Brinks

Corporate legal teams at global enterprises face a structural tension: routine legal work—contract reviews, compliance presentations, legal research, and memoranda drafting—consumes the bulk of available attorney hours, leaving little bandwidth for the strategic work that actually moves the business forward. For Brinks, a global secure logistics company operating across 54 countries, this tension was acute. The scale of international operations meant navigating dozens of distinct legal systems simultaneously, a workload that demanded heavy reliance on external counsel. That dependency drove up costs, slowed deal timelines, and introduced communication friction at every handoff—turning the legal function into a bottleneck rather than a strategic asset.

Brinks implemented CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters' AI-powered legal assistant built on large language models and generative AI, targeting three operational pain points. First, automated workflows replaced manual drafting and review cycles—CoCounsel handled contract creation, redlining, negotiation support, legal research, and memoranda drafting, reducing turnaround time and minimizing human error. Second, the platform's multilingual capabilities addressed the core challenge of managing compliance across 54 jurisdictions, enabling the in-house team to handle work that previously required local outside counsel. Third, the deployment was designed for strategic augmentation rather than replacement: by absorbing repetitive, low-complexity tasks, CoCounsel freed senior legal professionals to focus on M&A activity, complex negotiations, and cross-border governance initiatives.

The efficiency gains were immediate and measurable across the legal operation:

• Task turnaround: Work previously requiring hours or days was completed in minutes, directly accelerating deal execution cycles.
• In-house coverage: Legal work across all 54 countries shifted substantially to the internal team, reducing external counsel dependency.
• Cost reallocation: Savings from reduced outside counsel spend were reinvested into strategic projects, strengthening Brinks' competitive position.
• Team satisfaction: Attorneys reported reduced stress and higher job satisfaction as routine tasks were automated, allowing focus on substantive legal challenges.

The combined effect repositioned the legal department from a reactive cost center to a proactive contributor to business strategy.

• Reducing external counsel dependency through AI-enabled in-house capacity is one of the highest-leverage cost levers available to global legal teams operating across many jurisdictions.
• Multilingual AI capabilities are a prerequisite—not a nice-to-have—for in-house teams managing compliance across diverse international legal systems.
• Positioning AI as an amplifier of human expertise, rather than a replacement, drives adoption and preserves attorney judgment where it matters most.
• Efficiency gains in legal operations compound: faster turnaround times improve business responsiveness, which creates demand for more in-house capacity, accelerating the shift away from outside counsel.
• Attorney satisfaction is a measurable outcome of legal AI deployments—track it alongside cost and speed metrics.