The endless AI push is obviously driving away customers so it’s time to push Westlaw as human centric….
This story is part of our Chosen by Changemakers series, celebrating Thomson Reuters colleagues whose work drives real change and sharing what it’s like to build a career here.
An attorney called in with an urgent request. They needed a Westlaw citation for a court decision, and they needed it the same day.
This wasn’t a decision that was routinely acquired. It wasn’t already in the system. The clock was ticking, and there was no guarantee it could be found, processed, and published in time.
Kate MacEachern has been on the court opinion acquisition team at Thomson Reuters for more than four decades. She’s the person you want on the other end of that call.
In this case, they found the decision. They processed it. They got it into Westlaw within hours.
Tell us about your career at Thomson Reuters.
I came to Thomson Reuters after working at a law firm where I found my heart in providing the law for arguments, rather than arguing for clients. My first job was writing headnotes for court decisions. Over time, I moved into handling requests, then helped with the development of graphical KeyCite, the first visual version of citation history available commercially. I remember drawing out a complicated history chain on legal paper, sheets pasted together, just to show how hard it was for attorneys to track the impact of interrelated decisions. Then the technology team built a way to draw those lines automatically, and that moment has always stayed with me.
I was a manager for a while, but I went back to being an individual contributor. I wanted to be “in the work,” actively getting decisions to people faster. That’s still what drives me.
What does “trusted expertise” actually mean at the ground level?
It means double-checking. An attorney sends us an interesting decision. We go to the court source to get our own copy, not because we don’t trust the attorney, but because when we seek it out ourselves, we might spot a correction, a reconsideration, a later order that changes its status. We work hard to get vacated decisions flagged online, so researchers aren’t relying on law that’s no longer good. We add search terms, create links to cases and statutes, and provide editorial content that helps a researcher understand an area of law they may be walking into cold. Trusted expertise is everything from careful acquisition to the context we wrap around the content. We do more with the content, and we do more with the context.
