The Shift to 'Fiduciary-Grade' AI

Thomson Reuters is positioning its next-generation CoCounsel as 'fiduciary-grade' AI, a standard intended to distinguish it from frontier models that lack domain-specific grounding. According to CEO Steve Hasker, the primary cause of AI hallucinations in legal practice is the reliance on general-purpose models without native access to authoritative legal content (e.g., Westlaw, Practical Law) or the oversight of attorney-editors.

Key differentiators for this approach include:

  • Transparency: The tool provides step-by-step reasoning and direct citations for every conclusion, moving away from 'black box' outputs.
  • Data Governance: A commitment that customer inputs are not used to train the underlying models, contrasting with common Silicon Valley practices.
  • Human-in-the-Loop Support: Users can consult reference attorneys who can replicate queries to explain the AI's logic, a feature designed to support the apprenticeship model for junior lawyers.

Operationalizing AI Beyond Experimentation

Drawing from the Future of Professionals Report 2026, Hasker notes a widening gap between AI adoption and realized value. While many firms are experimenting with various tools, few have successfully re-engineered their workflows.

  • The Change Management Lag: Hasker cites a managing partner who observed that tools are currently '18 months ahead of change management.' Firms that are successfully operationalizing AI are moving away from 'let's see what happens' approaches toward practice-specific workflow integration—redefining how associates interact with AI-generated drafts and how performance is measured.
  • Client Assertiveness: Corporate counsel are becoming more assertive, consolidating their outside counsel panels and demanding that firms demonstrate how AI is improving turnaround times, quality, and cost-efficiency. Clients are increasingly unwilling to pay for work that could be produced more efficiently via AI.

Despite concerns that AI might diminish the need for human lawyers, Hasker maintains an optimistic outlook. He suggests that AI will likely increase the total demand for legal services, similar to past technological shifts.

  • Firm Evolution: The winning firms will be those that use technology to augment their best people rather than attempting to become software-development firms themselves.
  • Economic Shift: While the P&L of law firms may shift—with higher tech budgets and lower relative costs for labor and real estate—the core value remains in the human-client relationship. AI may initially serve to improve work-life balance for overworked attorneys by enabling them to reach accurate conclusions in minutes rather than hours.