As corporate legal departments continue adopting AI, the conversation is shifting from experimentation to strategy. According to the Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2026 State of the Corporate Law Department Report, nearly half of legal departments now report department-wide AI adoption, and technology has become a top strategic priority for many general counsel.

That momentum

Thomson Reuters scored a major victory in one of the first cases dealing with the legality of using copyrighted data to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. In 2020, Thomson Reuters sued the now-defunct AI start-up Ross Intelligence for alleged improper use of Thomson Reuters materials, including case headnotes in its Westlaw search engine, to train