Background: Anthropic is a US AI startup founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, best known for its chatbot Claude, which grown to over 30 million monthly active users. The company has been expanding into specialised AI tools, including Claude Code for developers and Claude Cowork.

What happened: Now, Claude Cowork just announced a new legal plugin. While it doesn't provide legal advice, it can review contracts, triage NDAs, and automate compliance work. Legal publishers saw their shares plummet - Pearson fell 8%, Thomson Reuters dropped 18% and Experian also lost value.

What else: This announcement shows how AI is speeding up disintermediation and removing middlemen in industries like legal research. This has created a major challenge for traditional publishers and junior legal staff.

What's the key learning

💡Disintermediation is removing the middle layer between users and services. AI tools like Claude Cowork automate work junior lawyers or research teams used to do.

💡The proposition is that AI isn't just faster, it's cheaper too. According to Indeed, the average junior lawyer earns around $80,000 per year, and AI tools can perform much of the same work at lower cost.

💡So now, traditional legal research companies and middlemen face a real existential threat. A single AI demo wiped billions off publishers and data providers, showing how quickly AI can disrupt entrenched industries.