Thomson Reuters launches cloud-based tool ‘for lawyers by lawyers’ to assist firms in real time
Thomson Reuters has released Thomson Reuters Panoramic, a product geared toward large and midsize law firms to help them budget, plan for and manage matters in real time.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled the cloud-based Panoramic, which joins together its productivity and content capabilities from its Practical Law product with the analytics and financial management tools in its 3E offering. Calling it a tool developed “for lawyers by lawyers,” Panoramic purports to be an easy-to-use tool that joins the practice and business of law, so that lawyers can better predict profitability and provide greater transparency for clients.
“I visit law firms all the time, and all are working through transformation—how they price, collaborate with clients, budget or manage work,” said Elisabet Hardy, vice president of Financial and Practice Management at Thomson Reuters, in a press release. “But if you scratch a little bit below the surface, you realize that while firms are embarking on these transformations, lawyers are often struggling with how to become more effective, how to plan matters, how to budget against the work that they’re competing for. At Thomson Reuters, innovation begins with a problem our customers are facing, and we knew we were uniquely positioned to help by providing a new vision for the way lawyers work.”
Another feature of Panoramic is the Matter Maps, which are process maps generated for each matter or case that are constantly updated with content, case law and guidance from the company’s attorneys and editors. Panoramic also serves as a how-to of sorts, suggesting steps for a lawyer to take based on prior similar matters. The program also seeks to provide attorneys and clients with financial predictability by giving them easy access to budgetary and profitability information from past matters to guide decision-making.
“Because of its connection with 3E, Panoramic can pair the granularity provided in its Matter Maps with real-time actuals, providing up-to-the-minute status on how a matter is progressing down to the task level,” Hardy in the press release said.
LeClairRyan and K&L Gates partnered with Thomson Reuters to develop and design Panoramic. “By bringing [Panoramic] to LeClairRyan, we can deliver on our promise of innovation and truly change how legal services are delivered,” said Christopher Lange, a Panoramic innovation adviser and a partner at LeClairRyan in its Richmond, Virginia, office, during a press briefing. “The quality of our work product will improve, as will predictability. This will also free up our partners to do the kind of creative lawyering that they were hired for while giving junior attorneys more insight into what they’re doing and why.”
As of Wednesday, Panoramic will be available in the United States and the United Kingdom. A spokesperson for the company said it would evaluate making it available in other jurisdictions later on. Panoramic will launch with a deep focus on corporate mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, litigation and finance. Thomson Reuters expects to build out additional practice areas over time.
A screenshot of the time entry function on Panoramic, provided by Thomson Reuters.
