CL Talk

Inside Thomson Reuters' legal AI buy-or-build moment

Oct 06, 2026

In this episode of CL Talk, host Tim Wilbur speaks with David Wong, chief product officer at Thomson Reuters, and Alexander Kardos-Nyheim, who co-leads the company's foundational machine learning research and came to Thomson Reuters through the 2024 acquisition of his legal AI startup, Safe Sign Technologies. Together, they unpack the strategic reasoning behind Thomson Reuters' decision to build Thomson – its first proprietary large language model – rather than continuing to rely entirely on third-party providers. The conversation covers what domain-specific training actually delivers for legal work, how Thomson Reuters defines fiduciary-grade AI and is tackling hallucinations, and the buy-versus-build question law firms across Canada are navigating. They also discuss Canada's place in Thomson Reuters' product rollout and what they would say to lawyers still skeptical of AI. Thomson Reuters is a supporting partner of the Canadian Legal Summit, taking place on October 14 in Toronto. Register here