Jul 02, 2026 | Inside Thomson Reuters

This story is part of our Chosen by Changemakers series, celebrating Thomson Reuters colleagues whose work drives real change and sharing what it’s like to build a career here.

An attorney called in with an urgent request. They needed a Westlaw citation for a court decision, and they needed it the same day. 

This wasn’t a decision that was routinely acquired. It wasn’t already in the system. The clock was ticking, and there was no guarantee it could be found, processed, and published in time. 

Kate MacEachern has been on the court opinion acquisition team at Thomson Reuters for more than four decades. She’s the person you want on the other end of that call. 

In this case, they found the decision. They processed it. They got it into Westlaw within hours. 

Tell us about your career at Thomson Reuters. 

I came to Thomson Reuters after working at a law firm where I found my heart in providing the law for arguments, rather than arguing for clients. My first job was writing headnotes for court decisions. Over time, I moved into handling requests, then helped with the development of graphical KeyCite, the first visual version of citation history available commercially. I remember drawing out a complicated history chain on legal paper, sheets pasted together, just to show how hard it was for attorneys to track the impact of interrelated decisions. Then the technology team built a way to draw those lines automatically, and that moment has always stayed with me. 

I was a manager for a while, but I went back to being an individual contributor. I wanted to be “in the work,” actively getting decisions to people faster. That’s still what drives me. 

What does “trusted expertise” actually mean at the ground level? 

It means double-checking. An attorney sends us an interesting decision. We go to the court source to get our own copy, not because we don’t trust the attorney, but because when we seek it out ourselves, we might spot a correction, a reconsideration, a later order that changes its status. We work hard to get vacated decisions flagged online, so researchers aren’t relying on law that’s no longer good. We add search terms, create links to cases and statutes, and provide editorial content that helps a researcher understand an area of law they may be walking into cold. Trusted expertise is everything from careful acquisition to the context we wrap around the content. We do more with the content, and we do more with the context. 

You’ve said the work sits at the foundation of everything else. What do you mean by that? 

Everything starts with the interpretation of law, and that includes court decisions. My work gets those decisions into the hands of the people who need them. If we miss a key decision, nobody can find it to cite. All the analytical works, the Practical Law content, the encyclopedic guides, everything is built on that foundation.  

What has been the most rewarding part of your career?

There have been so many proud moments over the years: an attorney praising the work of Westlaw, or a colleague and I celebrating after tracking down a hard-to-find decision for a customer.  

How has AI changed the way you work? 

AI has transformed how we search out and evaluate court decisions, helping us uncover relevant cases that might have been difficult to find in the past. By combining AI-powered analysis with human expertise and judgment, we can review far more decisions and identify the ones that matter most to researchers. It’s a remarkable shift from the days when opinions arrived in prepaid envelopes by mail. And it’s moving faster every day. 

In your own words, what does being a changemaker mean to you? 

Being a changemaker is being someone who cares. I care about my work. I care about our customers. When there’s an opportunity to do it better, we adapt. Change can be hard: implementing a new system, learning what the new failure points are, and finding new ways to navigate when the map has shifted. We move forward. We deliver things that were unthought of before: graphical citation history, decisions online in minutes instead of days, decisions that never would have been accessible in the past.  

Thank you, Kate, for sharing your story.  

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