CoCounsel
Also known as: CoCounsel Legal, Thomson Reuters CoCounsel
Agentic legal assistant (Thomson Reuters) for research, document review, and drafting, grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law. 1M+ users.
CoCounsel is Thomson Reuters' AI assistant for professionals, with CoCounsel Legal as the flagship for law firms, corporate legal departments and government. Describe a matter in plain language and it builds a step by step plan, then researches, analyses and drafts, reasoning from Westlaw primary law, Practical Law guidance and the firm's own documents, with every step visible and every citation linked for verification.
Named workflows include Deep Research, Litigation Document Analyzer, Tabular Analysis across up to 10,000 documents, Westlaw Brief Builder with the attorney choosing arguments and validating the draft at each stage, contract playbooks and clause drafting, and Workspaces that keep a matter's documents, conversations and history together between sessions.
It connects to iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, HighQ, Box, Litify and Smokeball, works inside Microsoft Word, Outlook and Teams, and can be driven from Claude through a CoCounsel Legal MCP.
Thomson Reuters names OpenAI and Google as its model providers under zero retention terms, hosts in the United States by default with region hosting available in the UK, Australia and Canada, states SOC 2 and ISO 42001 certification for the product and publishes its ISO 27001 certificate, and sells four plans for firms of ten attorneys or fewer through a gated rate card, with a free trial on CoCounsel Essentials.
Vendor details
Canonical URL
https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legal
Category
Enterprise operations agent
Subcategory
Legal — research/drafting agent (Westlaw-grounded)
Company status
first party product
Use cases & customers
Primary use cases
Target customers
Deployment options
In practice
Your research is only as trustworthy as its sources. CoCounsel is grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law, so its answers rest on authoritative legal content rather than the open web.
A matter needs research, then document review, then deposition prep, and switching tools each time kills momentum. CoCounsel Legal handles the multi-step work conversationally in one flow.
You want to brief the assistant like a junior associate, not write a query. CoCounsel Legal, rebuilt on the Claude Agent SDK, takes a plain-language ask and executes across research and contract analysis.
Agentic Index coverage score
10.0 / 14 capabilities · 71%
| Integrations & Tool Calling | Full |
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A named integration catalog on the product page: iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, HighQ, DeepJudge, Smokeball, Box and Litify for matter content, plus CoCounsel inside Microsoft Word, Outlook and Teams, Claude via MCP, and Supio, with files surfaced without manual uploads and outputs written back to the matter. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Workflow Orchestration | Full |
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From a plain language description of a matter, CoCounsel Legal builds a step by step plan, works through each step across research, analysis and drafting, and delivers cited work product, with the plan and reasoning visible as it runs; Deep Research plans, executes and iteratively improves a research plan. Multi step agentic execution is the product's documented mode of operation. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Knowledge Grounding & RAG | Full |
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CoCounsel Legal reasons from Westlaw primary law, Practical Law guidance and the firm's own documents and prior matter context, held in workspaces and connected document systems, with KeyCite flags and linked citations on every output. Both the maintained legal content and the firm's own corpus persist and can be queried. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Human Oversight & Guardrails | Full |
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Westlaw Brief Builder is a documented stepwise control surface: the attorney reviews the facts, chooses the arguments, attaches the authority and validates the draft and citations before the brief advances, and every step of an agentic plan is visible for inspection as it runs. That is a vendor shipped review and approve mechanism inside the workflow, not verification after output; bounded autonomy settings are not documented. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Security, Identity & Governance | Partial |
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The compliance side is documented: the CoCounsel Legal product page states SOC 2 and ISO 42001 certification, Thomson Reuters publishes its ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certificates on its trust center as the selling entity, and a CoCounsel Legal security profile with SOC reports sits on Whistic behind an account. No customer facing access surface is documented: no SSO, SAML, SCIM, roles or permissions for CoCounsel Legal, though retention is configured at the organization account level. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legal and thomsonreuters.com/en/trust-centerread 2026-09-06 |
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| Observability & Auditability | Full |
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Every step of the reasoning is visible as the agent works and every citation is linked for verification; Tabular Analysis returns every answer traceable to its source document, and Deep Research checks whether cited authority supports the assertions made. Together they show why each output was produced. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Memory & State Persistence | Full |
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Workspaces keep a matter's documents, templates, conversations and history together so a user returns and picks up where they left off, which scopes memory to the matter workspace and keeps it across sessions. The CoCounsel FAQ states that retention of user content and prompts is set at the organization account level and that users can delete their own at any time. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legal and thomsonreuters.com/en/cocounselread 2026-09-06 |
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| Deployment & Data Residency | Full |
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Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel FAQ states that hosting and processing default to the United States and that region based hosting is available in the UK, Australia and Canada. The customer can pick one of those regions, but on premises deployment is not offered. SourceThomson Reuters, thomsonreuters.com/en/cocounselread 2026-09-06 |
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| Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs | Full |
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The plans page lists a named set of prebuilt skills and workflows the customer adopts: Deep Research, Litigation Document Analyzer, Tabular Analysis, Westlaw Brief Builder, Draft and Modify Clauses, Contract Playbooks, Knowledge Search, Prepare for a Deposition, Contract Policy Compliance and Timeline, plus an expert created prompt library. Each does its own job. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legal/plansread 2026-09-06 |
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| Triggers & Channel Coverage | Partial |
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Work reaches CoCounsel Legal when a user prompts it, whether in the web app, Microsoft Word, Outlook, Teams or through Claude, and document management connectors surface matter files without manual uploads. No schedules, webhooks or event subscriptions that start work without a person are documented. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Model Flexibility & Routing | Partial |
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Thomson Reuters names OpenAI GPT and Google Gemini as the models behind CoCounsel, processed under zero retention API calls, and chooses between them itself; no customer or admin model selection is documented. SourceThomson Reuters, thomsonreuters.com/en/cocounselread 2026-09-06 |
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| APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility | Partial |
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The product page lists a CoCounsel Legal MCP that lets Claude drive CoCounsel Legal, which is an outside caller reaching the platform, and Thomson Reuters runs a developer portal with an API catalog. No API or SDK for CoCounsel Legal itself is published, so MCP is the only documented way in. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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| Testing, Debugging & Optimization | Not documented |
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Thomson Reuters says CoCounsel is designed, tested and refined with subject matter experts validating the AI, which is the vendor's own release practice, and the Forrester study on the product page is commissioned marketing. No customer facing evaluation harness, test cases, quality gate or optimization loop is documented. SourceThomson Reuters, thomsonreuters.com/en/cocounselread 2026-09-06 |
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| Browser & Computer Use | Not documented |
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No browser, desktop or computer control is documented; CoCounsel runs inside Word, Outlook and Teams as an add in, which is the product's own surface rather than an agent operating an interface. SourceThomson Reuters, legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/cocounsel-legalread 2026-09-06 |
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The Agentic Index coverage score grades every vendor Full, Partial or Not documented against the same 14 buyer facing capabilities, from public evidence only. Each capability links to how all vendors in the index score on it. How this evidence is graded
Recent platform changes
Thomson Reuters expanded CoCounsel's due diligence workflows within HighQ with missing document analysis, holistic review of interrelated documents, and categorical risk outputs. The release also introduced the HighQ MCP connection, allowing third-party AI assistants to securely query HighQ matter data.
Bears on: Agent capability
View sourceThomson Reuters announced the general availability of the next generation of CoCounsel Legal. The updated platform introduces enhanced agentic workflows that autonomously carry legal analysis through reasoning, drafting, and verification steps to produce complete work product.
Bears on: Workflow orchestration
View sourceThomson Reuters announced the general availability of the next generation of CoCounsel Legal. The updated platform introduces advanced agentic AI workflows and Deep Research capabilities, allowing the assistant to autonomously plan, select tools, and retrieve authoritative content from sources like Westlaw and Practical Law to execute complex, multi-step legal tasks.
Bears on: Agent capability
View sourcePricing
Not published; rate card gated behind a qualification form
seats
Included quota
CoCounsel Essentials is the AI only plan; the Westlaw Advantage and Practical Law bundles add research content; CoCounsel Legal is the full plan.
What is public
Four plans are published for firms of ten attorneys or fewer: CoCounsel Legal, Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials, Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set with CoCounsel Essentials, and CoCounsel Essentials; larger firms contact sales. The View pricing links on the vendor's sales site ask for role and firm details before showing figures, so no price is published. Online pricing is for new customers only, and two and three year terms are discounted.
Billing mechanics
Per plan subscription for small firms with discounts on two and three year terms; figures shown only after a qualification form; firms over ten attorneys are quoted by sales.
Cost watchouts
Case law research comes with the Westlaw Advantage bundle and practice guidance with the Practical Law bundle rather than the AI only plan; discounts need two or three year terms; firms over ten attorneys lose the online path.
Variable cost rationale
Per plan subscription; no usage metering is published.
Additional watchouts
The rate card sits behind a qualification form; online pricing is for new customers only; firms over ten attorneys are quoted.
Sales call required
Mixed (some tiers require a call)
Free / trial
Free trial on CoCounsel Essentials; free demo on CoCounsel Legal; no free tier
Lowest paid plan
Not published
Commercial notes
Two and three year terms are discounted; free trial on CoCounsel Essentials and free demo on CoCounsel Legal.
Key ambiguities
The rate card exists behind a form, so the price is gated rather than absent.
Cancellation / refund
One, two or three year terms with discounts on the longer terms; refund and exit terms are not published.
Support SLA / resale
Standard support across tiers (chat/phone weekdays); enterprise/large-firm support via sales; integrations with Microsoft 365, DMS, and HighQ
Missing data
No figures are shown before the qualification form. The earlier $225 per user figure and configurator anchors had no first party anchor and are withdrawn.
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Alternatives to CoCounsel
The closest documented capability profiles to CoCounsel among enterprise operations agents tracked by Agentic Index, ordered by similarity on the same 14 point evidence the rankings use. No vendor pays for placement.
- Legora10.5 / 14Fuller documented coverage on Security, Identity & Governance and Triggers & Channel CoverageCoCounsel vs Legora →
- Aera Technology10.0 / 14Adds documented Testing, Debugging & Optimization
- dSilo12.0 / 14Adds documented Testing, Debugging & Optimization
- Ema11.0 / 14Adds documented Testing, Debugging & Optimization
- Leah AI11.0 / 14Adds documented Testing, Debugging & Optimization
- LexisNexis11.0 / 14Fuller documented coverage on Security, Identity & Governance and Model Flexibility & RoutingCoCounsel vs LexisNexis →
Similarity is computed from each vendor's Agentic Index coverage score evidence, axis by axis, not from the totals. How this evidence is graded