TLDR: Thomson Reuters has launched sophisticated agentic AI systems, including ‘CoCounsel Legal with Deep Research’ and ‘agentic guided workflows,’ to transform legal processes. These systems are designed to automate complex tasks, enhance legal research, and boost efficiency by embedding AI directly into workflows, while maintaining crucial human oversight.
Thomson Reuters is spearheading a significant transformation in the legal industry with the introduction of its sophisticated agentic AI systems. These innovations aim to embed artificial intelligence directly into legal workflows, moving beyond simple task automation to enable more autonomous and intelligent operations.
A cornerstone of this initiative is ‘CoCounsel Legal with Deep Research,’ a custom agentic AI system specifically developed for legal professionals. This system integrates comprehensive legal research, essential workflow automation, intelligent document management, and AI-powered legal assistance. Unlike traditional AI tools that might operate alongside a lawyer’s work, Deep Research is designed to be an integral part of the process, offering robust support in litigation, transactional work, and regulatory analysis. The technology is built upon Thomson Reuters’ extensive content and tools, including the renowned Westlaw Advantage legal research platform. Deep Research is engineered to ‘reason, plan and deliver legal research results,’ ensuring that human reviewers remain in the loop by providing explanations of its processes, sourcing its answers, and building the foundation of its arguments.
In addition to Deep Research, Thomson Reuters is rolling out ‘agentic guided workflows.’ This tool applies agentic AI to high-friction legal tasks such as drafting privacy policies, complaints, discovery responses, and employee policies, significantly streamlining these often time-consuming processes.
The adoption of agentic AI marks a new era for the legal profession. As James Michael Cooper, a professor at California Western School of Law, noted, ‘Like every industry, the legal profession is going to have to face the fact that AI can often and increasingly do our jobs better than we can.’ He added that ‘This new set of innovations is helping to drive that conversation in the agentic AI and law space.’
Agentic AI distinguishes itself from earlier generative AI models by its ability to map out how to achieve broad objectives, rather than merely completing step-by-step tasks. It can create and follow a process under human guidance, executing multi-stage workflows from beginning to end, with the capacity to correct and adjust as it proceeds. This capability allows legal professionals to delegate more challenging tasks, such as litigation case intake, document summarization, creating key date timelines, and researching precedents.
The benefits extend to enhanced decision-making, as agentic systems can provide more accurate and nuanced insights by integrating professional-grade tools and proprietary data. This is crucial in the legal field, where interpretation of laws and regulations is often subjective and context-dependent. Furthermore, agentic AI promises improved efficiency by operating autonomously for longer periods, reducing the need for constant human intervention, leading to faster task completion and greater consistency.
David Wong, Chief Product Officer at Thomson Reuters, emphasized the transformative nature of this technology, stating, ‘Agentic AI isn’t a marketing buzzword. It’s a new blueprint for how complex work gets done.’ He further explained, ‘We’re delivering systems that don’t just assist but operate inside the workflows professionals use every day. The AI understands the goal, breaks it into steps, takes action, and knows when to escalate for human input — all with human oversight built in to ensure accountability and trust.’
The development of the Thomson Reuters Agentic AI Platform has been underway for over a year, accelerated by strategic acquisitions such as Materia, an AI copilot startup specializing in agentic systems for tax and accounting, and Casetext, a legal AI company. While initially launched for tax, audit, and accounting professionals, Thomson Reuters plans to expand the platform into legal, compliance, and risk sectors throughout 2025.
Despite the immense potential, the integration of AI in law also presents challenges, particularly concerning ‘hallucinations’ where AI tools generate incorrect or fabricated information. This has led to issues for some lawyers who have used AI in research and brief writing. Thomson Reuters addresses this by ensuring its AI tools are refined by legal experts to align with professional standards and best practices, with human expertise remaining central for guidance, validation, and final decision-making.
Also Read:
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- Autonomous AI Systems: Ushering in a New Era of Efficiency and Navigating Emerging Risks
This strategic move by Thomson Reuters underscores a broader industry shift towards more intelligent and autonomous AI applications, redefining the future of work in professional services.
