As large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (genAI) models become embedded in workflows, expanding legal AI skill sets are a must for all professionals. 

Thomson Reuters recently invited legal professionals in Singapore to test our professional-grade AI assistant, CoCounsel. The lawyers tested and compared their manual day-to-day legal work against the efficiency of CoCounsel in various challenges. 

The productivity benefits were a highlight at the Singapore legal AI skills challenges. According to Catherine Roberts, Senior Director, AI and LegalTech, Asia & Emerging Markets, there has been a significant shift in perception in the legal profession on fit-for-purpose, legal AI tools.   

“During the last 12 months, I have been really impressed with the strong interest in AI by the profession and how enthusiastic lawyers have been to experiment and test the tech,” said Catherine. 

“We are now moving from an experimental phase to an embedding phase, so the law firms and organisations that are actively adopting genAI now are putting themselves in a significantly competitive position as we will move to a normalised state very quickly.”  

Optimising manual processes could enable law firms to redirect resources toward strategic initiatives via reduced operational costs and higher efficiency. The legal AI skills challenge highlighted how gen AI tools could free-up time for more impactful work. 

“The strength of an AI Legal Assistant like CoCounsel is that CoCounsel is trained on deep legal expertise, so it knows legal workflows and terminology.” 

“We are seeing that the adoption of CoCounsel provides substantial and immediate benefits to lawyers, which include enhanced efficiency by rapidly analysing vast amounts of legal documents, improved accuracy in tasks susceptible to human error, and cost-effectiveness by automating routine tasks to free up lawyers for more complex, billable work,” Catherine added. 

How can legal AI help lawyers? 

Processing large documents that come in volumes is a process that CoCounsel can tackle and improve. For litigator Navin Thevar, time-savings and cost-saving are key areas where CoCounsel can help. 

“To do that at a rate that’s a lot quicker than any human trainee or lawyer could, thereby saving lots of time delivering products to the client a lot more quickly and saving them costs in the process,” said Navin. 

CoCounsel can assist with identifying issues with documents. Megan Seah, Senior Associate and Senior Legal Technology Manager at WongPartnership LLP explored the use of CoCounsel’s ‘Summarise’ skill. 

“CoCounsel is able to summarise issues in a document and format it for presentation or collaboration without much input,” Megan stated. 

“While it’s doing that, users can focus on more pressing matters at hand for better time management overall,” said Megan. 

Ho Kin Onn Associate Director at NLC Law Asia LLC commends his capable team but is keen to see them relieved of administrative tasks. To increase productivity, the team’s skills and expertise would best be directed at billable work. 

“Right now, I’m blessed to have a very, very, very capable team, but a lot of their time is spent doing a lot of these [administrative] tasks.” 

“I think they will be able to upskill and do a lot more useful, billable work, perhaps but I think more importantly, you’ll be able to do tasks that would train them to eventually be leading counsel, second chairs, and so on.” said Ho. 

For Sharon Ng, Assistant Vice President SGX Group, CoCounsel would be able to support her work by going through lengthy correspondence threads between clients. 

“The scenario where we actually allowed CoCounsel to go through the lengthy correspondences between clients, I think CoCounsel did a great job in picking out the relevant dates and providing timelines,” said Sharon. 

What value can genAI generate for professionals? 

Our new global Future of Professionals (FOP) report has found that 77% of legal, tax and corporate professionals are expecting gen AI systems to have transformative impact on work. This is a 10% increase in comparison to our FOP report data from 2023. 

In just a year, professional perceptions have shifted in favour of gen AI integration. According to Steve Hasker, President and CEO of Thomson Reuters, the ‘market sentiment around AI’ has been ‘surprisingly positive.’ 

“With rapid adoption underway and professionals finding a variety of practical use cases for Al, we’re embarking on an exciting era for these industries – and for the economy more broadly,” said Steve. 

“We are witnessing a transformative shift in the professional workplace unlike any we’ve seen before.” 

This year, 2,200 professionals and C-level corporate executives from over 50 countries provided insights for the FOP report. The common thread in the survey responses indicated that professionals need to find the time to focus on strategic work that is taken up by administrative tasks. 

“There’s been considerable discussion in recent years about how generative artificial intelligence (GenAl) could affect the careers of professionals.” 

“Now that many professionals are actually using the technology, they have a better sense of how it will impact their lives,” Steve added. 

Professionals surveyed in the new FOP report believe gen AI powered tools can save them four hours per week. According to our data, the productive gains equate to an estimated 200 hours saved per professional according to our 2024 research. 

What will the survey respondents do with 200 extra hours of time a year? They might reinvest that time in strategic work, innovation, and professional development, which could help companies retain or advance their competitive advantage. 

“Many people see it [genAI technology] as a force for good in their profession.” 

“With rapid adoption underway and professionals finding a variety of practical use cases for Al, we’re embarking on an exciting era for these industries – and for the economy more broadly,” Steven concluded. 

WATCH: The Singapore AI Skills Challenge wrap-up.

Legal professionals in Singapore who are using legal AI to drive innovation are discovering ways to use it as a tool to leverage to boost productivity at work. Discover how professionals worldwide are integrating generative AI into their work process in our Global Future of Professionals report 2024. The findings highlighted the value generative AI systems can bring for professionals in all industries.