Thomson Reuters launches gen AI for justice legal aid programme
Thomson Reuters today (24 October) launched an AI for Justice Legal Aid program, including both a Legal Innovators Incubator and subsidised pricing for legal nonprofits.
Participating organizations receive complimentary access to Thomson Reuters CoCounsel GenAI legal assistant, as well as close partnership and training to develop the GenAI use cases that will most benefit their organizations and clients. The resulting playbooks will also be used to empower the legal aid community to amplify their impact through AI. The inaugural Legal Innovators Incubator pilot class includes The Innocence Center, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Lawyers Alliance for New York, among others.
Thomson Reuters has been incorporating AI into its platform for three decades, and so has seen firsthand the benefits of that investment. In addition, it has a longstanding history of serving, supporting, and helping strengthen the justice system worldwide, by collaborating with organizations including Lawyers Without Borders, the Justice Technology Association, and Equal Justice Works. Recent new programs to support courts include a joint initiative between the Thomson Reuters Institute and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to create the AI Policy Consortium for Law and Courts. The initiative aims to help court leaders and legal professionals understand generative AI’s risks and opportunities, and to create a forum for the exchange of views among various actors in the justice system.
“As an early CoCounsel user, I’ve experienced the transformation this powerful tool can bring about for an organization. From summarizing voluminous records to finding inconsistencies between witnesses, all in a matter of minutes, the power is endless,” said Michael Semanchik, executive director of The Innocence Center.
“I’m so glad to have been part of the evolution of this game-changing solution, and I’m honored that The Innocence Center is part of the first Legal Innovators Incubator class. In just two weeks of using its latest generation, CoCounsel 2.0, I’ve been able to apply CoCounsel even more broadly to advance our work. For instance, it completed 10 grant applications for me in about three hours. Normally I’d spend an entire day on just one. I’m excited to share our experiences with and learn from the other organizations in this first class.”
