Thomson Reuters CEO: Legal Profession Faces “Biggest Disruption in Its History” from AI  

Thomson Reuters President and CEO Steve Hasker believes the legal profession is experiencing “the biggest disruption … in its history” due to generative and agentic artificial intelligence, fundamentally rewriting how legal work products are created for the first time in more than 300 years.

Speaking to legal technology reporters during ILTACON, the International Legal Technology Association’s annual conference, Hasker outlined his company’s ambitious goal to become “the most innovative company” in the legal tech sector while navigating what he described as unprecedented technological change affecting a profession that has remained largely unchanged since its origins in London tea houses centuries ago.

Fundamental Game-Changer

“There have been lots and lots of technologies introduced to that process over time, but there hasn’t been one that is quite as disruptive as generative and now agentic AI because in our view, it really does rewrite and rewire the way in which the fundamental work product, the first draft, is produced,” Hasker said.

The media-only event was presented as a conversation between Hasker and Ragunath Ramanathan, Thomson Reuters’ president of legal professionals. After the media event, I sat down privately with Hasker for a brief supplemental interview.

The CEO, who joined TR as CEO in March 2020, emphasized that while AI doesn’t replace attorneys’ responsibilities, it fundamentally changes how initial legal work is created. “It does not absolve an attorney, a qualified lawyer, of their rights and responsibilities. It does not enable anyone, including us, to sort of defer to the machine.”

His conversation with Ramanathan came on the heels of TR’s launch of CoCounsel Legal, with sophisticated agentic AI and deep research capabilities.

Wide Adoption, Limited Strategic Planning

Hasker noted that virtually every law firm is experimenting with AI tools. “I can’t find a law firm, large, medium or small, that isn’t experimenting with or adopting one or more AI technologies. There may be a firm out there, but I haven’t found it.”

Government entities such as court systems, attorneys general, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Hasker said, “are perhaps a half a step behind, but I’ve no doubt that they will also come along.”

However, he observed that few firms have developed comprehensive transformation strategies. “I think there are very few firms that have truly got their minds around the broader transformation required to take advantage of these technologies. And there are even fewer firms that have a laser like view of how they’re going to win in this environment.”

Revenue Model Challenges

Before joining TR, Hasker was senior adviser to TPG Capital, CEO of CAA Global, and spent nearly eight years as global president and COO at Nielsen. He began his career at PwC and later spent over a decade as a partner in McKinsey’s global media, information, and technology practice.

In his ILTACON conversation with Ramanathan, Hasker acknowledged that the industry faces significant structural changes, particularly around billing models. “Most of the firms still have a good chunk of their revenues based on per-hour billing. And if you start to meddle with your revenue model, that can be very disruptive.”

He noted that firms must balance innovation with practical concerns: “And they’ve got partners to pay and colleagues to sort of provide apprenticeships to. And the second thing, of course, is that lawyers are the salespeople. And so if you mess with that too much, you lose your sales force.”

Copyright Protection Concerns

In a separate private interview I had with Hasker, he expressed strong views on copyright protection in the AI era, particularly regarding TR’s ongoing litigation with ROSS Intelligence. While declining to comment specifically on the case, he argued that copyright protection is essential for maintaining incentives for content creators.

“For me, what this is about is incentives for creatives to create, journalists to write and create content, videographers, filmmakers, recorded music artists, or legal editors. Because if the copyright is fundamentally undermined, then so too are the incentives for people to create content,” Hasker told me.

He rejected arguments that the U.S. should weaken copyright protections to compete with China in AI development. “And so where does the U.S. have it fundamental advantage? It’s in the quality of the underlying content that feeds these problems,” he said in the private interview.

Three-Phased Transformation

During their conversation, Ramanathan outlined Thomson Reuters’ view of industry transformation occurring in three phases.

“The first is exactly like you said, experimentation. That’s the phase we are in. The second phase will be what we call process reengineering. You’re re-engineering the legal workflows, the processes, the hiring processes. … The third way, which I do agree is at least five years away, is real business model change.”

‘$10 Billion in Dry Power’

Hasker detailed Thomson Reuters’ approach to AI development, emphasizing the company’s financial resources. “We talk about having $10 billion in dry powder – by the end of 2027, it will be $10 billion. By the end of 2028, it’ll be $12.5 billion.”

The company recently acquired Safe Sign, a group of scientists from Cambridge and Harvard universities working on specialized legal language models.

“We don’t know whether the world will continue to rest upon the large language, the foundation models, or whether there will be some really interesting ways in which our products and outcomes can be differentiated on the basis of the work that Jonathan [Schwartz] and the Safe Sign team are doing,” Hasker said.

The Casetext Acquisition

In my side interview with Hasker, I asked him about TR’s “build vs. buy” decision to acquire Casetext for $650 million, given that TR already had a long history of developing AI and its own AI lab in Toronto.

At the time, Hasker said, TR’s internal efforts were “moving pretty quickly” around integrating ChatGPT with Westlaw and Practical Law, with Mike Dahn, SVP and head of Westlaw product management, leading the charge on Westlaw, and Emily Colbert, SVP of product management, doing the same for Practical Law. “We were already on high alert and acceleration.”

But the reason he wanted to acquire Casetext was to provide a second option, as he was not sure how long internal development would take before bearing fruit.

“We literally said that, because we figured out [the Casetext deal] could take a while for us to close, let’s run the internal teams as hard and fast as we can.”

At the same time, he would encourage Casetext CEO Jake Heller and his team “to run as hard and then the day we integrate, we’ll pick the best code base. Simple as that.

“That may sound dispassionate, but I think in this environment you have to – and it’s not favoring one person or one team over another. It just says, ‘Look, we’ll just make a dispassionate call as to who’s made the most progress and we’ll adopt that.’”

In the end, he said, he felt that Casetext had made the most progress in developing an legal AI assistant, while Dahn and his team had made the most progress in injecting Open AI into Westlaw.

“So, for better or worse, we ended up taking both of those and now we’ve bought them – truly brought them – together”

Small Firm Adoption

Contrary to traditional technology adoption patterns, Hasker observed that AI tools are seeing rapid uptake among small and solo practitioners. He recounted meeting a solo practitioner who immediately embraced the technology after seeing a demonstration.

The solo told Hasker he was about to hire another paralegal at a salary of $90,000 a year plus expenses, but he conceded, “I’m not very good at hiring them. I’m not very good at managing them. They come and go.”

TR’s AI tools would cost him a fraction of that, the solo said, adding, “And I think this is going to be able to do their work just as well, and I’d much prefer to manage this than I would another human being in my office.”

The lawyer then asked to start using the tool immediately, saying: “I’ve got a big case tomorrow and I really want to start to use the tool today, so can I sign up?”

Professional-Grade AI Emphasis

Hasker stressed the importance of professional-grade AI that addresses data security and privacy concerns specific to legal practice. He criticized recent comments by OpenAI’s Sam Altman about privacy limitations.

“I was astonished to hear Sam Altman last week just sort of throwing out and saying, well, you know, one of the things that ChatGPT doesn’t have is any form of privacy. You know what I mean? We really need. Okay, but Sam, your people are out there telling lawyers that they can just use that. So pick one. Right. Does it lack privacy or can it be used by lawyers? Because it’s not both.”

Content-Driven Tech Company

Hasker, who joined TR as CEO in 2020, said he realized almost immediately that TR needed to migrate from “being a content company, predominantly – as some people would have traditionally said, a publisher – to a content driven technology company.”

He said the company’s focus is now on “the seamless integration of unique and proprietary content, both ours and that of our customers, that of third parties, where it makes sense to do so with AI.”

Both Hasker and Ramanathan noted the company’s inclusion in the NASDAQ index as a validation point – both for TR and for the legal industry more broadly.

“I think it’s a sort of a signpost along the way,” Hasker said. “It certainly meant more to our colleagues than I thought it would.”

His ‘Aha Moment’ for AI

In our separate interview, I asked Hasker whether there was an “aha moment” for him regarding the potential of ChatGPT and generative AI.

“When it passed the bar exam,” he replied, leading him to think, “Okay, this is going to be a real disruptor.”

Another aha moment came soon after than, when he was at a TR event for managing partners of major law firms. When the topic of AI came up, he described observing their varied reactions, from those planning aggressive adoption to others hoping to “hold your breath until retirement.”