Thomson Reuters Adds Legislative Insights to Westlaw Edge

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, February 12, 2020 – Thomson Reuters introduces Legislative Insights, a new tool on Westlaw Edge that provides actionable data relating to proposed federal legislation.

Westlaw Edge users will now be able to 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.

“Legal professionals want to exhibit a deep level of understanding of their clients’ businesses and operations,” said Lisa Mulrooney, director of Product Development at Thomson Reuters. “Legislative Insights on Westlaw Edge enables users to deliver greater value through deeper insights and strengthen their trusted partnership with their clients.”

Driven by a proprietary machine learning and natural language processing methodology from Skopos Labs, Legislative Insights uses more than 250 factors to assign a Probability of Enactment score to each bill. Additionally, a tag is generated for relevant industries that will likely be impacted if the bill is passed.

The algorithm weighs multiple factors, including the text of a bill as well as political and external variables. A text example could show an environmental bill would be more or less likely to pass with the terms “climate change” included compared to a bill where “global warming” is used. Political variables could 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.

Khalid Al-Kofahi, vice president of Research & Development for Thomson Reuters and head of its Center for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing, noted the value of continued development and collaboration to meet the need of our customers. "Thomson Reuters has been employing AI and machine learning for more than 25 years. 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."

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business information services. Our products include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world’s most global news service – Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters, visit tr.com and for the latest world news, reuters.com.

CONTACT

Jeff McCoy
+1.651.687.4091
jeffrey.mccoy@thomsonreuters.com