The scare this week caused in the legal publishing business due to the release of Anthropic Cloud Cowork with plugins appears to usher in a new era in which AI threatens to undermine or even replace software providers serving specific professions such as law, sales and finance.
The generative AI vendor introduced several plugins on January 30 for Cowork, an AI agent originally introduced on January 12. cloud peer Enables users to grant the cloud access to a folder on their computer. The agent then reads, edits, or creates files in that folder. Cowork with plugins lets users customize agentic tools for specific industries. For example, a sales plugin can connect the cloud to the sales team’s CRM and teach them the sales process; Legal plugins can help legal teams review documents, flag risks, and track compliance.
The dramatic decline earlier this week in the value of shares of legal technology and publishing companies such as RELX, owner of LegalZoom, Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, was widely attributed to Anthropic product releases.
Fears of ripple effects across the broader SaaS industry gripped the tech world, leading to a selloff in many software stocks and raising concerns that AI technology could displace entry-level professionals and other workers.
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While Cowork with plugins works across a variety of domains, the biggest impact was felt in the legal sector when major legal and professional services saw stocks drop drastically on February 3 and February 4. For example, Thomson Reuters Its stock saw a 16% decline in value, while Dutch professional firm Wolters Kluwer saw its stock fall 10%.
The stock market’s immediate reaction to the new Anthropic tool underscores how easy it is for a general-purpose model provider to create domain-specific agents that can automate repetitive tasks in other industries, including the sales, legal, and finance industries. This reflects the rapid maturation of the AI market to the point where it is now becoming possible and common to use AI agents to complete tasks in many professional settings.
According to law firm owner Michael McCready, “It’s not a case of fooling people or asking questions with ChatGPT; this is real agentic AI built specifically for law and specifically designed for certain tasks.” McCready Law in Chicago. He said that while some independent legal information providers, such as LexisNexis, are also offering agents that assist lawyers, Anthropic’s ability to develop and release agents at scale makes it a direct competitor.
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Concern about AI disruption in the legal profession is understandable because cowork with plugins assists experienced professionals and helps cut costs, said Michael Bennett, associate vice chancellor for data science and AI strategy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Most specialist legal practitioners and consultants who have deep skills are going to benefit from this in the short term,” Bennett said. “These are people who have incredible expertise and will now be able to reduce the costs of doing the hard work.”
However, the human cost of reducing hard work and using AI Agent McCready said favoring experienced professionals means it could lead to the loss of lower-level positions such as recent law school graduates.
“If this mundane, routine work can now be done by agentic AI, know that, it eliminates that bottom line, and it will be more difficult for entry-level lawyers to find positions that have historically been open to them,” McCready said. “Similarly, why would clients who are paying by the hour want to pay an associate’s hourly rate for work that can be done through AI?”
The new reality being created by AI highlights how the jobs of many white-collar workers will evolve over the next few years.
“We’re just at the very beginning of this,” Bennett said.
