Anthropic expands Claude's AI tools for law firms, lawyers

WASHINGTON, May 12 : Artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Tuesday released an expanded suite of features for lawyers using its Claude AI assistant, including tools for specialized legal topics and access within Claude to other legal research and AI products.  San Francisco-based Anthropic said the release allows law firms and other Claude customers to connect securely with third-party platforms including Thomson Reuters for legal research, document management and other services. It said the new features would be available to existing Claude customers. The announcement comes amid intensifying competition among technology companies to develop and market professional artificial-intelligence tools, as information-heavy industries such as the legal sector rush to adopt AI tools.  The new Anthropic release builds on plug-ins for Claude Cowork that the company announced in late January, sparking a major selloff by investors of U.S. and European data analytics, professional services and software companies. Anthropic said Thomson Reuters customers would now have access within Claude to Thomson Reuters' Westlaw Primary Law database of court records and other documents and its Practical Law legal practice guides. LEGAL RESEARCH INTEGRATION Thomson Reuters also announced the integration of its Westlaw-enabled AI platform CoCounsel with Claude on Tuesday, saying the connection will allow its customers using Claude to access CoCounsel's "fiduciary grade" legal research tools directly. "We are actively building integrations that connect general-purpose AI to professional environments, ensuring that wherever lawyers are working, the full power of CoCounsel Legal is available to them," Thomson Reuters Chief Technology Officer Joel Hron said in a statement. Hron said the integration "doesn’t replace the CoCounsel Legal platform or provide standalone access to that underlying content and workflow system." Financial terms were not disclosed. Thomson Reuters is the parent of Reuters. Anthropic said another connection with AI startup Harvey will bring that company's legal assistant into Claude, including supporting general legal inquiries. Users of Claude for legal will also be able to connect directly with content-management platform Box, cloud-based electronic-discovery platform Everlaw and software company DocuSign, Anthropic said.  "We’re seeing an incredible uptick in adoption of AI in the legal industry," Mark Pike, associate general counsel at Anthropic, told Reuters. A recent webinar focused on how legal teams use Claude drew more than 20,000 registrations, he said. Anthropic said Tuesday's release includes 12 new legal practice plug-ins including "commercial counsel," "employment counsel," "litigation associate" and "law student." It said the new tools can be deployed directly inside Anthropic’s Cowork or embedded into a firm’s own systems.