Clarity

Steve Assie, head of the Canadian business for Thomson Reuters, joins the Thomson Reuters Institute's Insights podcast to discuss some of the key findings from the recently released 2024 State of the Canadian Law Firm Market Report and the 2024 Canadian Government Lawyers Benchmark Report. Steve and host Bill Josten discuss findings from the report that Canadian lawyers generally view their law firms as successful and have a positive view for potential growth in the market in coming years, but also understand the potential downside they face from a variety of problems that they have yet taken steps to address. They also discuss the strong rates of early adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) by Canada's legal community and the potential that such technology could hold for innovation in the market and, in particular, for improving attorney mental health and well-being, a key area of focus for Canadian lawyers.

Jared Applegate, Chief Legal Operations Officer at Barnes & Thornburg, joins the latest installment of the "Designing Your Candidate" podcast series to discuss what his ideal candidates might look like for some of the legal operations functions that he oversees. From pricing to legal project management and practice management, the need to find professionals who will become strong team players who understand the legal industry and can help to motivate change is becoming crucially important for many firms.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we speak to Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Anderson Thumma about our recent 2024 State of the Courts report and what it shows about the impact of technology — including generative artificial intelligence — on access to justice and the courts themselves.

After a year of change in the compliance landscape, the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast discusses with regulatory and compliance expert Todd Ehret of Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence many of the trends that will unfold during 2024.

Holly Hill, Partner and Sustainability Leader with MinterEllisonRuddWatts, joins us to discuss what her firm looks for when hiring new associates, especially those fresh from law school. Hill points out that the New Zealand-based law firm has experienced a unique pinch in the past several years as many of their prime associate targets were lured by lucrative offers from firms in Australia and even the United States. With competition for top legal talent remaining tight, the firm focused on building a solid early pipeline for incoming talent. MinterEllisonRuddWatts is a leading full-service, legal, and business advisory firm. It is a New Zealand owned and operated partnership, dating back 140 years. It also has a strong international presence through the MinterEllison Legal Group — one of the largest full-service legal groups in the Asia-Pacific region. MinterEllisonRuddWatts has built a strong brand in the market with numerous accolades and Tier 1 rankings in the Legal 500 Asia Pacific.

In this week's Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we speak with industry experts about impact on the compliance industry of the newly operational beneficial ownership database, discussing what they see on the horizon and what concerns they have about what lies ahead.

Jay Courie, Managing Member at MGC Law joins the Thomson Reuters Institute team for the latest installment of the Designing Your Candidate podcast series to discuss what his firm is looking for when hiring associate lawyers. Whether lateral attorneys or new hires, the skillsets that associates need to succeed in the legal market today and in the future are becoming more diverse and more complex.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we gather a panel of industry experts and legal professionals to discuss the current state of crypto-assets and look at what might be in crypto's future as litigation and regulatory compliance become bigger factors in this sector.

It's well understood how technology is changing law, but what may be less understood is how it is changing legal hiring. In this second installment in the new Designing Your Candidate limited series for the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast channel, Kenneth Jones, COO of law firm technology subsidiary Xerdict and business professor at Seton Hall, describes what technology skills today's technology professionals need to know — and how artificial intelligence may be set to change the entire equation. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes exploring what law firms and other professional services providers are looking for in their next crop of candidates.

In the first installment in the new Designing Your Candidate limited series for the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast channel, Esther Bowers, Chief Practice Innovation Officer at Honigman, discusses the roles she needs to hire to drive innovation and legal operations and what her ideal candidates for those roles might look like. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes exploring what law firms and other professional services providers are looking for in their next crop of candidates.

With key insights on law firm growth, rates, and profits, the 2024 Report on the State of the US Legal Market is an invaluable resource for law firm leaders. Chief author James Jones, Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, joins the Thomson Reuters Institute's Bill Josten for a deep dive into some of these important insights.

The role of in-house legal departments is growing and will continue to do so in 2024 as the complexity of the regulatory environment around sustainability increases. In our latest podcast episode, TRI's ESG strategist Natalie Runyon speaks with Christine Uri, an ESG expert and adviser to corporate legal departments.

At the opening of 2024, our in-house experts on the tax and legal industries, Nadya Britton and Bill Josten, share what they see as the key issues for the coming year.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute podcast, our resident experts Natalie Runyon, Zach Warren, and Rabihah Butler share their 2024 predictions for employers and professionals within the legal, tax & accounting, and risk & compliance industries — with a special eye toward environmental, social & governance (ESG) issues, regulatory developments, and the impact of artificial intelligence — in the first part of our premier podcast of 2024.

By all accounts, 2023 was the year of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), giving some organizations a major boost while catching others blindsided without plans or procedures. For a few truly forward-thinking organizations, however, it's already time to look beyond Gen AI to start planning for what's next. In this week's Thomson Reuters Institute (TRI) Insights podcast, Zach Warren, head of technology content development for TRI, talks with Jeff Wong, Global Chief Innovation Officer at EY, about what he sees as the next big innovations in the market that professionals should know about now.

In the final episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast for 2023, Mike Abbott, Head of the Thomson Reuters Institute, speaks with Laura Clayton McDonnell, President of Thomson Reuters' Corporates business. The pair discuss highlights from the recent Future of Professionals: C-Suite Survey and the varying perspectives on generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), one of the most game-changing innovations impacting companies today. The podcast also explains where members of corporate C-Suites are focused right now and how the rise of Gen AI may impact their goals.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we feature a discussion with colleagues Alexander Robson, Managing Editor, and Lindsey Rogerson, Senior Editor at Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence (TRRI) of the key highlights from this year's UN Climate Change conference known as COP 28. This episode of our Insights podcast is part of a collaboration between the Thomson Reuters Institute and TRRI around the launch of the new white paper ESG: Navigating past the noise, which was authored by TRRI and published by the Thomson Reuters Institute.

In our latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Natalie Runyon, ESG strategist with the Thomson Reuters Institute speaks with colleagues Lucy Leach, Director of Technical Research, and Tom Snavely, Principal Consultant and advisor to law firms, about the talent-related insights revealed in the recently published Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals report. The podcast discusses the report's research around generative artificial intelligence and how it relates to professional service firms' talent challenges as well as client and lawyer satisfaction.

The corporate tax world has seen a lot of change in recent years between budgetary and hiring crunches and regulatory shifts. There's one area, however, in which many corporate tax departments still see a lot of room to grow: technology. Fresh off the first edition of the Corporate Tax Technology Report, published by the Thomson Reuters Institute (TRI) and Tax Executives Institute, TRI's Zach Warren dives into the report with Todd Lard, Tax Counsel at Tax Executives Institute, to explore why so many tax departments categorize their tech maturity as reactive, whether these departments have the personnel to carry out modern tech implementations, and how smaller departments with tiny tech budgets can do more with less. The podcast also examines the artificial intelligence (AI) question: Where does generative AI actually fit into the day-to-day work of corporate tax professionals?

Aaron Boersma from Google and Shanna Davidson from Barnes & Thornburg join the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast to discuss client and law firm perspective on some of the key findings from the Thomson Reuters Institute's recent Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index report. As clients find themselves seemingly caught between the challenge of needing to control costs and the realities of increasing legal matter volumes with little by way of additional staffing or budget to manage those new matters, they must look for creative way to "do more with less" and will likely be relying more on outside counsel. While this presents opportunities for law firms, it can also be a breeding ground for worry as clients increasingly look to shuffle work around in search of greater cost effectiveness. This podcast's buy-side/sell-side discussion of these topics and more sheds new light on the challenge that corporate legal department operations professionals face today, what law firms are doing to help, and what more can be done.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) holds a lot of potential to transform law, upending everything from how lawyers do their daily work to how law firms and clients interact and conduct business. However, that begs the question: Where does the actual person fit into all of this? In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, recorded live at the Generative AI & Emerging Technology Forum in New York City, the Thomson Reuters Institute's Zach Warren sat down with Wendy Butler Curtis, Chief Innovation Officer at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, to discuss why it's humans and AI rather than humans versus AI, how Orrick is working to prioritize mental health while introducing innovative technology, and where she sees generative AI actually making an impact in the future of the legal profession.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Heather Fischer, Senior Advisor of Human Rights Crimes at Thomson Reuters Special Services and a previous Special Advisor for Human Trafficking at The White House, discusses today's launch of the Human Trafficking Resource Center, which makes use of the City of Houston's world-class anti-trafficking toolkits, with Minal Patel Davis, Director of the Mayor's Office of Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence at the City of Houston under the leadership of Mayor Sylvester Turner. As the podcast describes, the new Resource Center will make these toolkits readily accessible online to cities and other public authorities into the future. These step-by-step guides will help municipal authorities quickly mobilize anti-trafficking campaigns which may otherwise take years of planning, saving cities money and other public resources.

In the latest episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Nadya Britton, the Enterprise Content Manager for Tax and Trade at the Thomson Reuters Institute, sat down with Suzanne Offerman, Director of Outbound Product Marketing ONESOURCE Global Trade at Thomson Reuters, to discuss key insights from the recently released 2023 Corporate Global Trade Survey Report . In the podcast, the pair discussed the talent gap in global trade compliance, and how companies are increasingly outsourcing and turning to technology for solutions. They also spoke about how integrating advanced technologies offers significant benefits to global companies, and how many considerations around environmental, social & governance (ESG) issues have become pivotal in supplier relations.

While keeping personal information private is incredibly important for any number of reasons, it is also crucial that some of that very same information be available in some situations. That balance — between data privacy and protection — animates the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast. In it, Thomson Reuters Institute's Rabihah Bulter speaks with Ben Bawden, a principal at consulting firm Brooks Bawden Moore; Kate Friedrich, VP of Government Affairs & ESG at Thomson Reuters; and Steve Rubley, President of the Government segment at Thomson Reuters about the importance of data privacy and how to best organizations can balance privacy, access, and public protection.

Client feedback programs are one of the most effective ways to increase the share of legal spend from a client, yet less than one-third of clients say they have been asked to participate in such a program. For the law firm lawyers that take advantage of client feedback programs, 70% say they want to do the programs more; and 50% of lawyers not getting feedback from clients say they want to start such a program. In the latest episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we speak with Jen Dezso, director of client relationships at Thomson Reuters, about the benefits law firms can receive from actively gathering feedback from their clients, the key ways to get a formal client feedback program started, what law firms should be asking their clients, and how to overcome some of the more common challenges that can stifle early efforts to learn more about clients.

In the latest episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Nadya Britton, the Enterprise Content Manager for Tax & Accounting content at the Thomson Reuters Institute, spoke with Pilar Mata, Executive Director of Tax Executive Institute, about the findings from the Institute's 2023 State of the Corporate Tax Department survey report. The discussion shed light on the present landscape and future trends within corporate tax departments, particularly concerning technology adoption and talent management — two themes that stood out in the report. As the podcast highlights, the shift towards technology and automation has become the focal point for many tax departments and many department leaders said they are proud of their departments' achievements in this area.

In the latest episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Brent Turner, principal consultant within the Thomson Reuters Institute's advisory services, speaks with Jessica Pavlik, chief operating officer at law firm Berger Singerman about how she is leading efforts to navigate the complexity of the latest economic environment and technology trends at play within the legal industry.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Thomson Reuters CEO Steve Hasker provides his key takeaways from the newly published Future of Professionals report, including how AI could change professional services in "very fundamental ways" but also provide a "big step forward" in improving working lives.

More than 100 leading academics and senior leaders of professional organizations came together recent at the Professions Summit: Leading through Uncertainty to Clarity, to discuss current organizational challenges and their implications for professionals. In our latest podcast, Natalie Runyon, ESG Strategist for the Thomson Reuters Institute, sits down with Summit organizer Laura Empson, Professor in the Management of Professional Service Firms at the Bayes Business School at the University of London, to discuss key take-aways and highlights from the event.

Every law firm has a strategy to serve clients and win business, and every law firm also works with some sort of technology in today's digital world. But how often does that overall strategy take law firms' digital initiatives into account? Recent research from the Thomson Reuters Institute (TRI) found that most law firms are satisfied with how they're tying their firm's digital transformation to its overall strategy — but in practice, only about half actually have a fully realized digital strategy at the C-suite level, and many of those have been instituted only in the past couple of years. In the latest TRI Insights Podcast, Zach Warren, TRI's technology and innovation insights leader and Lucy Leach, director of research strategy at TRI, discuss why many law firms think they're above average (but not perfect) on digital strategy, how clients are too often left out of the process, and what the rise of generative artificial intelligence means for digital strategy's future.

Dealing with economic uncertainty has become a part of daily life for law firm leadership and it seems there is always a new crisis to be worried about. In this week's Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Thomson Reuters Industry Data Analyst Bryce Engelland discusses with Lawrence J. White, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business, how the second half of the year may fare and what events law firm leaders should be on the lookout for.

In this week's Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, our technology content leader Zach Warren dives into the generative artificial intelligence (AI) craze within law firms, speaking with Kelley Drye & Warren chief information officer Judi Flournoy. As a law firm CIO with years of legal technology experience, Flournoy has seen tech trends come and go. However, generative AI and ChatGPT isn't just a continuation of past AI initiatives, she believes, but a true game-changer. That's why she's encouraging those within her firm to get acquainted early. "They need to understand this technology early so they understand where it's going to lead them later," Flournoy explains. In the podcast, she discusses not only the use cases she sees now, but her prognostications for law firms' future, why generative AI will be here "faster than anyone realizes," and why one AI is reminiscent of the movie Her.

Fraud, waste & abuse in government are very important topics in a time when many government agencies are being asked to do more with less and are attempting to use technology to bridge the gap while bringing new staff up to speed. With the global pandemic moving to the rearview, government workers must focus on the monumental task ahead, including improving their efficiency and technical ability. In the latest episode of the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Rabihah Butler, Enterprise Content Manager, speaks to Andrew Pellington, Senior Director in Product Marketing for Thomson Reuters, about the upcoming Government Fraud, Waste & Abuse Report from the Thomson Reuters Institute.

After several banner years, many law firms find themselves in a different position in 2023. While billing rates set new record marks, law firm profitability continues to slip, driven down by a continued rise in overhead expenses and a slowing of how effectively law firms collect the cash that is owed to them. In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights Podcast, host Bill Josten is joined by Brent Turner from Thomson Reuters Institute Advisory Services to discuss the realities of today's legal marketplace and what law firms can do to protect their profitability this year and beyond. As the podcast explains, the solution doesn't necessarily lie in ever-increasing rates or in pushing clients to take smaller discounts. Instead, the answer most likely comes from ensuring the firm's partners are following best practices for how they handle their bills.

As demand for legal services shifts and tightens, how law firms differentiate themselves in the market is critical. Jen Dezso, director of client relationships for the Thomson Reuters Institute, joins the podcast to discuss recent research into how law firms are effectively developing standout brand positions and the importance of clear brand equity for law firms. While it can be tempting to try to be all things to all clients, the research shows that, much more often, those law firms that have the strongest brand identities are the firms that are known for excellence in specific areas.

In our latest podcast, Nadya Britton, tax & accounting specialist for the Thomson Reuters Institute, chats with Corey Greene, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Thomson Reuters, about some of interesting findings around operational efficiency from the 2023 State of the Tax Professional Report. Although efficiency isn't a new concept for most businesses, until recently it was hardly something a tax & accounting firm would see as a strategic priority. In this new report, however, efficiency was listed as the number one priority. In the podcast, the pair discusses how tax & accounting firms can optimize their operations to maximize productivity, and provide-quality services to clients and reduce costs.

As the world buzzes about the chaos caused by 21-year-old Jack Teixeira and the online chat service Discord, the new Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast examines the real conversation around the data breach controversy and other security concerns. Rabihah Butler, corporate compliance & risk specialist for the Thomson Reuters Institute, speaks to Jim Dinkins, former executive associate director of Homeland Security Investigations, who provides a unique perspective on the data breach. In a world of checks and balances, where privacy is competing with security, the pair discusses how best to keep the balance.

In the new Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, Zach Warren, technology specialist for the Thomson Reuters Institute, revisits the "2023 Alternative Legal Services Provider (ALSP) Report" with Jim Jones, Senior Fellow at the Center on Ethics in the Legal Profession at Georgetown University. Now a few months out from the report's initial release, Jim and Zach explore what surprised them from the results, including how quickly the ALSP market has grown in such a short amount of time, and how law firm attitudes towards ALSPs are shifting.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we speak to Meredith Ritchie, General Counsel of Alliant Credit Union; and Audrey Rubin, senior advisor with BarkerGilmore and former COO of the legal department at Aon, about some of the key findings of the 2023 State of the Corporate Law Department report and how those issues are impacting the daily operations of corporate law departments and in-house lawyers. The discussion covers the increasing regulatory complexity that corporate general counsel must navigate, the pressure to stay on budget, key practices that may be poised for growth in the changing economy, and whether other strategic priorities like diversity, equity & inclusion may potentially see a loss of focus as new challenges take prominence.

As we move forward from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, compliance and banking regulation become more of a focus. In the latest Insights podcast from Thomson Reuters Institute, we speak with Todd Ehret, of Thomson Reuter Regulatory Intelligence, about how regulators, financial industry leaders, and politicians can look objectively at the red flags that were missed and prevent a bank crisis from happening again.

In this week's Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we discuss data concerns around environmental, social & governance (ESG) activities with Frank Zambrelli, Executive Director of the Responsible Business Coalition at Fordham's Gabelli School of Business and Managing Director of the Global ESG Retail practice at Accenture. The podcast explores the current state of ESG data, including why many companies are far away from "audit-quality financial data," the wrinkles that upcoming government regulations may put into the data collection process, and the difficulties that come with categorizing Scope 3 emissions.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we spoke with Todd Ehret, of Thomson Reuters Regulator Intelligence, about the state of compliance described in the recently published white paper, 10 Global compliance concerns for 2023. Now, as we come from the geopolitical concerns that caused a tumultuous 2022, we look ahead to what 2023 may have in store, including new concerns over environmental, social & governance issues and new impactful regulations such as Reg BI.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we sat down with Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, retired from the Supreme Court of Ohio, to discuss the current state of the nation's court system, as laid out in Thomson Reuters Institute's recently published 2023 State of the Courts Report. Our conversation covers the courts' digital divide, the ongoing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the work she did on the Task Force on Improving Court Operations Using Remote Technology.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, we discuss how law firms manage their talent in the post-pandemic era, and how their various strategies have become an area of intense focus as well as a determining factor in how firms can define and differentiate themselves going forward.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, available on the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast channel, we dive deep into the recently published 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market, produced by the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Georgetown Law Center. In the podcast, we examine some of the themes discussed in the report, and in particular some of the things that media coverage may have overlooked, with Jim Jones, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at the Georgetown Law Center and the report's chief author.

In the most recent Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, available on the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast channel, our team of strategists reveal the trends they're watching as we enter 2023, and how changes in the overall economy may affect this coming year's strategic priorities for law firms, tax & accounting firms, and corporations and impact areas of ESG, technology, and compliance and risk.

In the most recent Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, available on the Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast channel, we are joined once again by Lizzy Duffy, a senior director with the Thomson Reuters Institute's global client services team. Duffy shares with us some surprising findings around just how powerful a team of lawyers that the client feels operates in a truly collaborative fashion can be for the law firm that employs them.

In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, available on the Thomson Reuters Institute channel, we speak with Gabriel Hidalgo of FTI Consulting and Teresa Anaya of Archblock about digital assets, how they act within their own ecosystem, and how that compares to and interacts with the traditional economy.

In a new Thomson Reuters Institute Insights podcast, available on the Thomson Reuters Institute channel, we discuss the Thomson Reuters Institute's Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index, an annual look at the state of affairs within corporate legal departments, and what it says about department leaders' thinking in the current environment.

In this week's podcast available on the Thomson Reuters Institute channel, we speak to Suzanne Offerman, Senior Product Manager at Thomson Reuters, about Thomson Reuters' inaugural Global Trade Report 2022: Turbulence Tempered with Technology, released in September.