CoCounsel (Thomson Reuters) screenshot

What is CoCounsel (Thomson Reuters)?

CoCounsel is an AI legal assistant from Thomson Reuters designed to help lawyers with research, document review, and drafting tasks. It integrates with Westlaw, Thomson Reuters' legal research platform, giving you access to AI-assisted analysis alongside their existing legal databases. The tool is intended for law firms and in-house legal teams looking to speed up routine legal work. CoCounsel can help you summarise documents, identify key clauses, answer questions about case law, and generate initial drafts of legal documents. It's built on legal-specific training, so it understands jurisdiction-specific rules and legal terminology better than general-purpose AI tools.

Key Features

Document review and summarisation

quickly extract key information from contracts, pleadings, and other legal documents

Legal research assistance

search case law and statutes with AI-generated summaries and analysis

Draft generation

create initial versions of legal documents, letters, and motions

Westlaw integration

access to Thomson Reuters' legal databases and citation tools within the interface

Clause identification

flag specific contract provisions and highlight potential issues

Question answering

ask natural language questions about documents or legal concepts and receive targeted responses

Pros & Cons

Advantages

  • Integrated with Westlaw, so you have legal research and AI assistance in one workflow
  • Legal-specific training means it understands case citations, statutes, and jurisdiction-specific rules
  • Reduces time spent on initial document review and routine drafting tasks
  • Backed by Thomson Reuters, a established legal information provider with decades of credibility

Limitations

  • Subscription pricing integrated with Westlaw packages; not available as a standalone product, so costs depend on your existing Thomson Reuters subscription level
  • Requires familiarity with Westlaw; new users may need training to use it effectively alongside other CoCounsel features
  • AI outputs still require lawyer review and fact-checking; it should not be relied upon without human verification of legal accuracy

Use Cases

Contract review: summarise lengthy supplier or client agreements to identify key terms and obligations

Due diligence: quickly analyse large volumes of documents during M&A transactions

Legal research: find relevant case law and statutes, then ask follow-up questions about how they apply to your situation

Document drafting: generate a first draft of a motion, letter, or standard legal document to save time before manual revision

Clause analysis: scan documents for specific provisions (e.g. termination clauses, indemnification) and flag them for review