Introducing Legislative Insights on Westlaw Edge
Today Thomson Reuters introduced Legislative Insights, a tool on Westlaw Edge that provides actionable data relating to proposed federal legislation.
Westlaw Edge users can take advantage of the comprehensive legislative content from Thomson Reuters and technology from Skopos Labs to present a complete picture and provide counsel relating to proposed legislative changes that may affect a client, company, agency or an entire industry.
“Legislative Insights on Westlaw Edge enables users to deliver greater value through deeper insights and strengthen their trusted partnership with their clients,” said Lisa Mulrooney, director of Product Development at Thomson Reuters.
Legislative Insights uses more than 250 factors to assign a Probability of Enactment score to each bill. Driven by a proprietary machine learning and natural language processing methodology from Skopos Labs, the tool also generates a tag for relevant industries that will likely be affected if the bill is passed.
The text of a bill as well as political and external variables are among the factors weighed by the algorithm. A text example could show whether an environmental bill is more likely to pass if it includes the term “climate change” versus “global warming.” Political variables range from the composition of Congress to the assigned committee. External factors incorporated may be related to gross domestic product or natural disasters.
Thomson Reuters was an early investor in Skopos Labs through Thomson Reuters Ventures, its venture capital group that focuses on growing and mentoring early stage startups. The Skopos Labs team consists of artificial intelligence researchers, attorneys, data scientists, software engineers, and policy experts, building solutions ranging from legislation, regulation and election-level insights.
“Thomson Reuters has been employing AI and machine learning for more than 25 years,” said Khalid Al-Kofahi, vice president of Research & Development for Thomson Reuters and head of its Center for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing. “We continue to build and enhance AI applications in-house but also partner with companies that can complement our offerings. The capabilities of Skopos Labs are impressive, and we’re excited to bring more AI and machine learning to Westlaw Edge through Legislative Insights.”