In a surprise move, Thomson Reuters has today announced two new offerings, Thomson Reuters Marketplace and Thomson Reuters Legal Home.
For example, it sells templates and condition precedent checklists, as well as promotes the services of professional firms, such as KPMG, and also will showcase legal tech companies that are not yet inside of Thomson Reuters, such as Specifio, which is a legal AI solution for patent filing.
A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters told Artificial Lawyer about 50 solutions and service offerings were already in the beta offering, with more to be added in the coming months, covering legal and also tax.
Artificial Lawyer asked if this was primarily a way to keep clients ‘inside the Thomson Reuters ecosystem’? The spokesperson replied that the marketplace was a win/win for all involved.
KPMG Law, which provides clients with legal business solutions based on its strong legal capabilities coupled with its expertise in areas such as consulting and legal ops, will be listed on the Marketplace.
James Thomas, head of Legal Technology & Innovation at KPMG Law in the UK, said: ‘Being a part of Thomson Reuters Marketplace enables KPMG Law to make its services and expertise readily available and accessible to a broad network.
‘We’re looking forward to working with businesses to ensure their journey towards a more digitized legal department is successful, from both a people-process and technology perspective.’
Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters Legal Home is an integrated digital launchpad serving as a central entry point for legal professionals to seamlessly access essential resources and information in one place.
Irish McIntyre, head of Legal Software and Workflow for Thomson Reuters, added: ‘These solutions will help our customers derive more value from the investment they have made in products, technology and services. We are delivering product interoperability around our customers’ workflows; it is about performing work, not onboarding tools.’
Both Marketplace and Legal Home connect customers to multiple features within Thomson Reuters HighQ, as well as many of the company’s legal products, including Westlaw and Practical Law. In addition, Marketplace offers key integrations to 3E for legal professionals and enables corporate tax professionals to connect solutions through Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE.
Thomson Reuters will continue to expand Marketplace, growing the offerings for legal, tax and accounting professionals as well as adding solutions for government and regulatory customers.
Is this a big deal…? Yes, massive. Selling its own products is one thing, selling others’ tech, as well as legal services providers – (even if the focus there is on KPMG’s legal ops consulting) – is huge.
(And, once a client has come through to KPMG’s tech solutions and legal ops offering on the Marketplace there is no reason why they may not then seek input afterward from KPMG’s many lawyers for some legal advice….)
This is kind of a Reynen Court/legal app store on steroids, with not just legal tech, but templates, and more. And, it will be growing, as this is only the early beta.
This increases the ability for Thomson Reuters to keep clients inside their ecosystem, and it’s also very noteworthy that KPMG has signed up – tying it to a raft of legal tech solutions.
How the relationship between KPMG and Thomson Reuters evolves will no doubt be watched very closely by the rest of the Big Four. That said, the giant publishing company has stressed the marketplace is open for all.
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