JFK Law LLP

JFK Law LLP, a Canadian firm specializing in Aboriginal law across multiple office locations, wanted to boost productivity in high-volume tasks such as document chronology building, agreement comparison, and lease-term extraction without sacrificing the human expertise clients expect. Large-scale eDiscovery and document review work in particular demanded significant attorney and paralegal hours.

The firm rolled out Thomson Reuters CoCounsel and AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Edge Canada firm-wide, led by Director of Firm Vision & Operations Monique Cotton and a dedicated eDiscovery/legal technology lead. Adoption was driven by structured change management: internal communication campaigns, accessible training, and group sharing of successful use cases, with leadership modeling expected use on their own files.

On one chronology project that traditionally required more than 150 hours of review and compilation, CoCounsel cut the total turnaround time roughly in half while human quality control remained central. The tool also sped up drafting and editing cycles, comparison of similar agreements, and extraction of key terms from lengthy multi-location lease agreements, helping reduce billable hours to clients. Adoption reached every biller in the firm.

• Structured change management — internal communications, accessible training, and shared use-case demos — was the deciding factor in firm-wide AI adoption, not the tool alone.
• CoCounsel worked best as a fast first draft or starting point (chronologies, research memos, letters), with lawyers and paralegals still providing final analysis and nuance.
• Using governed, legal-specific AI (CoCounsel) rather than general-purpose tools like ChatGPT was treated as essential for responsible use on client work.