Thomson Reuters 2023 Future of Professionals: ChatGPT and Generative AI in Legal, Corporate & Tax Markets, June 2023 [24 pages, PDF]: “As generative AI started taking hold, the Thomson Reuters Institute has begun to catalog and measure generative AI usage and attitudes in the legal and tax industries. The first report examined generative AI within law firms, while the second expanded that use to include corporate legal departments. Following that, we developed a report looking at tax & accounting firms side-by-side with corporate tax departments. This report combines each of those individual segments into one holistic view, providing insights into not only how professional services industries as a whole are approaching this new technology, but some ways that their approaches and attitudes towards adoption and risk management differ among the professions. On the whole, professional services view generative AI tools positively, although with an element of uncertainty. The surveys conducted for these reports found that legal and tax professionals alike are not only aware of generative AI technologies and ChatGPT more specifically, but believe these technologies can and should be actively applied to their daily work. Legal and tax respondents also reported a similar rate of those who are actually using generative AI tools and those who are still considering it, with most still in a wait and see pattern of consideration before any wide-scale roll-out. While there are many similarities across these industries, a close look at the data teases out potential differences between how legal and tax, and between how corporate departments and their outside firms, are using the technology. The legal industry, for instance, is more likely to believe that generative AI can be applied to legal work than the tax industry is for tax work. Interestingly, however, corporate tax departments felt more positively about their outside tax & accounting firms using generative AI for tax work than corporate legal departments felt about their outside law firms using generative AI for legal work. And when it comes to risk, the report also found differences between corporates and outside firms: Corporate legal and tax departments, for instance, are more likely to already have policies in place against unauthorized use than their outside firm counterparts. By and large, respondents across legal and tax pushed back against the idea of technology being able to perform all of the functions of a legal or tax professional. “Legal analysis requires nuanced reasoning that I’m unconvinced AI can perform to the same level as humans,” said one law firm respondent…”