Hi and welcome to the June Orange Rag. Erm, it’s been quite the half year. If you weren’t already discussing generative AI towards the end of last year, I bet you have made up for it at the start of this one!
This month has ended with a slightly fitting acquisition – Thomson Reuters has acquired US legal research challenger Casetext for a whopping $650m cash. To put that sum in context, remember that TR sold Elite for $500 (albeit that was surprisingly low). The price tag is said by those involved to be a validation of Casetext’s early generative AI work – it was granted early access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, and its key products include GPT-4 powered legal assistant CoCounsel, which it launched in 2023. Read on for all the details on that, including some social media reaction.
Our top story of the past month was also in the gen AI space – our exclusive that Addleshaw Goddard is running a series of trials or POCs of gen AI vendors with significant cross-firm engagement. Addleshaw is taking a bullish approach led by a very senior working group and you can read or re-read that story in this issue.
We’ve got some fascinating news stories coming up on legaltechnology.com so if you haven’t already subscribed to our email bulletin please do so here.
Our next issue will be the July/August Orange Rag, so make sure you send any wins, deals, movers and/or shakers to me on caroline@legaltechnology.com
Caroline Hill