This week, we welcome Laura Clayton McDonnell, President of the Corporates Business Segment at Thomson Reuters. Laura shares her inspiring journey from corporate securities law to executive leadership at top technology companies, including Apple, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and now Thomson Reuters. She discusses how her Silicon Valley upbringing and her family’s immigrant experience have shaped her leadership style and commitment to innovation in the legal industry. Laura’s personal purpose—rooted in values like courage, curiosity, and integrity—drives her mission to deliver measurable value to clients through legal technology and business transformation.
The conversation highlights the rapid advancements in legal technology, with a special focus on the impact of generative AI and agentic AI in the legal sector. Laura explains how she stays ahead of legal tech trends by collaborating with internal teams, listening to customer feedback, and learning from her daughter, a practicing transactional lawyer. She emphasizes the importance of a growth mindset, continuous learning, and adaptability—qualities she honed during her time at Microsoft under Satya Nadella’s leadership and through the teachings of Carol Dweck’s “Growth Mindset.”
Laura provides insights into how corporate legal, tax, and compliance departments are evolving from traditional cost centers to strategic business partners, thanks to innovative legal technology solutions from Thomson Reuters. She discusses how tools like Westlaw, Practical Law, Legal Tracker, and OneSource are helping legal professionals automate routine tasks, reduce contract review times by over 80%, and save millions on outside counsel spend. Laura notes that forward-thinking clients are not just adopting new legal tech tools—they are developing comprehensive strategies to transform business processes, training, and staffing for the future of legal work.
The episode also explores the rise of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs) and the ongoing bifurcation of the legal market driven by technology adoption. Laura observes that general counsel are increasingly sophisticated in their approach, weighing cost, complexity, and the use of AI to achieve better outcomes. She stresses that legal technology is now essential for law firms and ALSPs alike, and that innovation and value delivery are key to staying competitive in the evolving legal landscape.
Looking to the future, Laura predicts that predictive analytics, risk assessment, and cross-functional insights will become even more critical for legal, tax, and compliance professionals. She highlights the growing demand for skilled legal talent and the importance of ongoing training, ethical oversight, and building resilient, growth-oriented teams. Laura encourages legal industry leaders to prepare for a future where human expertise and advanced legal technology work together to drive strategic transformation and business success.
For more information on legal technology trends, AI in the legal industry, and upcoming events, Laura invites listeners to connect with her on LinkedIn or visit Thomson Reuters. She also highlights the upcoming Thomson Reuters customer conference in November, where attendees can experience product demos and gain insights into the latest legal innovation and industry trends.
Links:
Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]
Blue Sky: @geeklawblog.com @marlgeb
Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music: Jerry David DeCicca
Transcript
Marlene Gebauer (00:01)
Hi, I’m Marlene Gabauer from the Geek in Review podcast. have Nikki Shaver here from Legal Technology Hub. She has some news to share with us. So Nikki, what’s going on?
Nikki Shaver (00:11)
Hi Marlene, lovely to be here. So Legal Tech Hub just had a conference in London. It was our first ever conference in London, which we were delighted by. It was so exciting. Some interesting things came out of it, including one of the panels in particular got a lot of attention because it was on, of course, agents. We’ve spoken before about how this is such a hot topic at the moment. But this focused specifically on how to define agents.
Marlene Gebauer (00:20)
exciting.
Nikki Shaver (00:41)
So many announcements, but really there’s not a lot of clarity in the market about what an agent is or what agentic actually means. Dan Hoadley of vLex produced a very clear definition. He says that essentially an agent has to have agency. That means it must be equipped with tools that allow it to take actions and perform tasks. And it has to have the ability to reason about how and when to make use of the tools available to it to accomplish those tasks.
So that reasoning element is really important. True agents are able to come up with a plan about how to accomplish the overall goal, then pursue that plan and make adjustments to the plan during execution, and they will know when the overall goal is accomplished. think in light of all the activity in this space, it’s really important for firms to understand what is meant by the term so they can see through marketing language and determine when something really is agentic and when it’s not.
And it’s important to know because the questions you should be asking your vendor if you’re dealing with a true agent are different than if you’re dealing with, for example, an assistant tool. For example, if an agent is operating in a legal workflow, you may want to know whether visibility has been built in so that you can see the plan the agent creates for achieving its overall goal before it gets going on that plan and whether the lawyer or user is able to course correct the plan before it is executed.
The panel at our event actually concluded that based on Dan’s definition, there are very few true agents in the legal tech space at the moment. But for more information on agents, which as you know, we’ve been writing about since 2023, visit our site at legaltechnologyhub.com and reach out to us if you’re interested in a subscription to our premium content where you’ll find all of our deeper analytical pieces. Thanks Marlene.
Marlene Gebauer (02:34)
Thank you, Nikki, for all those great insights.
Marlene (02:47)
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer
Greg Lambert (02:53)
And I’m Greg Lambert. And this week we Clayton McDonnell, who is president of Corporates Business Segment at Thomson Reuters. Laura’s a leader driving transformation at the intersection of law, technology, and global business, which makes her the perfect guest to come here on the Geek and Review. So Laura, yeah, good to see you.
Marlene (03:12)
Exactly. It’s like you were made for us, Laura. Welcome to the Geek in
Review.
Laura (03:18)
Thank you so much. It’s just a privilege to be here.
Greg Lambert (03:21)
Awesome. So I was reading, you have a fairly recent article in which talks about leveraging agentic AI, which we talked about here a lot over the past year or so. And you kind of spun it in the way that agentic AI can help with corporate compliance issues. gonna talk about that in a little bit, but I really wanted to kind of back up a little.
little and look at the whole picture and ask you just kind of, how do you on a personal level, like keep up and train yourself and learn the ins and outs of all the AI tools, not just the internal tools that you work with, but all of these other tools as well. What’s the secret to your success on this?
Marlene (04:09)
And how do you know which, what to choose?
Laura (04:11)
What to choose, I know. That’s the thing. So I’ve got two answers to that. One is I actually do leverage the individuals in the organization. We’ve got a product and industry specialist team. We’ve got a lot of great product marketing folks. And they’re always good for us to tap into and learn what’s going out there and just keeping up to date. The second area is really our customers. They help sort of.
Greg Lambert (04:11)
Yeah.
Laura (04:35)
and push us forward because they see what’s happening there. And right now it’s about leveraging technology. It’s almost a requirement. Now the third way that I do it is we’ve got a daughter who’s in law and she is always pushing me to learn more about it. She’s like my source, right? What’s happening in the industry. She focuses on an area of law. She’s a transactional lawyer.
at a large law firm and she is on top of things. So she’s my secret source.
Greg Lambert (05:04)
There
we go. good, good. Yeah, it’s just so much to keep up with anymore as I can see that people may throw up their hands and go, okay, I’m gonna stick to this one. One thing that I know when there’s just so much change going on.
Marlene (05:18)
That is, that’s
the challenge, particularly when like stuff keeps happening. It’s like something new comes and it’s like, squirrel, you know, it’s like, but you know, you have to like, you have to like stop and be like, is that what I really need to focus on? Or do I need to kind of go the course and get, this level done first and then move to that.
Greg Lambert (05:35)
Well, Laura, you’ve also had a pretty exciting career and fascinating journey over the years. So I think you started off, you know, corporate securities law practice. Then you moved through legal into sales and executive leadership roles. At some tech companies people may have heard of like ⁓ Apple, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, ServiceNow.
Marlene (05:56)
Small companies.
Laura (05:58)
Yeah.
Greg Lambert (05:58)
Yeah, you know, these, these little startups. So, and then you took on the role of corporate, of the corporate segment there at Thomson Reuters leading that. So what were some of the key experiences or philosophies that kind of influenced the path that you’ve taken and driven you to where you are now?
Laura (06:21)
That’s a terrific terrific question. You know when I think about it, you know, I grew up in Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley So I grew up in San Jose and it was a farming community and so lucky that I was able to sort of leverage all of the experiences there and the wonderful companies that you listed out and I think about a couple of things one is you know, it’s about delivering value to customers and it’s
whatever the industry might be, but in particular when it comes to law or technology, are we delivering value to customers? And one of the questions that folks will ask me is, well, wait a minute, you moved from law to sales or business. Aren’t those so different? I mean, how could it really be the case that you can be successful in both of those areas? And I say, you know, there’s probably more in common that you might think. When you think about a framework of helping to deliver value to customers, first,
you gotta find out what the need is. Secondly, what’s getting in the way of them being able to address that need, whether it’s a goal that they have or maybe it’s a challenge. The third is about the solution that you can offer up and the fourth is are you delivering value that’s quantifiable. And whether you’re a salesperson or slash business person or a lawyer, you go through those steps. A lawyer gets a client sitting down and saying, look, I’ve got this intellectual property, maybe it’s a copyright.
really interested in protecting it and but what’s getting in the way? Clearly they don’t have the knowledge that’s why they’re coming to you. And then the third piece of it is the solution. Well it could be a license agreement, maybe it’s a non-disclosure, maybe it’s whatever the agreement might be, but you offer that up as a lawyer. And the fourth is there’s value there. I’ve got the protection that I I sought. Well a salesperson, a businessperson, same thing. Customer, what’s your need? What are your goals? What are your challenges?
What’s getting in the way? I don’t have budget, or maybe I don’t have the resources, or I don’t have the right solution. And you come prepared with a solution. It could be a Pagero e-invoicing, one source Pagero e-invoicing, because there’s a mandate out there that you’ve got to comply with when it comes to e-invoicing. And then there’s value there. You’ve complied with the law. You’ve avoided the fines. You’ve protected your reputation. So that’s what you approach customers in that fashion. It makes a huge difference.
I think the second area is really about embracing innovation. It just comes naturally to folks who sort of grew up in the tech industry. think I haven’t worked at any other type of industry except for sort of technology, whether it’s wearing the hat of sales or wearing the hat of law. And these companies are really about technology facilitating business and helping to transform business. So I think that’s pretty tremendous. And I think that the third piece of it
that I found is that it’s about impact and purpose. And many of these organizations talk about what the purpose is, how to change the world, how to impact society in ways in which folks may not have thought about. And you feel, whether you’re an engineer or a lawyer or a salesperson or a business person, that you’re a part of the development of that technology that’s going to drive that impact and that drive the purpose. And like I said, you don’t have to be an engineer to do that.
everybody contributes to making that happen. mean, and I think for me, those became like the reasons why I joined Thomson Reuters to deliver value to customers, to embrace innovation, to have a purpose that resonates in order to make a difference. And I feel very fortunate to be able to enjoy all of those here at Thomson Reuters.
Greg Lambert (09:45)
Yeah. we had a couple on that, that wrote a book about basically managing your purpose and finding your purpose. Do you, do you have your purpose written down somewhere? ⁓
Laura (09:57)
I
have it written down and it’s in my head. It’s to live life in an exemplary manner and all that matters with courage, curiosity, compassion, humility, integrity, and optimism. And each one of those words has a meaning and it’s all tied to my family story.
Greg Lambert (10:12)
Now I feel bad that I don’t have my purpose written down.
Marlene (10:14)
Now I feel like I want to hear more about the family story. Yeah,
Laura (10:14)
I’m happy
to share. I’m happy to share.
Marlene (10:21)
please, if you’re okay with it, sure, let’s do that.
Laura (10:22)
Yeah, yeah.
mean, when you think about it is, you know, there’s this book that Simon Sinek wrote. It starts with why and it’s about purpose and always starts with that. Why am I here? Why am I working at Thomson Reuters? Why do I do what I do? And values and I, you know, at some point we’ll probably talk about that linkage there, but values are about the how. But it does start with why. And he found that it’s really important to guide decision making, shape your actions.
builds your culture by that. So when I sort of describe, you know, to live life in an exemplary manner, that lead-in is really about my family. And I picked that word really specifically, exemplary. For me, it has two meanings. One is to be the best that you can be at whatever that you’re doing. And the other is to be a role model for others. So one is sort of this personal drive to be the very best in Excel. And the other is to help other folks.
And I say it that way because I think about my family. My parents were born and raised in Colon, Panama. And they wanted to come to the United States. They wanted to make the American dream real for the family. And so one of the ways to do it is to join the US military. My father joined the US Air Force. He got trained up in what you need to do. He learned English because Spanish was his first language. The first place he was stationed was Bermuda. And that’s where I was born.
I became a citizen when I was 18. And then the next place he was stationed was in Northern California. We’re so lucky, right, to have been moved there or transferred there because that sort of began the career in Silicon Valley. But I think about what they had to do. They gave up their language. They left behind family, friends. They were the first of their family to come to the United States. And I think about what was that like? I can’t even imagine doing it today.
But they sacrificed, and I thought, well gee, sacrifice that they made, everything that I do, I need to honor that. Otherwise, why did they do it? They were doing it for us, a family yet to be born. They made that sacrifice, and that’s why exemplary is part of my story. But each one of those words, I can’t think of one of those words that’s not a story about my family. Every single one of them, and so I start my day thinking about that. What am I gonna do today?
to embody these qualities of my purpose statement. And at the end of the day, I reflect upon it, gosh, how did I do? Was I a role model? Was I curious? Or maybe I wasn’t as curious about the world. And you use it as a way to almost like a way to meditate around that, reflect, and commit to just doing better. Because that’s all my parents really want me to do, is to just be better the next day.
Marlene (13:01)
Okay. You’re officially my Buddha now. Um, and you’ve, you’ve teed me up perfectly for the next question. So thank you for that. Um, you know, your talk and what, know, the things that you’re talking about, like this is, this is all about having, you know, a growth mindset. you hinted earlier when you were talking to Greg about, you know, being essentially being a student of your customer, which I think is fantastic. Um, you know, it seems that you were at a great place now and, and, and, but I’m wondering.
Greg Lambert (13:03)
Ha
Marlene (13:31)
in your prior legal training or other training, how did that initially shape your approach to business and technology and how has that evolved from beginning as to where you are now moving into high level sales and transformational roles?
Laura (13:45)
Yeah,
well thank you very much for that. it’s, gave me an opportunity to kind of think about how I have evolved in my thinking. And the order, I guess I would place the order as legal training first. And legal training brings this rigor and discipline to it about critical thinking and problem solving and how you go about making decisions. And I think it’s absolutely critical that we are able to do that.
And when you think about technology in all of these companies that I worked at, there were legal implications to the technology. They drove cybersecurity concerns potentially, data privacy issues, artificial intelligence is another piece of it, right? But they all have implications that are legal. you can approach the world sort of with that sort of critical thinking, that rigor and discipline.
And then later on when I was at Microsoft, and I think I had this all along in terms of my career, but growth mindset became something that was just absolutely important for success. And very luckily, I joined Microsoft when Satya became the CEO. I think he had been the CEO for maybe a year and a half before I joined. And it was all about growth mindset. There was a realization that Microsoft, you needed to be a learn it all, not a know it all, a learn it all.
in order to drive and develop a high performance team. So when you think once again, legal training is sort of, you know, isolated, maybe a little bit siloed about how you put that rigor and discipline in, growth mindset is all about sort of not only yourself, but your team also. So we leverage the book by Carol Dweck, Growth Mindset. And we taught ourselves or got trained up to realize that if you’re going to develop
your intellect, your talent, you do it through effort and learning, that you actually have the ability to change that. that challenges or opportunities. And so it allows for you to sort of, once again, sort of broaden the way that you’re able to approach issues or problems. So you go from the rigor and discipline of legal training and you put on top of that this continuous learning. That’s what’s in common with legal training because there’s gonna be, you it’s gonna be a dynamic environment.
There’s going to be new information and new technology. So you need to be open to learning continuously. And then when you add on to it, you know, the sales and transformational police, now you’re talking about something that has this interdisciplinary nature to it. You’ve got law, you’ve got business, you’ve got technology. When you bring all of those together, for example, from a sales perspective, it’s about learning to put the customer at the center.
developing out a relationship with that customer where you can develop that loyalty and that trust. Transformation is about, you know, change and innovating and adapting and aligning with business goals. And when you put all these pieces together, now you have this great foundation for being able to navigate the complexity in this world. You approach it as a challenge and an opportunity because of growth mindset. You apply the rigor of
of critical thinking and problem solving and you do it in a fashion that is in support of customers because of the sales aspect of it. And sometimes it means that you just have to think differently that whatever the result is is so different from the original that you have transformed your approach. And, you know, by pulling all these pieces together, I feel like I’ve just been very lucky in being able to have all these different experiences that influence the approach.
that I take in support of customers.
Greg Lambert (17:12)
Yeah, and.
Marlene (17:13)
Would you also say that being able to accept a reasonable amount of risk, is that also part of it?
Laura (17:19)
I think it is too, right? When you get the data that you need in order to make a decision, you look at it critically and you’re solving problems, it may mean sort of that trade-off. You’re more likely to have that opportunity to do that trade-off that is to make the decision about it when you’re wearing the business hat. The legal side says, I’m going to present to you as objectively as we can, here are the risks, here are the challenges, and then as a business person, you have the opportunity to say, okay, I think it’s worth the risk.
for me to go down path A versus path B.
Greg Lambert (17:49)
Now, we’re talking about your customer base and right now at TR, really looking at the corporate legal departments, tax, compliance departments. And so I’m not sure if that’s a huge transition from the excitement of the tech world and then coming in to focus in on what a lot of people would consider like the
basic need work of the corporations. These are things that just absolutely have to be done. And so I’m just wondering, what inspired you and or I guess maybe even what inspires you when you’re working with these groups on the challenges that you’re trying to solve?
Laura (18:36)
Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, when you think about it is I am daily excited about what my customers are experiencing. You know, it’s interesting, this type of customer, you’re going to find the general counsel and the tax department and the finance department. Sometimes folks might think about these groups as being cost centers. I mean, like really, they’re here to kind of outline the risks and they offer of advice, but they kind of go away.
What are they really doing? The Department of No, you know, and, you know, like, what did they really do to drive this business forward and help us transform is something where we at Thomson Reuters are shifting that perception because we have the tools, we have the technology that will free up time for these groups to…
Greg Lambert (19:02)
the Department of NO.
Marlene (19:05)
Ha ha ha ha.
Laura (19:26)
put in a sort of an AI type of, or generative AI environment, the opportunity to do repetitive tasks that may be ones that don’t require a lot of higher order sort of thinking to free up time so you can do just that and become a strategic partner to the business. And that is pretty inspirational in and of itself that you can actually transform, we are transforming these roles, these professionals to do something that they haven’t done before, nor have they been asked to do.
And it’s because now we have the technology that can do it. And I think about what it does, this technology, it drives change. change is there, right? Change is constant. But you need to change so you can stay relevant, so you can be competitive, so you can be innovative. And there are groups that folks would naturally go to and think that those are the groups that can do it. I truly believe that at Thomson Reuters, we can enable those professionals to be that
catalyst for that driving of that transformation. So many things are happening in the world. The macroeconomic environment, the regulatory landscape that is changing trade and tariff and you need somebody can counsel you to do that. The talent shortage that’s out there. What can we do as know professionals to make sure we have talent that have the skill set to be able to help us you know navigate through this complexity. There’s lots of data that’s out there and new technologies are
being produced all the time. So how do we help these professionals become more impactful, help to drive the transformation? Well, we have solutions. It could be on the research side, Westlaw, Practical Law, and Checkpoint, all of which is designed to help you get to the answer faster so you can free up time to be that strategic partner. Or the workflows that we have, OneSource, Pegaro, Haiku, Legal Tracker, Clear, all of…
which is designed once again to free up time for you to do some things that really do matter in terms of the priorities of that business. We see that role, the role of the professional in the tax department or finance department or legal department, dramatically changing. And we’ve got a, I guess, a place in that to drive that for making it happen. I mean, I think the bottom line is customers are looking for professionals to help them digitally transform, to help them.
generate more revenue, improve customer loyalty. So how do you do that as one of these professionals? You’ve to free up time to do that thinking. Once again, to our earlier conversation, its interdisciplinary piece of it puts this category of customer for us in such an important position in a company’s growth, reduction of risk, streamlining their business and saving on the expenses.
It’s pretty exciting.
Marlene (22:09)
So.
I want to follow up on that because Thomson has been a major player in legal tech and I know you’re incorporating AI. You’ve mentioned a number of tools that you have available for clients to be able to improve their workflow. I’m curious if you have heard of clients actually
having a strategy around this. So not so much just sort of looking at the tools and what the tools do, but having a larger strategy around these are what these things do and this is how we have to change our business, our training, our staffing as a result. Are you seeing that in terms of your clients?
Laura (22:56)
Yeah, I mean, think what, know, especially like the general counsel’s office, the general counsel is really looking to see how can I work with this budget that I’ve been given and still make an impact in an organization. And a lot of it is making sure that there’s time to do that kind of work. But first you got to get sort of you got to answer the mail. And that mail includes drafting agreements and doing contract review and
providing advice and what we’re seeing, especially if we use sort of Thomson Reuters General Counsel’s office as an example, if they can reduce the time it takes to review a contract, that could free up time for them to do more strategic work. So they’ve leveraged our products and they’ve been able to reduce contract review time by 80 % plus. We’ve seen a financial services company looking at the work that
they do and that is working with outside counsel and knowing that they’re getting a lot of pressure to reduce the cost, reduce the expenses, so using legal tracker to save millions of dollars on outside counsel spend. So we’re seeing that customers are using it as a way to facilitate getting to that higher order critical thinking strategic planning and so it may seem a little more indirect.
Probably the one that’s most direct, I think, is global trade management. So everybody’s talking about tariffs and how important and critical it is for global trade and using that product to do scenario planning. Not just sort of solving for the issue at hand, but being able to look around the corners, be able to predict what might happen in the future. Look at option A and option B and decide what we’re to go next. So you need that kind of guidance. You need the data being captured.
analyze insights extracted so you can then offer up that kind of advice that is pretty, it’s changing, it’s almost sort of business changing type of advice, especially nowadays, to be able to do it at your fingertips as quickly as the regulatory landscape is changing.
Greg Lambert (25:02)
Yeah. Now you’ve talked about, you know, leveraging the technology to kind of shift on how businesses are approaching the issues. There was a recent Thomson Reuters report which highlighted a significant growth in the alternative legal service providers or ALSPs and a potential what was called a bifurcation in the market based on tech
option. think this is one of the areas where I think a lot of us initially thought ALSPs were going to be like a huge injection into this area a lot faster than it is. so how do you see corporate legal departments, know, leveraging these ALSPs alongside their regular traditional legal services?
Laura (25:49)
You know, it gives them options. It really does, right? And it depends on the work. So I guess the first sort of priority that we hear from our general counsel leaders of that function, the legal department, is cost control. So that’s one of them. And so when they look at a law firm or they look at the ALSPs, they’re looking at how much is it going to cost me? And so that’s one of the top things. I think when we did our survey, our report,
Like 35 % of GCs are thinking about cost savings, but they’re also wanting it to be done right. So it’s not just about the savings. How can I assure myself and give confidence to our executives that this will be accurate and this will be right? So that’s one of the trends that we’re seeing. The other is they’re looking to see, where do I tactically outsource? Is it a specialty that maybe we don’t do well?
The law firm does or the ALSP? Maybe they’re looking at something that’s much more complex. Does it go to the law firm? it go to… It gives options. It’s a repetitive task. Maybe that goes to the ALSP. Maybe it’s something around e-discovery. So they’re being much more refined about where the work goes instead of, we don’t do it here, therefore let’s use an outside counsel. They’re looking at cost. Is it going to be done right? What type of work is it?
that we might be driving. They’re also looking at, I’m gonna get better value from it. And so once again, back on the cost part of it, but it’s associated with better outcomes. So I wonder if the ALSP is leveraging AI, is the law firm leveraging AI? And so as a way to facilitate or supplement and augment the work that they’re doing. And so they’re looking we really got to contribute to the bottom line. So billing, you know.
I guess, different ways of billing, whether it’s value-based or other kinds of arrangements are going to be really important. So becomes a little bit more complex in terms of the analysis that’s done. And GC is just not the ability to be able to kind of decide, does it go here versus another place, or do we keep it inside? So I think there’s a realization that technology is just not optional. It’s not optional. We’ve got to have a great
Greg Lambert (28:02)
I’m wondering,
and the evidence may be anecdotal at this point, but in your interactions, who are the corporate counsel looking to and seeing more innovations coming from? it more their traditional law firms or the ALSPs coming up with innovations? I’m curious if anyone’s talking about this or not.
Laura (28:24)
Yeah, that’s
a great question. I haven’t personally encountered the conversations with ALSPs. I believe that we have some of them actually use our technology, Westlaw and Practical Law, to facilitate their delivery of services. You know, what general counsel are talking to us about, or, you know, just we want to be able to leverage technology in a very budget-conscious way where I can get accurate data, freeing up time so I can deliver.
these strategic things. So they’re trying to sort of solve for that formula through the work that we’re doing. And I believe it’s going to continue to be a potential option for a general counsel to look at an ALSP.
Marlene (29:02)
So leading transformation often significant cultural shifts. Laura, what are some of that you’re seeing and how is that impacting how Thomson Reuters, how their are viewing sort of the legal, the technical, the political is that impacting
decisions and how you’re going to move forward.
Laura (29:30)
Yeah, mean, transformation is one of those areas that just comes up all the time when we have a conversation with a customer. They realize that because the landscape has changed, whether it’s macroeconomic or geopolitical or regulatory, that transformation is going to be one of those elements of their priorities that they just need to drive. And so what they’re looking at is, do we have a need out there?
what could be driving it. And this is requiring them to have a really close relationship with their stakeholders, their C-suite, to really understand what are the key priorities that may be driving a change. Then it needs to also align with the values that that company has. So whatever the change may be required, it has to be something that doesn’t sound dissonant from what the company’s purpose is and what the values are.
And as I mentioned before, engaging the stakeholders in this conversation is absolutely critical. So I think about what we’re doing here at Thomson Reuters is we have introduced a new set of values. I call it sort of this evolution, really based on what we’ve been talking about here, where you start with the customer first. You understand why you’re here. With Thomson Reuters, it’s about informing the way forward. And I think about this as sort of the natural step in our transformation.
few years ago we did something called a change program where we transformed the way that we operate internally. Now this is one where we’re bringing the customers in and the number one value is about customer obsession. So then you think about, okay, that’s a value that we have. The need that’s there is to make sure that we stay relevant to our customers. So that’s a need, okay, we’ve got the value. Then what do we do differently inside of our organization? Well, inside of the corporates segment,
we shifted to become more customer-centric. And that meant that we needed to approach customers not with the solution in mind, well, here’s a product that’s Westlaw or here’s a product that’s Practical Law, but what is your need? What are you trying to achieve? What your goals are? And making sure that’s aligned all the way through the organization into the C-suite before we act. And so taking the time to really spend time with the customer.
and understand their goals and objectives and challenges is a cultural change too. We change the values, therefore we’ve changed the culture. And that will take time. I love what we’re doing. We’re making that part of everything that we do. So for a transformation, it’s really about understanding what that vision is and communicating it, prioritizing it. And you’re doing that often to show folks
what it means to them to have the world be a little bit different because we have this. And transformation is going to be sort of, it’s going to happen throughout the course of time. You’re going to transform because, there’s a new competitor in the marketplace, or this customer is asking for something differently. It’ll be a constant. So one of the other things besides communicating the vision and ensuring that happens, developing a team that’s resilient, that has the growth mindset.
that is thinking about ways in which they can continue to learn. And that’s how transformation will occur.
Greg Lambert (32:43)
Now, Laura, we talked about the transformation, the changes with the technology. We had a couple of weeks ago, had Raghu Ramanathan on one of your colleagues. And he talked about the talent, the change in the need of the type of talent that we’re going to see in the legal industry.
go on the corporate side, could go on the law firm side, even the judicial side. So how are you seeing people that you interact with, whether it’s their TR or it’s your customer base out in the field, how do you see them balancing the human the loop versus the technology that’s in the loop and the changes?
on both sides, what’s kind of how you see that unfolding.
Laura (33:34)
Yeah, what a great topic. Talent, we think about it all the time. We talk about it all the time. Our customers are talking about it. They’re talking about the shortages that are out there in terms of folks who are qualified to, whether they’re a CPA or a lawyer. mean, how do we ensure that have a resource pool that is up on technology, that is trained up to do it? And so it becomes a very important topic there.
you know, when you think about generative AI or agentic AI, it’s just a powerful tool. It really is. but we remind folks, because sometimes you look at the news and all of a sudden folks say, no, my job is going to be replaced. I’m going to be replaced. And it’s not a replacement for folks. It really isn’t. What we’re seeing is that the best uses of generative AI or agentic AI are really about analytics. You’ve got this volume of data.
hard to assess and analyze it and draw insights from it manually. It helps with pattern recognition. Once again, with you, I have a lot of data there, so you can get the right patterns there, and that facilitates what action you might want to take. It helps with automating routine processes. Once again, freeing up your time so you can be much more strategic. And I think that’s really important, strategic thinking, decision making.
But you’ve got to balance it. It’s not just about that. And the approach that we take and what we advise our customers to take is it’s really a multifaceted approach. You need to look at forming an ethical review board. You’ve got to look at the ethics. it fair and transparent, the work that gets produced? Because line is for these tools, they’re learning also. And they’re learning because of work that you do with them.
Is it fair? How do you hold folks accountable? How do you audit to make sure that there’s no unintended consequences from that work? There’s examples in the past where if you’re not monitoring that, if you’re not auditing it, if you don’t have a review of it, it can go awry, right? Data governance is especially important. At Thomson Wörters, we have a set of principles with respect to data and AI ethics.
And so you have a quality control piece of it training because it’s only going to be as good as people. In every one of these elements about what we advise the team, the human is still there. The human needs to provide oversight. The AI tool is only there to augment, not to replace. And we always say, look, if you don’t know AI, you’re going to be replaced by somebody who does. I mean, that’s where the replacement comes in.
So the human must be front and center. And I remind some folks too, especially folks who have been in the law field, is that according to the code of professional responsibility, whether you have a paralegal or you have an AI, you’re still responsible. You’re still accountable for the work product. And that’s where it should remain. So that’s the balancing act that needs to occur.
Marlene (36:34)
So Laura, this has been a really, really fascinating conversation. Thank you so much. like you to look ahead. So I’d like you to pull out your crystal ball for us, right? And can have it right there. What major changes or challenges do you foresee on the horizon for corporate legal, for tax, for compliance functions? Because I think this is going to be a huge.
Laura (36:44)
Okay.
Marlene (36:58)
hot area in the next five to ten years, know, particularly regarding, you know, the technology and innovation aspect. So should leaders in these fields be preparing today for that future?
Laura (37:02)
All right.
Wow, that’s a terrific one. And I think about it in a couple of different ways. Right now we’re talking about using generative AI to do some things like looking at data, doing routine tasks. But in the future, and the future is almost here, right? It seems like it’s right around the corner here. How about predictive analytics? We talk about taking the data, analyzing it.
extracting insights about what you currently see today. But what about the future? Can we use it to predict? Is it reliable? How do we test to make sure it’s reliable? So I think about predictive analytics as being a really good area. Risk assessment, legal reasoning. And so these topics start adding in a layer of judgment. Once again, going back to our earlier conversation about the human still needs to be involved, oversight needs to happen.
But I could see where over time, genitive AI and agentic AI has a level of skill that could sort of border on that judgment assessment, what we normally would expect from a human. So we still have to sort of keep that in mind, but I see it evolving that way. And we know that, you know, powered by domain expertise and humans checking, it could be of value. So that’s one area.
The other is that I see it looking across the whole of the field, it’s not just legal or just tax or just compliance, but you have the opportunity to draw insights across legal tax trade compliance. You have one question, but there’s different angles to that question. You want to establish a manufacturing plant in Malaysia, you’re to have a series of questions that are not just legal. You’re going to talk about, we may need to hire some folks.
I wonder what the employment laws are, but what are employment policies out of it? How should we train the hiring managers? starts drawing out suppliers. We may have to do business with a third party. So how do we know that these folks aren’t, you know, that they’re for doing business with? And these become not just legal, but across the board. And I can see the insights being drawn no matter what the source is, no matter what the content that.
Genitive AI can help you with that. There’s going to be an even more increased demand for skilled professionals. It’ll continue. We already have a shortage of folks who are skilled. So this now shifts to, how do we prepare? Well, there’s training. Training that needs to co-sponsor it from your company to help folks learn about AI. As we opened up, we talked about the different ways in which you can learn about AI and keep up to speed.
We’re looking for our companies to help us with that because technology is going to be able to be used for us to get ahead. then there’s sort of the qualitative part of it, building a resilient team. We touched on growth mindset. How do you develop this high performance team that is willing to embrace the changes that occur and be able to continue to deliver and continue to learn? So with all of those pieces, I think that’s the way to kind of get ready.
Get ready for the changes that are here and we’ll be here.
Marlene (40:12)
Well, we gotta, gotta get ready.
Greg Lambert (40:12)
up.
Well, Laura Clayton McDonnell president of corporates at Thomson Thank you very much. It’s been great hearing kind of your personal philosophy, your professional history and where we’re going. Thank you for joining us on the Geek in Review.
Laura (40:31)
Thank you so much. It’s great to be here, Marlene and Greg.
Marlene (40:36)
And thanks to all of you, our listeners, for taking the time to listen to the Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you on LinkedIn and Blue Sky.
Greg Lambert (40:46)
And Laura, we’ll make sure that we put any links out there to the things that we’ve mentioned today. But if there’s, you know, what’s the best way for listeners to reach out and learn more about you or your work there at TR.
Laura (41:01)
Yeah, absolutely. So folks can check out our website at ThompsonReuters.com. We also have a customer conference coming up in the fall in November where you can see some product demos, get some more insights and learn about industry trends. So I encourage folks to stay tuned for that and please share stories with me, whether through LinkedIn, please make the connection there. I’m also at Laura dot Clayton McDonnell at ThompsonReuters.com. I know it’s a mouthful, so try LinkedIn.
Greg Lambert (41:25)
Yeah.
I’ve used those Thomson Reuter emails before, so I’ve had to type them out.
Marlene (41:30)
Full names, everybody full names. And as always, the music you hear is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.
Laura (41:33)
I’m just kidding.
Greg Lambert (41:40)
All right, thanks Marlene. Talk to you later.
Marlene (41:43)
All right, bye.
Laura (41:43)
Thank
you. Bye bye.