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CoCounsel

Thomson Reuters AI assistant for legal professionals, now integrated into Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core, providing AI-powered legal research, document analysis, and contract review capabilities.

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In Plain English

Thomson Reuters AI assistant for legal professionals, now integrated into Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core, providing AI-powered legal research, document analysis, and contract review capabilities.

OverviewFeaturesPricingUse CasesLimitationsFAQ

Overview

CoCounsel is Thomson Reuters' AI-powered legal assistant that delivers AI-driven legal research, contract analysis, and document review grounded in the Westlaw database of over 40,000 curated legal sources. For attorneys seeking to reduce research time while maintaining citation accuracy, CoCounsel offers a compelling solution — particularly for firms already embedded in the Thomson Reuters ecosystem.

Originally launched by Casetext in 2023, CoCounsel was acquired by Thomson Reuters in August 2023 for approximately $650 million, signaling the company's aggressive investment in AI-powered legal technology. Since the acquisition, Thomson Reuters has progressively integrated CoCounsel's AI capabilities into its flagship Westlaw Precision platform, creating a seamless experience where attorneys can conduct AI-assisted research within the same interface they already use for traditional legal research.

CoCounsel's core strength lies in retrieval-augmented generation grounded in Westlaw's editorially curated legal databases. Unlike general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT that rely on broad internet training data, CoCounsel draws from verified case law, statutes, regulations, and secondary authority curated by Thomson Reuters' team of attorney editors. Every AI-generated response includes direct citations to specific Westlaw sources, enabling attorneys to verify outputs and maintain professional responsibility obligations.

Key capabilities include natural language legal research across jurisdictions, AI-generated research memoranda, contract analysis for due diligence and compliance workflows, document summarization and extraction, and deposition preparation assistance. The contract analysis module is particularly notable for its ability to process large document sets — such as hundreds of leases or vendor agreements during M&A due diligence — and identify non-standard clauses, missing provisions, and deviations from market norms.

As of 2025-2026, CoCounsel exists across multiple product tiers. Westlaw AI-Assisted Research embeds CoCounsel capabilities directly within the Westlaw Precision interface for existing subscribers. CoCounsel Core provides a more accessible entry point with foundational AI research and document review features for smaller practices. The full CoCounsel platform includes advanced contract analysis, batch document processing, and expanded workflow integrations.

The platform has been adopted by over 1,000 law firms and corporate legal departments, reflecting significant enterprise validation. Thomson Reuters reports that tasks such as multi-jurisdictional research that might take a junior associate 8-10 hours of manual Westlaw searching can be reduced to under an hour with CoCounsel, though attorneys must still review and verify all AI-generated outputs.

CoCounsel operates on Thomson Reuters' secure cloud infrastructure with SOC 2 Type II compliance. Client data uploaded for document review is not used to train AI models, and the system maintains data isolation between firm accounts with full audit trails documenting which sources informed each output.

The primary limitation is pricing transparency: Thomson Reuters does not publish public pricing, and enterprise contracts are negotiated through sales. Industry estimates place per-user costs at several hundred dollars per month when bundled with Westlaw Precision, making it one of the more expensive legal AI options but potentially cost-effective for firms already paying for Westlaw access. Firms using competing research platforms like LexisNexis may face significant switching costs.

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Key Features

AI Legal Research with Westlaw Integration+

CoCounsel's research capability is grounded in Westlaw's 40,000+ legal databases, enabling attorneys to pose natural language questions and receive structured memoranda with pinpoint citations to case law, statutes, and secondary authority. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, CoCounsel's retrieval-augmented generation approach pulls directly from editorially curated legal content, including attorney-written headnotes and the West Key Number System. The integration into Westlaw Precision means attorneys can initiate AI-assisted research without leaving their existing workflow, and can seamlessly navigate from AI-generated citations to full-text authority within Westlaw.

Contract Analysis at Scale+

The contract review module can ingest and analyze large document sets — such as hundreds of leases or vendor agreements — to identify non-standard clauses, missing provisions, and deviations from market norms. Results are organized into structured reports that categorize findings by risk level and clause type, enabling attorneys to prioritize review efforts. This capability is particularly valuable during M&A due diligence, where transactional teams need to review 200+ contracts efficiently while ensuring no material terms are overlooked.

Source Attribution & Citation Verification+

Every AI-generated response includes direct citations to specific Westlaw sources, with links to the full-text authority. The platform maintains complete audit trails documenting which sources informed each output, directly supporting attorneys' professional responsibility obligations under rules requiring competent supervision of AI tools. This source attribution model distinguishes CoCounsel from general-purpose AI tools that cannot reliably cite legal authority.

Document Summarization & Extraction+

Attorneys can upload briefs, filings, contracts, or regulatory documents and receive structured summaries identifying key provisions, parties, obligations, deadlines, and potential issues. The system can process documents up to several hundred pages in length and extract specific data points into organized formats suitable for client reporting or internal analysis. This feature reduces the time attorneys spend manually reviewing lengthy documents while ensuring critical details are surfaced consistently.

Deposition & Litigation Preparation+

CoCounsel analyzes deposition transcripts alongside case materials to suggest lines of questioning, identify inconsistencies in witness testimony, and flag areas requiring further investigation. This capability integrates with the broader research functionality, allowing attorneys to cross-reference deposition testimony against relevant case law and statutory authority. Litigation teams can use these features to prepare more thoroughly for depositions and identify potential impeachment opportunities.

Pricing Plans

CoCounsel Core (standalone)

Custom enterprise quote

  • ✓Document summarization, contract review, drafting, and database Q&A skills
  • ✓Secure tenant with SOC 2 Type II controls
  • ✓Seat-based licensing typically negotiated annually
  • ✓Optional add-ons for advanced skills and integrations

Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel (AI-Assisted Research)

Add-on to Westlaw Precision subscription

  • ✓AI-Assisted Research embedded in Westlaw Precision
  • ✓KeyCite-integrated citation verification
  • ✓Access tied to existing Westlaw seats and content plans
  • ✓Bundled discounts when combined with Practical Law

Enterprise Suite (multi-product)

Custom enterprise quote

  • ✓CoCounsel across Westlaw, Practical Law, Checkpoint, and HighQ
  • ✓Cross-product workflows and unified administration
  • ✓Dedicated customer success and training resources
  • ✓Volume pricing for AmLaw and large in-house teams
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Best Use Cases

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Mid-size litigation firm conducting multi-jurisdictional case research

A litigation team handling a product liability case across 8 states can use CoCounsel to simultaneously research relevant statutes of limitation, product liability standards, and recent case law in each jurisdiction. The AI synthesizes findings into a comprehensive memorandum comparing each state's legal framework, with pinpoint citations to controlling authority. This replaces days of manual research with a structured starting point that attorneys can refine and verify, dramatically accelerating case preparation timelines.

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Corporate M&A due diligence contract review

A transactional team reviewing 200+ vendor contracts during acquisition due diligence can upload the document set to CoCounsel for batch analysis. The system identifies change-of-control provisions, assignment restrictions, termination clauses, and non-standard indemnification terms across all contracts, organizing findings into structured reports by risk category. This enables attorneys to focus review time on the highest-risk agreements rather than reading every contract cover to cover.

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Solo practitioner or small firm legal research acceleration

A solo employment law attorney preparing for a wrongful termination hearing can use CoCounsel to quickly research relevant precedent, identify key cases supporting their theory of the case, and generate a draft research memo. This levels the playing field by giving small firms access to research capabilities that previously required teams of junior associates, enabling solo practitioners to handle complex matters more efficiently without sacrificing research thoroughness.

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In-house counsel regulatory compliance monitoring

A corporate legal department tracking regulatory changes across multiple jurisdictions can use CoCounsel to analyze new regulations and compare them against existing company policies and contracts. The tool helps identify gaps between current practices and new requirements, enabling proactive compliance updates before enforcement deadlines. This is particularly valuable for companies in highly regulated industries operating across multiple states or countries.

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Litigation team preparing for complex depositions

An attorney preparing for a key witness deposition in a commercial dispute can feed prior deposition transcripts, interrogatory responses, and document production into CoCounsel. The system identifies inconsistencies across testimony, flags potential areas of vulnerability, and suggests lines of questioning based on the case record. This preparation capability helps attorneys enter depositions better prepared to pursue productive lines of inquiry and identify impeachment opportunities.

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Law firm knowledge management and brief drafting

A firm's appellate practice group can use CoCounsel integrated with Westlaw Precision to research and draft sections of appellate briefs, pulling relevant authority and synthesizing arguments. The AI-generated drafts serve as starting points that attorneys refine with their own analysis and advocacy skills, reducing the initial drafting time while ensuring comprehensive coverage of relevant precedent and statutory authority.

Limitations & What It Can't Do

We believe in transparent reviews. Here's what CoCounsel doesn't handle well:

  • ⚠Enterprise-only pricing with no self-serve option makes the product inaccessible to many solo practitioners and small firms without engaging in a sales process
  • ⚠Performance degrades in niche or emerging legal areas where Westlaw's underlying database has limited coverage, such as cryptocurrency regulation, AI governance law, or indigenous legal systems
  • ⚠Tightly coupled to the Thomson Reuters ecosystem — firms cannot easily use CoCounsel's AI capabilities with legal content from LexisNexis, Bloomberg Law, or other competing databases
  • ⚠Document upload and batch processing capabilities have practical limits on file size and volume that may require supplementing with dedicated e-discovery platforms for very large matters
  • ⚠The AI cannot perform legal reasoning about truly novel questions where no precedent exists; it excels at finding and synthesizing existing authority but cannot generate original legal theories

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

  • ✓Citations grounded in Westlaw's authoritative database: Responses link directly to Westlaw case law, statutes, and secondary sources with KeyCite signals, dramatically reducing the risk of hallucinated or fabricated citations that plague general-purpose LLMs.
  • ✓Purpose-built skills for real legal workflows: Pre-engineered skills cover contract review, deposition prep, timeline extraction, summarization, and policy comparison, eliminating the need for lawyers to craft sophisticated prompts from scratch.
  • ✓Deep integration with Westlaw Precision and Practical Law: AI-Assisted Research is embedded directly into the Westlaw Precision interface, letting researchers move seamlessly between traditional Boolean searches, KeyCite verification, and AI-generated answers within one workflow.
  • ✓Enterprise-grade security and confidentiality posture: SOC 2 Type II compliance, encryption in transit and at rest, and contractual commitments that customer prompts and documents are not used to train foundation models address ethics rules around client confidentiality.
  • ✓Backed by Thomson Reuters editorial expertise: More than 4,000 attorney-editors continually curate the underlying content, providing an editorial moat that pure-play AI startups cannot easily replicate.
  • ✓Cross-practice coverage beyond pure litigation: Beyond legal research, CoCounsel extends into tax (via integration with Checkpoint), risk and compliance, and corporate transactional work, making it useful across a multidisciplinary professional services firm.

✗ Cons

  • ✗Opaque, quote-driven enterprise pricing: Thomson Reuters does not publish pricing; deals are negotiated alongside Westlaw and Practical Law subscriptions, often resulting in five- or six-figure annual commitments that are difficult to compare against competitors.
  • ✗Strongest value requires a Westlaw subscription: Firms not already on Westlaw lose much of the citation-grounding advantage, and switching from Lexis or Bloomberg Law carries substantial migration and retraining costs.
  • ✗Output quality varies meaningfully by skill: Document summarization and contract review are generally strong, but more nuanced legal analysis can still produce shallow or boilerplate-feeling answers that require significant lawyer review and rework.
  • ✗Limited customization compared to platform-agnostic competitors: Unlike Harvey AI or in-house GPT deployments, CoCounsel offers limited ability to fine-tune behavior on a firm's own work product, precedents, or house style.
  • ✗Vendor lock-in to the Thomson Reuters ecosystem: Adopting CoCounsel as the primary AI assistant deepens dependence on the Thomson Reuters product stack, complicating future migrations to Lexis+ AI, Bloomberg, or independent AI platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is CoCounsel the same product as the original Casetext CoCounsel?+

It is the evolution of it. Thomson Reuters acquired Casetext in 2023 and has since rebuilt and expanded the product, integrating it across Westlaw Precision, Practical Law, and Checkpoint, and rebranding the broader AI strategy under the CoCounsel name. The standalone offering is now called CoCounsel Core.

Does CoCounsel hallucinate case law like ChatGPT?+

CoCounsel is engineered to mitigate hallucinations by grounding responses in Westlaw's editorially curated database and returning verifiable citations with each answer. While no generative AI is fully immune to errors, hallucinated citations are far less common than with general-purpose LLMs, and lawyers are expected to verify outputs using KeyCite before relying on them.

How is customer data and client confidentiality handled?+

Thomson Reuters operates CoCounsel in a secure enterprise environment with SOC 2 Type II compliance and encryption in transit and at rest. Customer prompts, uploaded documents, and outputs are not used to train Thomson Reuters' or third-party foundation models, supporting compliance with ABA Model Rule 1.6 confidentiality obligations.

How does CoCounsel compare to Harvey AI?+

Harvey is platform-agnostic and oriented toward large law firms with bespoke deployments, while CoCounsel's primary advantage is its tight coupling with Westlaw's authoritative legal database and Practical Law's templates. Firms that prioritize citation accuracy and live in Westlaw will favor CoCounsel; firms that want a more flexible AI layer across multiple data sources may prefer Harvey.

What does CoCounsel cost?+

Thomson Reuters does not publish pricing. CoCounsel is sold as an enterprise product, typically bundled with or added to Westlaw Precision and Practical Law subscriptions. Pricing is negotiated based on firm size, seat count, and which skills and integrations are included.
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What's New in 2026

Through 2025 and into 2026, Thomson Reuters has continued to roll out agentic capabilities in CoCounsel, allowing the assistant to chain multiple skills together to complete multi-step workflows such as end-to-end deposition prep or full contract review cycles with minimal lawyer intervention. AI-Assisted Research in Westlaw Precision has expanded to additional practice areas and jurisdictions, and integrations with Practical Law and Checkpoint have deepened so that tax and transactional workflows benefit from the same conversational interface. Thomson Reuters has also emphasized model flexibility, with CoCounsel running on a mix of frontier models from providers including OpenAI and Anthropic depending on the task, and has continued investing in evaluation and benchmarking to address concerns about hallucinations and output reliability in professional settings.

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