2021 Highlights: Helping Legal Professionals Work Virtually, Improve Productivity
With 2021 winding down, Legal Current is looking back at the milestones and key accomplishments from the Legal Professionals business of Thomson Reuters. Today we revisit some of the top tools and enhancements Thomson Reuters introduced to help legal professionals strengthen virtual work, collaboration and productivity.
The 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market found nearly 85% of law firms planned to increase their technology investment as the pandemic changed how legal professionals work. As firms embraced tech-enhanced workflows, automation, the cloud, and productivity tools, Thomson Reuters introduced new features in HighQ and 3E and expanded Marketplace and Legal Home.
Marketplace
An open environment that lets users find and test solutions that extend the functionality of many of their existing products, Marketplace’s expansion in 2021 was driven by law firms and legal tech providers offering their products and workflows, such as customized solution templates for HighQ.
Proven Paths, a capability within Marketplace, helps users identify vetted applications and solutions that seamlessly integrate with Thomson Reuters products and technology to extend their capabilities. Proven Paths guide users through an approach that filters applications and solutions designed to work together, delivering cost savings by reducing research, analysis and maintenance.
Legal Home
Legal Home – a free, integrated digital workspace that brings together key information along with solutions and services in one place – also grew in 2021. It offers key integrations, including with HighQ, Practical Law and Microsoft 365, to provide legal professionals a detailed view into their workflow and matters.
This year Legal Home added an integration with iManage Work, allowing users to link their iManage account with Legal Home to see iManage Work as an option in their app library alongside their Thomson Reuters apps. Legal Home also includes a deeper iManage Work integration, surfacing the five iManage matters the user most recently worked on, displaying them in a separate Legal Home tile.
3E and 3E Cloud
Another key 2021 enhancement was the 3E 3.0 release, introduced to better meet law firms’ changing technology needs and support their profitability and growth. The enhancements delivered more flexibility to boost firm productivity, simplify configuration, streamline time management, and enable a seamless migration path to the cloud. Also, 3E Cloud has helped firms like Osborne Clarke realize cost savings through decreased investment in hardware, software and maintenance. The latest release also included APIs that link 3E to Thomson Reuters and third-party applications to help ensure that firms stay connected with the tools they need.
Watch for more enhancements and integrations in 2022 as Thomson Reuters continues to help customers strengthen how they work virtually, better collaborate with colleagues, and operate more efficiently.