Anthropic is taking a page out of Elle Woods’ law book, turning to junior attorneys and asking, “What, like it’s hard?”

The artificial intelligence company that created chatbot Claude has introduced a legal plugin for its Claude Cowork platform, the more user-friendly version of its popular AI coding platform, Code. The new plugin automates contract review, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses, according to the company. (“All outputs should be reviewed by licensed attorneys,” it adds).

In other words, it does what associate lawyers have done for decades, posing a threat to the billable-hour model underpinning Big Law. That further undermines hiring of new law school graduates, which has deteriorated since the turn of the century amid software-driven document analysis and predictive coding.

Automation Anxiety

Corporate clients were already pushing for the end of billable hours, and at last year’s American Bar Association ethics conference, attendees predicted that AI could lead to the demise of the payment model.

The platforms powering that trend include tech startups growing at a rapid clip. Harvey AI, a tool designed specifically for the legal industry, said in December that it had raised $160 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing it at $8 billion. Another AI startup looking to automate lawyers’ workloads, Legora, said in October it closed a $150 million funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a $1.8 billion valuation. In May, Harvey — which was already integrated with OpenAI — announced it would add models from Anthropic (alongside Google) to its platform. Legora also relies primarily on an underlying model from Anthropic.

Now that Anthropic itself, which tailors its model to the needs of specific industries such as finance and marketing, is joining the space, investors seem concerned:

• Shares of legal data service provider Thomson Reuters fell roughly 16% on Tuesday. Anthropic’s entry into the legal industry is “a sign of intensifying competition, and thus a potential negative,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote. European legal publishing and LexisNexis parent company RELX, which provides AI tools for the legal sector, plunged 14%.
• In the US, FactSet Research Systems, S&P Global and Accenture suffered, too, as worries spread. The Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 ended the day down 1.4% and 0.8%, respectively. “All the software players are clients of the hyperscalers,” Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, told the Financial Times. “If the guys who are supposed to buy the computing power are being disrupted, that’s bad for the hyperscalers, too.” If the legal industry can be disrupted by Anthropic’s tool, he said, so can consulting and financial services.

Pentagon Clash: Anthropic didn’t exactly get a warm welcome from the legal industry, but it’s at least better than the one the company is getting from the Defense Department. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a $200 million Pentagon contract that Anthropic snagged last summer could be at risk because of the firm’s limits on how its technology can be used.

For every patient Eli Lilly helped downsize with its obesity drug Zepbound, rival Novo Nordisk’s purse got a little lighter, too.

After Novo reported disappointing results Tuesday, all eyes are on Eli’s earnings today, evaluating whether the firm has what it takes to, once and for all, take the Danish firm’s krone.

Foes Woes

Sales of Lilly’s GLP-1 treatments for diabetes and weight loss accelerated in 2025, winning investor confidence and sending its shares soaring 39%. That was met with forecasts that the Indianapolis-based company would soon overtake struggling Novo in the weight-loss drug race, unseating the firm that pioneered the whole sector. Analysts predicted the firm would garner roughly $17.9 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, a 32% increase from a year ago, according to Zacks Investment Research.

Novo, meanwhile, just had itself a bad Tuesday. Even though it became the first company to get a GLP-1 weight-loss pill to market in the US last month, executives said they expect sales and operating profit to fall between 5% and 13% this year. Leadership attributed the gloomy outlook to lower US prices amid heightened competition, weakening Ozempic and Wegovy sales, and the end of exclusivity for both drugs in Brazil, Canada and China. The Danish firm’s US-listed shares fell more than 14.6% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, future competitor Pfizer, which is targeting a 2028 entry into the obesity drug race, released new trial data for an experimental obesity shot Tuesday, but it came in “slightly inferior” to Lilly’s Zepbound, according to Leerink Partners analysts. Among Lilly’s other strengths:

• Its GLP-1 portfolio, led by blockbuster treatments Mounjaro and Zepbound, is expected to gain its own weight-loss pill, orforglipron, to rival Novo’s this year. There is also considerable upside thanks to a deal Eli struck in November to secure Medicare access for its obesity drugs, which Bernstein analysts said could open its treatments to 25 million beneficiaries.
• Seven phase 3 trials for Eli’s next-generation obesity drug, retatrutide, are expected to finish in 2026, covering not just weight management and Type 2 diabetes but cardiovascular and kidney issues. Given its trajectory and pipeline, UBS analysts last month called Lilly “the best growth story for 2026-2030.”

Lose a Size: The proliferation of cheaper generic drugs and increased competition have already begun to bring down prices for weight-loss treatments, as will the Trump administration’s deals with the pharma industry. Wall Street knows that this will do to revenues what GLP-1 drugs have done to waistbands. Last month, Jefferies cut its forecast for the weight-loss market by 20%, to an $80 billion peak from an earlier prediction of over $100 billion by 2030. Goldman Sachs also slashed its estimate from $130 billion to $105 billion.

It’s the kind of clock management that would do Bill Belichick proud.

When Seattle Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen passed away in 2018, he left Jody Allen — his sister, executor of his trust and newly named chair of the Seahawks — with one directive: sell the team and donate the proceeds to charity. After eight years of waiting, the timing finally looks right as the Seahawks swoop into this weekend’s Super Bowl.

America’s Game

Paul Allen bought the Seahawks way back in 1997 for just $194 million, preventing a potential franchise move from Seattle down to Southern California. Nearly 30 years later, the franchise is worth some $6.6 billion, according to a recent Sportico estimate. Meanwhile, one league executive told ESPN the final price tag could run as high as $8 billion.

The NFL has cemented its status as America’s true pastime since Allen bought the team. In 2023, the NFL accounted for a record 93 of the top 100 most-viewed US TV broadcasts, according to Nielsen data. But as the Allen estate nears a sale, the league’s utter dominance begs a simple question: Does the last remaining vestige of US monoculture have any more room to grow? Could the rest of the world learn to love football as much as futbol? League owners certainly hope so:

• On Monday, the league announced a multiyear pact to continue playing regular season games in Madrid after a Commanders-Dolphins game this season, as well as a new deal to bring a game to the Stade de France in Paris.
• The twin deals mean 2026 will feature a record number of international NFL games, with the schedule already including games in Rio De Janeiro, Munich, London and Melbourne, marking the first-ever NFL game in Australia.

Every Given Sunday: Global expansion is just one part of the plan. Last month, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft implied that the long-ballyhooed plan to add an 18th week to the NFL’s regular season is now all but inevitable. Labor isn’t exactly on board. On Tuesday, the NFL Players Union publicly opposed the plan to add an extra game, citing health and safety concerns. Considering the union previously opposed adding a 17th game, this one might come down to a coin flip.