As insurance companies incorporate AI into their underwriting, claims processing, and fraud detection efforts, defense attorneys must rise to the challenge: adapt to the fast-paced technological landscape to meet their clients’ needs.
Highlights
- Insurance sector leaders utilizing AI achieve six times greater shareholder returns than their less innovative counterparts.
- Attorneys leveraging advanced AI can work 20-30% faster while producing higher quality outcomes.
- Defense law firms must evolve to match the AI-driven operational speed of their insurance clients.
As insurance providers increasingly implement AI, the role of defense attorneys is evolving. Law firms must keep pace with the burgeoning technology, which is reshaping the insurance landscape.
The debate over whether to adopt AI has long been settled within the insurance industry. Carriers are now utilizing AI across all aspects of their operations—from pricing risk to automating claims processing, identifying fraud, and generating bulk customer communications, often before any human intervention occurs.
The impacts are significant. For instance, UK insurer Aviva has employed over 80 AI models in its claims department, leading to a 23-day reduction in the time required to assess liability for complex cases, a 30% improvement in claims routing accuracy, and a staggering 65% decrease in customer complaints. These changes have saved the company more than £60 million ($79.3 million) in just 2024. Additionally, one large insurance provider now issues about 50,000 claims communications daily via AI. A recent study reveals that AI frontrunners in the insurance sector have achieved over six times the total shareholder return compared to their slower-adopting peers in the past five years.
As policyholders and litigants consider these changes, lawyers tasked with defending insurance carriers must adapt quickly. The expectation is clear: attorneys need to work at the speed of AI to satisfy the needs of their clients.
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The new standard for insurance defense counsel
Choosing your AI tool is a professional responsibility question
The new standard for insurance defense counsel
Insurance defense attorneys have historically been compelled to work swiftly. Their carrier clients demand high volumes of work under stringent cost constraints, where speed and accuracy are paramount. Generative AI is revolutionizing not just what attorneys can provide but also setting new expectations for every law firm they collaborate with.
At AIDA’s recent 2026 Insurance Law Forum: Global Perspectives, speakers illustrated how an experienced insurance defense attorney can now utilize a single integrated workflow to analyze a plaintiff’s expert report against opposing counsel’s arguments; identify key evidence from thousands of documents; formulate targeted deposition questions to contest a public adjuster’s methodology; and research complex apportionment laws across different jurisdictions—all tasks that previously would have taken days can now be executed within hours.
Research substantiates the magnitude of this shift. Trials conducted by Professor Daniel Schwarcz at the University of Minnesota Law School revealed that attorneys employing professional-grade AI worked 20 to 30 percent faster and produced output that was rated 20 to 30 percent higher in quality. Notably, the greatest benefits accrued to seasoned practitioners, who are best equipped to assess AI outputs critically and apply results to complex analytical tasks. AI doesn’t replace legal judgment; rather, it enhances it—especially when wielded by those already familiar with high-quality work.
This represents a significant enhancement, fundamentally reshaping what outside counsel can offer to carrier clients operating at the speed of AI.
What good looks like
Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, a Philadelphia-based insurance defense law firm with 53 attorneys, stands as a clear case study. After integrating Thomson Reuters® CoCounsel with a focus on security, confidentiality, and governance, the firm managed to compress full-day document reviews into under 30 minutes, significantly enhancing client responsiveness and case outcomes.
Ted Schaer, Chairman of Litigation, stated, “What CoCounsel has allowed us to do is efficiently manage massive amounts of data and become more responsive to our clients’ needs, in a timelier fashion.” In one instance, a CoCounsel-generated case analysis was so coherent and well-organized that it encouraged a carrier to exceed its original settlement proposal—benefiting all parties involved.
Nobody went to law school to comb through 3,000 pages of records. We went to critically think and be zealous advocates. These tools help us do exactly that.
Chairman of Litigation, Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy
Ross DiBono, a shareholder in the firm’s insurance defense division, emphasized, “CoCounsel levels the playing field and gives us a huge competitive advantage, especially against other defense firms that aren’t using technology like CoCounsel.”
Maximize efficiency with CoCounsel, the leading AI solution for professionals. Discover more about AI technology designed for practical application, grounded in trusted information and refined through expertise.
Not all AI tools are created equal. In a field governed by strict confidentiality requirements, selecting the right AI platform is a matter of professional integrity.
As global AI regulations evolve, the focus is shifting from merely assessing the correctness of decisions to scrutinizing whether the systems that produced them are adequately governed, transparent, and auditable. For insurance defense attorneys, this emphasizes a critical standard of due diligence: Is your AI platform safeguarding client data? Does it operate with documented accuracy and transparency? Is it constructed to meet the governance standards your carrier clients are increasingly expected to uphold?
“Data privacy, security, and the prevention of inaccuracies are non-negotiable,” said Mitchell Kaplan, Managing Director of Zarwin Baum. His firm conducted extensive evaluations—not just of features, but also of architecture, data practices, and governance standards before making a decision.
After assessing a range of tools, the firm chose Thomson Reuters® CoCounsel due to its robust safeguards and secure closed-system architecture.
As lawyers, we have strict confidentiality obligations set by our state courts and our clients. Thomson Reuters delivered on that.
Chairman of Litigation, Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy
Another deciding factor was integration capabilities. “What appealed to us about Thomson Reuters,” explained Lisa Slotkin, Managing Shareholder of the firm’s Jersey City office, “was that we could combine CoCounsel with Westlaw and streamline drafting into one platform.” Additionally, the tools easily connect to the firm’s document management system, creating a seamless workflow from start to finish.
This sets the standard—one that the legal profession now demands.
The firms that will lead
Insurance companies that do not fully integrate AI risk falling behind their AI-savvy competitors. The same principle applies to the law firms that serve them.
Lawyers in the insurance defense sector who best adapt to the evolving landscape will be those who embrace the pace of technology—quickly synthesizing discovery, responding to carrier inquiries within hours, and delivering insights that align with the expectations of clients operating on an AI scale.
Firms that emerge as leaders will be those that approach AI as adept insurance litigators do: rigorously, intentionally, and with appropriate safeguards in place. In today’s legal environment, this isn’t merely a competitive advantage; it embodies what a competent, client-focused insurance defense practice must look like.
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