Thomson Reuters and work intelligence platform Laurel have formed a partnership aimed at helping law firms measure whether artificial intelligence is improving the business of legal practice—not simply whether lawyers are using it.
The companies say the partnership will connect activity across Thomson Reuters products, including CoCounsel Legal, Westlaw and Practical Law, with Laurel’s automated timekeeping and matter intelligence technology. The goal is to show how AI-assisted work affects billable time, write-downs, matter profitability and return on technology spending.
Law firms have invested heavily in AI for research, drafting and document analysis, but measuring the financial impact remains difficult. Usage statistics can show how often a product is opened; they do not reveal whether it improves realization, reduces the cost of delivering a matter or creates capacity for higher-value work.
Laurel is designed to close that gap by capturing work activity across email, documents, calls and other applications, then classifying it by client and matter. Its Laurel Time product converts that activity into ready-to-review time entries, while Laurel Signal connects work patterns and AI usage to metrics such as leverage, cost of delivery and matter performance.
The technology is intended to give lawyers a more complete record of their work while helping partners and finance teams identify scope creep, staffing issues and write-down risk before a matter closes. That visibility could be particularly valuable for fixed-fee work, where additional hours can quietly erode margins.
Laurel says firms using its platform recover up to 30 minutes of additional billable time per lawyer each day and have recorded revenue increases of between four and 11 percent. Those figures are company-reported and were not independently verified in the announcement. Laurel says it serves more than 150 law firms.
For Thomson Reuters, the partnership extends its legal AI strategy beyond producing legal work and into measuring business outcomes. The company has been expanding CoCounsel from a collection of task-specific tools into an agentic platform for multi-step research, analysis and drafting workflows.
That strategy reached Canada earlier this year with the launch of CoCounsel Legal Canada, which combines AI capabilities with Westlaw and Practical Law content. However, the Laurel announcement specifies that Thomson Reuters legal customers can currently access the platform in the United States. The companies did not provide a timeline for Canadian availability.
The partnership reflects a broader shift relevant to Canadian firms. As legal AI moves from pilot projects into everyday workflows, leaders are being asked to justify spending with evidence that goes beyond licence counts and time-saving estimates. The next question is not simply whether AI completes legal tasks faster, but whether those efficiencies translate into better client value and stronger margins.