve been in the game for 150 years, building on that human insight, using things like the Key Number System to categorize and adding editorial enhancements to ensure the quality and structure of the source material. And let me tell you, trusted legal content and accuracy are their top priorities, according to Thomson Reuters Legal President Paul Fischer. He even spoke about it at a webinar where they were dropping news about upcoming generative AI offerings. That’s what I call reliable, baby!
The truth is, raw legal data ain’t ready to be handled by search engines, my friends. The legal industry has always relied on human expertise to make documents easy to find. And AI ain’t gonna change that, not one bit.
AI experts
Now, when you’re choosing an AI-powered tool for the legal game, you gotta think about the expertise level of the data scientists, designers, and software developers behind it, my friends. The level of AI expertise a company has shows how committed they are to giving you the best experience possible. And we’re talking technical expertise, experience working with AI and all its principles and techniques, and a solid investment in technology stacks. It’s all about that cutting-edge stuff, man.
Thomson Reuters knows what’s up. They’ve created the Center for Cognitive Computing and the Thomson Reuters Labs to bring AI experts together with domain experts. These teams are pushing the boundaries of what technology can do for the legal process. They’re working on natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, information retrieval, and a whole lot more. They’re the real deal, my friends.
AI-powered tools all rely on data, and they all have AI scientists and designers behind ’em. But when you’re choosing technology for your legal practice, ask yourself: which solutions give you the most trustworthy data? Which ones are designed and trained by fellow legal practitioners who got you in mind? And which ones come from companies that keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for your workflow? Choose wisely, my friends.
Thomson Reuters has earned trust in legal research through over a century of innovation, content maintained by our attorney editors, and reliable and responsible use of technology like AI. Find out more about artificial intelligence for legal professionals.
