CoCounsel

What is CoCounsel?

CoCounsel (developed by Casetext and subsequently acquired by global giant Thomson Reuters) is one of the world's first professional-grade artificial intelligence legal assistants powered by the GPT-4 model. It was trained under strict data security rules to perform complex, time-consuming tasks that traditionally required hours of work from associate attorneys or paralegals — such as legal research, contract risk analysis, deposition preparation, and summarizing massive documents.

How it works

CoCounsel operates on a secure web platform. The attorney uploads documents related to a case (such as contracts, deposition terms, or email databases from an audit). The AI scans these files and answers complex analytical questions asked by the user in natural language. In addition, CoCounsel connects to Casetext's database of public and private US court cases to locate precedents and build structured arguments grounded in actual decisions.

Key features

• Legal Research with AI: Location of judicial decisions and precedents based on the meaning of laws, not just exact keyword searches.
• Contract Review (Document Review): Rapid scanning of contract drafts to identify termination clauses, abusive terms, regulatory risks, or corporate non-compliance.
• Deposition Preparation: Automated generation of question outlines and critical topics based on witness statement histories.
• Extensive Record Summarization: Condensation of hundreds of pages of court transcripts or medical records into logical chronological summaries.

Available integrations

Being focused on compliance and belonging to Thomson Reuters, CoCounsel works in tandem with:

• Westlaw (Thomson Reuters' leading legal research platform).
• Leading secure cloud providers for law firms (such as Microsoft Azure Government Cloud).

Who it is for

• Large and Medium-Sized Law Firms looking to speed up the discovery processes and defense preparation in complex litigation.
• Corporate Legal Departments needing to validate hundreds of contracts and regulatory compliance agreements.
• Paralegals and Researchers who need to synthesize legal databases within short filing deadlines.

Pricing

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Developed specifically to avoid legal hallucinations, providing links and citations from direct and official sources for every answer given.
• Robust security standards that prevent client confidential data from being used to train third-party models.
• Ability to analyze competitor complaints for logical flaws in arguments.

Cons:

• Very high enterprise deployment cost for solo practitioners.
• Primarily focused and parameterized on the United States legal system (Common Law).

Alternatives to CoCounsel

As leading legal AI assistants and research tools: Harvey AI, Lexis+ AI (from LexisNexis), Clearbrief, and Luminance.