Thomson Reuters Shares Plunge as Anthropic Enters Legal AI Market

The new tool from Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, targets routine legal tasks including contract review, compliance workflows, and the drafting of standard legal responses. This development strikes at the heart of Thomson Reuters’ Legal Professionals division, a segment that generated roughly half of the company’s $1.46 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter. While Thomson Reuters has aggressively integrated generative AI into its own flagship products like Westlaw and CoCounsel, investors are increasingly wary of specialized competition in the workflow automation layer.

Market Reassessment of Legal Tech

The impact extended beyond North America, as shares of European competitors RELX and Wolters Kluwer also retreated following the news. The volatility reflects a shifting sentiment among analysts who question the long-term defensibility of traditional software licenses in an era dominated by large language models. National Bank of Canada recently slashed its price target for Thomson Reuters to C$190 from C$300, noting that the stock has faced a nearly 50% decline over the past 52 weeks.

According to analyst Adam Shine, the market is currently prioritizing companies providing the hardware and computing power for AI over the software applications themselves. The report suggests markets are growing cautious that AI could eventually erode the demand for traditional software licenses. To counter these shifts, Thomson Reuters CEO John Hasker previously informed investors that the company expects to invest heavily in the technology, with generative AI spending projected to exceed $200 million annually in 2025 and 2026.