2021 Highlights: Westlaw Edge Enhancements
As 2021 comes to an end, Legal Current is looking back at the milestones and key accomplishments from the Legal Professionals business of Thomson Reuters. Today we revisit significant Westlaw Edge enhancements from the past year.
A key Westlaw Edge addition included Quick Check Contrary Authority Identification, a feature within Quick Check, introduced during the first Thomson Reuters Legal SYNERGY conference. As Bob Ambrogi explained on LawSites: “A feature launched this week in Westlaw Edge is designed to help legal professionals more easily identify law that is contrary to their opponents’ arguments.”
The Quick Check feature uses artificial intelligence to enable researchers to analyze the other side’s filing and more quickly identify law that runs contrary to their opponent’s arguments.
Jean O’Grady headlined her coverage of the launch on Dewey B. Strategic: “In The Brief Checking Wars Thomson Reuters Ups the Ante with New ‘Contrary Authority’ Feature.” In PinHawk’s Librarian Daily Digest, John DiGilio noted: “Today the company is making headlines with the release of a new Westlaw Quick Check functionality for brief checking. Called ‘Contrary Authority’, it is designed to help you punch holes in the opposition’s arguments by finding … well, contrary authority.”
Another major Westlaw Edge development was the Westlaw Edge Canada launch, which introduced a range of tools – including Judicial Consideration for Statutes, KeyCite Overruling Risk, Common Queries, Legal Topic Suggestions and more – to help Canadian legal professionals expedite complex and time-consuming research tasks.
Alvin Ng, manager of End User Applications, Thomson Reuters, described customizing Westlaw Edge for the Canadian market. “It’s an easy assumption that all English common law countries are the same, but while we share a lot with the United States and UK, we are all unique. We inherited technology and blueprints from Westlaw Edge in the United States and UK when we built our product. One size mostly fits, but there’s also significant tailoring to be done for each country.”
Maria Cooley, head of Canada at the time of launch for Thomson Reuters, said: “Following the successful launches of Westlaw Edge in the United States and UK, we’re delighted to bring it to our Canada-based customers and share our biggest investment in innovation in the Canadian legal market in more than 10 years.”
Check out Quick Check Contrary Authority Identification here, and learn more about Westlaw Canada here.
