Author: Jean Davis, Associate Librarian for International Law, Brooklyn Law School Library
At Legalweek New York (March 24-27, 2025), Wolters Kluwer (WK) Customer Success Manager Stefanie Efrati offered me an in-depth demo of VitalLaw AI beta version. Beneath VitalLaw’s search box, there was an option to check: “Include AI Generated Answer.” In this demo, VitalLaw AI Assistant responded to drafting prompts such as: “create a client email” (which could be useful for new attorneys); “draft a CLE agenda and program”; “draft a client memo summarizing the depreciation of capitalized transaction costs”; and “generate a checklist for depreciation of capitalized transaction costs.”
AI-generated answers to research questions posed during the demo included links to WK sources for verification and further research. Note: Your AI-generated answers would yield/link to sources in your VitalLaw subscription.
Question: “What are the prerequisites for a property to be depreciable?” This question yielded an editorially curated answer that cited/linked to a section of the Standard Federal Tax Reporter and provided related questions. VitalLaw AI also offered opportunities for a user to provide detailed feedback on what was wrong with a response. The starting point was a “thumbs up/down” icon near the top of the screen.
Recommendation for VitalLaw AI Users: From VitalLaw’s All Content dashboard: under “Need Help?” click “View online help.” Under category, Using VitalLaw AI, review: Writing Effective AI Prompts.
Conclusions: VitalLaw AI will aid tax researchers who are unfamiliar with the Internal Revenue Code and tools like Standard Federal Tax Reporter (2025). Users will appreciate VitalLaw AI’s drafting prompts. I asked WK Customer Success Manager Jeff Brandimarte to schedule an April demo of VitalLaw/Vital Law AI for students in the BLS Tax Law Association so they can preview the newest features of these products.
While in New York, I also met Ken Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of legal markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. One of Ken’s articles on AI is listed below for additional research.
Further Reading:
- To learn how products like Open AI’s Deep Research might affect the legal profession, see Ken Crutchfield’s, “Deep Research,” Above the Law, (March 25, 2025), https://abovethelaw.com/2025/03/deep-research.
- To obtain ideas on how to teach critical analysis in legal research, see Alyson Drake and Amanda Watson, “Legal Research Instruction in the NextGen Era,” Buffalo Law Review, (August 1, 2024), https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5027&context=buffalolawreview.
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