Lawyers have always been accountable for their work. That was true before AI, and it is just as true now. A brief carries your name. An argument carries your judgment. A citation carries your reputation. None of that changes because an AI tool helped you produce it faster.��

That’s��why when firms talk about adopting AI for legal work, the first question��shouldn’t��be about speed or cost savings. It should be: can I��actually verify��what this produces? If you��can’t��trace an output back to its source, check whether that source is still good law, and inspect the reasoning that connected the two, you��don’t��have work product. You have a draft you��can’t��stand behind.��

That standard is not new.��What’s��new is how many lawyers are finding out the hard way that the AI tools they adopted��weren’t��built with it in mind.��

Courts across the United States have now sanctioned attorneys for��submitting��briefs with fabricated citations, false quotes, and mischaracterized precedent — all generated by AI and not verified by the attorneys. When those tools are built on content scraped from the web rather than authoritative legal sources��maintained��by practicing attorneys, the risk of error is structural. The AI has no way to know whether a case is still good law, whether a statute has been amended, or whether a citation��actually supports��the argument��it’s��being used to make. Verification becomes difficult not because the tools��don’t��show their work, but because the underlying sources��can’t��be trusted in the first place.��

At��Thomson��Reuters,��we��understand��that lawyers��don’t��just need to find the law — they need to be able to stand behind what they find.��We’ve��always built Westlaw��and Practical Law��with that in mind, and��it’s��the same principle we carried into CoCounsel Legal from the very beginning.��

Built for Verification at Every Stage��

When we designed CoCounsel Legal, we started from a simple premise: a lawyer should be able to verify everything the AI produces before putting their name on it. That meant building��tools that give attorneys everything they need to do that��verification��themselves,��at every stage of the workflow.��

As the research unfolds,��Deep Research��shows you its work in real time, step by step. You can follow the reasoning as it develops,��explore��findings as they��emerge, and��refine��the research with more specificity��by answering��additional��questions.����

As citations are built, two things work in parallel.��KeyCite��is woven into every stage of the research workflow, flagging cases overruled in part, warning of proposed amendments to statutes, and surfacing cases that are��frequently��cited together even when they��don’t��cite each other. Alongside it,��CoCounsel Legal’s patent-pending citation ledger��tracks every source the AI draws on throughout the research process and confirms that each source was��actually read��and reviewed — not just referenced.��Together, they give attorneys what they need to��answer the question��that��should��precede every citation��they rely on: does this hold up?��

Before anything goes out, two more layers of review engage.��The Verify function, launched in February 2026, surfaces every assertion made in the research report alongside the relevant source passages and pointers for��additional��research — giving attorneys everything they need to��verify��before anything goes out the door.��Litigation Document Analyzer��goes further��by��identifying��potential misrepresentations of law throughout an entire brief, your own or opposing counsel’s. Because in litigation, what a document implies about the law matters just as much as what it explicitly says.��

Every one of these capabilities exists for the same reason: because when you use AI to do legal work, you are still the one responsible for it.����

The Question Every Lawyer Should Be Asking��

Not all legal AI is built the same way.��Some tools are little more than general-purpose foundation models with a legal label applied — with little ability to confirm whether the underlying sources are current, authoritative, or accurately represented in the answer.��They can be fast. They can be impressive in a demo. But when a client’s matter is on the line and a judge is asking questions, impressive in a demo is not the standard that matters.��

At ��������,��fiduciary‑grade��AI is our standard for how AI should work in��high‑stakes professions.����It’s AI designed for professionals – built on our authoritative content; protected by rigorous privacy and security safeguards; shaped and validated by subject‑matter��experts; and designed to produce transparent outputs that can be verified.����

We’ve spent decades earning the trust of the legal profession. That history shaped how we built CoCounsel Legal. When your firm is evaluating which AI tools to adopt, the conversation about speed and efficiency matters. But it shouldn’t be the only conversation. Ask how the system handles accuracy. Ask what happens when you need to trace an output back to its source. Ask whether you can actually verify what it produces before your name goes on it. Those questions will tell you everything you need to know about whether a tool was built for legal work or just marketed to it.��

Lawyers have always been accountable for what they put their names on. The right AI gives you the tools to meet that accountability — and the confidence to know you have.

Agentic AI, Grounded in Expertise

Help us shape the next generation of CoCounsel Legal

Earlier in April we announced the next generation of CoCounsel Legal, now available in Beta. Built from the ground up, it��delivers on��the vision we set out from the start: an AI companion that works alongside lawyers through every task and every stage of a matter, grounded in the trusted sources of knowledge they rely on.

We’re��inviting customers to help shape what CoCounsel Legal becomes – an AI that works at the level of a senior associate, built with Anthropic��cutting-edge��technology, engineered for legal work with authority and verification at its core.

We are excited to put the next generation of CoCounsel Legal in the hands of more customers as the year progresses.��!

Additional Sources in Deep Research��

Deep Research reports��in Canada��now include��additional��sources that help further explore the legal question and provide logical pathways to continue the research process. A new section provides sources that, although not cited directly in the report, may provide further, helpful context��to��your question. This added material provides greater depth and perspective to support research, giving users more pathways to��validate��findings and expand their understanding of complex legal issues.

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Built for How You Work

Contract Policy Compliance Enhancement: Obligation Extraction

Contract Policy Compliance��now��enables��uploading regulations and documents for a quick compliance check. Customers can now skip the manual entry of their policies by uploading a file, accelerating the compliance review��process��and reducing the time spent on repetitive data entry tasks.��

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Westlaw Content Source Added to Knowledge Search ��

Now, users��have the ability��to��search��U.S.��Westlaw cases inside Knowledge Search and use them instantly in CoCounsel��Legal��workflows—no tool-switching��required. Users can search��U.S.��Westlaw cases alongside their DMS content, intranet��content, Practical Law, or other sources.��Upload cases��directly��into chat or��your��databases for further case analysis or to continue a workflow, making legal research more efficient and comprehensive.��

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Tabular Analysis Enhancements

Manually edit cell values and add your own custom columns directly within a table to apply your own judgment, add context, and shape the output so it’s ready for the next step in your workflow. Review flags help you prioritize your focus by automatically highlighting extracted answers in the table that require a closer look due to ambiguity or nuance in the source document. It helps you prioritize the responses that require your human expertise review while trusting your final results. Download a table with applied filters directly into Excel, preserving your work in CoCounsel Legal��without resetting those filters in a separate spreadsheet. Filter table results by data type to quickly narrow down and focus on the most critical information within the table. These tabular analysis enhancements offer the user more control over their tables, streamlining their workflow from analysis to action.��

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Companies Search����

A new search form on the Westlaw UK cases page searches for company-specific content across Cases,��Dockets, and��Pending Actions��that��helps��users��uncover company-related litigation more efficiently��and from��one place. This gives users a broader and more connected view of a company’s dispute landscape, improving research speed, confidence, and decision-making.��

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Concise Answer ��

Now, users��in Canada��have the��option for a concise answer��when using��Deep Research on Westlaw Advantage��that��will run in 2 minutes or less.��This provides users��with��more flexibility in how they use Deep Research��and can opt for a��concise answer��in��instances where a quick, straightforward answer is needed over an entire report.��

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Sharing and Saving Deep Research Reports (Canada)

Within a Deep Research report,��users can now copy a link to share the report with colleagues or save it to a folder in Westlaw for easy access later.��Quickly and seamlessly share��Deep Research to streamline��knowledge sharing with��your��teams.����

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Explore These New CoCounsel Legal Features Today

Sign in to CoCounsel Legal today to enhance the speed and effectiveness of your research, analysis, and document review workflows. Or explore training options at the����site.

To keep up to date on CoCounsel��Legal��new enhancements, sign up for the����today.��

The accolade, announced on April 23,��2026,��is awarded to �������� for��This purpose-built agentic AI platform is designed for professionals who prioritize accuracy, accountability, and trust. ��

Built for fiduciary-grade AI��

Since its launch in March 2025,����has been adopted by firms of��all sizes across the��United States,��with��users reporting time savings of��32% per task. The solution��draws on��Thomson��Reuters Checkpoint expert-authored��content, as well as primary sources including the IRS, FASB, GASB, AICPA, and IFRS, with every answer cited and defensible.����

Judges praised����for��demonstrating��“strong innovation��in enterprise AI by delivering��an agentic AI platform that integrates research, analysis, and workflow automation into a secure,��authoritative��environment��for accounting��professionals.”��Others��highlighted��its��“strong enterprise credibility and clear positioning in a regulated domain,”��and its��“intriguing use of AI to complement human work in a notoriously complex field.”��

“CoCounsel��Tax & Audit was built to solve real problems for real professionals, and this recognition is a testament to the transformative work our team has done to reimagine what’s possible for tax and accounting professionals,”��said , President, Tax & Accounting Professionals, ��������.��“I’m proud of the meaningful, measurable impact we’re delivering for thousands of firms across the country.”��

More than 3,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and industries were submitted this year for consideration. More than 230 professionals worldwide participating in the judging process to select this year’s Stevie Award winners.��

“Organizations across the United States continue to set a high standard for innovation and performance,”��said��Maggie Miller,��Stevie Awards President.��“The breadth and quality of nominations submitted to the 2026 American Business Awards reflect a dynamic and competitive business environment, where organizations are finding new ways to drive growth, deliver value, and make an impact.”��

Recognition beyond the Stevie Award��

The Stevie��Award��follows��,��which��recently highlighted �������� as one of the vendors most visibly shaping the agentic AI conversation in the tax industry. The��scale of��CoCounsel’s��adoption and its integration across the broader �������� stack��are��cited��as meaningful competitive differentiators in its ‘Agentic AI Tax Race’ series.����

Today, we’re announcing the next generation of CoCounsel Legal, now available in Beta. Built from the ground up, it delivers on the vision we set out from the start: an AI companion that works alongside lawyers through every task and every stage of a matter, grounded in the trusted sources of knowledge they rely on.

Built on the most advanced AI, and engineered for how legal work actually gets done

Built on Anthropic’s Claude Agent SDK, the next generation of CoCounsel Legal is a unified agentic platform that plans, selects tools, retrieves authoritative content, and adapts mid-workflow just as a senior associate would, not a first-year waiting for the next instruction. Critically, the lawyer remains in control—able to see the agent’s reasoning as it unfolds, step in to redirect its approach, challenge its assumptions, and probe whether alternative angles have been considered.

CoCounsel Legal doesn’t reason from the web – it’s built with Westlaw and Practical Law content and tools natively embedded. Different by design, the technology and the sources are built as one system, making defensibility part of the architecture rather than a feature. As a result, when CoCounsel Legal produces a deal term sheet, contract, or litigation strategy memo, every step of its reasoning is grounded in authoritative legal sources, guided by 35 million West Key Number classifications and 3.9 million Precision Research attributes, and fully transparent through verifiable Practical Law resources and Westlaw citations. Developed and evaluated by practicing-attorney editors working alongside top AI data scientists, the breakthrough isn’t simply faster task completion – it’s the ability to produce complex work product across the many decision points of a legal matter, moving beyond task execution to true legal reasoning.

Our leading evaluation framework encodes quality at each step. This means before any capability ships; we measure it. Licensed attorneys, including our Practical Law editors, define what the correct output looks like for each task type. Every new capability must demonstrate measurable improvement against that benchmark before it reaches production. The framework evaluates not just final outputs, but the full chain of reasoning that produced them, because an agent that arrives at the right answer through flawed reasoning cannot be trusted to do so consistently.

And we’ve gone further to protect the integrity of that reasoning, with patent-pending tools for citation integrity and output verification:

• Verification and grounding as system primitives. Authoritative retrieval, explicit source handling, and verifiable citation flows are product infrastructure -not post-processing or marketing language.
• Patent-pending link integrity.��Our patent pending citation ledger architecture tracks every source the agent brings into context and the specific passages it reads.

This is ; outputs grounded in authoritative content and customer context – making verification part of the system’s architecture rather than an afterthought. In a profession where a single missed citation can cost a client their case, defensibility isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point. In a profession where a single missed citation can cost a client their case, defensibility isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole point.

What our customers are telling us

The feedback we’re hearing from customers reflects this.

Brooke Conkle, partner in Consumer Financial Services at Troutman Pepper Locke, asked CoCounsel Legal a broad question about recent TCPA developments across two circuits and the solution “immediately zeroed in on the precise ascertainability nuances” between them, the kind of careful parsing that typically requires significant time and research. Her conclusion: “The underlying legal analysis genuinely blew me away and made me rethink what is possible with AI in complex litigation work.”

That’s not the response of someone who found a faster tool. That’s the response of someone who found a different kind of tool.

Andrew Medeiros, managing director of Innovation at Troutman Pepper Locke, captures something I think is fundamental to why this matters: “Lawyers don’t want to just operate software, and that’s not what great AI should do.” What he’s seeing is that CoCounsel Legal keeps lawyers in the analytical mindset they were trained for, going back and forth, challenging answers and steering the work.

He added: “The next generation of CoCounsel Legal seems to be a total game changer as��we’ve��introduced it to litigation and transactional attorneys. It’s meeting them within their workflows, allowing them to ask plain language questions and then see the step-by-step approach that CoCounsel [Legal] takes to help them draft the document relying upon Westlaw Deep Research and the Practical Law guidance.”

The AI Knowledge Management Department at Morgan Lewis, shared, “We were really impressed with the enhancements to the CoCounsel Legal platform. In our evaluation, it demonstrated strong capabilities in supporting efficient document drafting and in addressing gaps in information, such as filing party details, with both speed and accuracy when prompted. The outputs were well-structured and immediately usable, and the overall workflow was intuitive and easy to navigate. Performance was consistently fast. We are really looking forward to what’s next!”

Why we’re launching this as a beta, and building in public

Just as important as what we’re building is how we’re introducing it to customers.

We are deliberately launching the next generation of CoCounsel Legal as a beta, with a clear commitment to building in public and in partnership with our customers. This beta includes leading law firms such as Troutman Pepper Locke, Morgan Lewis, Carlton Fields, and Caplin & Drysdale, as well as four large enterprise customers. As we move through successive beta waves ahead of general availability later this year, we’re putting the solution in the hands of real lawyers working on real matters – listening closely to where it earns confidence, where it doesn’t, and incorporating that feedback directly into how the product evolves.

We’re inviting customers to help shape what CoCounsel Legal becomes – an AI that works at the level of a senior associate, built with Anthropic with cutting edge technology, engineers for legal work with authority and verification at its core.

This reflects a core belief I hold: the solution itself should be the argument. The strongest validation won’t come from launch announcements or benchmarks alone, but from sustained use – when lawyers choose to rely on the product because it holds up under real professional accountability.

Today’s beta is just the beginning. I’m excited to put the next generation of CoCounsel Legal in the hands of more customers as the year progresses.

I encourage you to explore how it works.

The 2026 AI in Professional Services Report from �������� tells a striking story. Sixty-two percent of professionals are using generative AI daily. Thirty-four percent of tax firms are deploying it at an organizational level — up from 21% just a year ago. And yet only 19% of those firms are actually measuring the ROI of their AI tools. More than half aren’t measuring at all, and the remainder have no idea how their firms are measuring AI’s output. The pace of change is accelerating faster than most firms anticipated, and the window for early-mover advantage is closing.

But adoption alone isn’t the headline. The real story is what’s happening inside the firms that have moved from experimentation to transformation.

Leading firms are putting AI to work

Our research shows that just 14% of tax firms say agentic AI is currently part of their workflow, but 80% expect it to be central to how their organization operates within five years. The question for every firm leader is whether they’re building for that future today or planning to catch up later.

At ��������, we launched in March 2025 — not as a pilot, but as a fully deployed, purpose-built agentic AI platform. In the months since, thousands of firms have embedded it into their daily workflows, and the results are measurable. The CoCounsel solutions include , and — tools that are helping firms transform the way they do tax research, tax preparation and strategic advisory. And users are reaping the benefits — with average time savings of 32% per task. Research that once consumed three to five hours now takes fifteen to thirty minutes. As , Tax Partner at Copeland Buhl, one of the top 20 accounting and advisory firms in the Midwest, puts it: “It’s a super easy way to ask very complicated tax questions from a reliable source… Everybody has said they can’t live without this anymore.”

What sets CoCounsel apart is the fiduciary-grade AI it’s built on: drawing from trusted sources including more than 12 million �������� Checkpoint expert-authored pieces, plus primary sources including IRS, FASB, GASB, AICPA, and IFRS. Every answer is cited, and every output is defensible. That matters in a profession where accuracy is non-negotiable.

, Principal at Virginia-based firm Harris, Hardy & Johnstone, captures what time savings means in practice: “Time is worth more than anything else. Our industry is so choked for time that any minute I get back could mean an extra evening with my wife or a vacation without stress.”

Built for the work — not retrofitted to it

What I hear most often from firm leaders evaluating AI tools is a version of the same concern: how do I know I can trust it? It’s the right question. General-purpose AI can generate plausible-sounding answers. But the high-stakes work tax and audit professionals do day-to-day means they need answers they can stand behind.

, Senior Tax Managing Director at Arizona-based firm Jansen & Company CPAs, tried several AI tools before landing on CoCounsel. His verdict: “It saves us time, but not just time — there’s an accuracy and a confidence element there… CoCounsel shines for deep research. Nobody can touch it.”

AI is no longer a future consideration for tax and audit firms. It’s reshaping the profession now, across firms of every size. At ��������, we have moved beyond promise to delivery — in CoCounsel Tax & Audit, providing AI technology that is already transforming how high-stakes work gets done.

Elizabeth Beastrom is President, Tax, Audit & Accounting Professionals at ��������

Two Industry Leaders, One Shared Mission

�������� recently announced that more than 120,000 law students across the U.S. will have access to their latest AI technology, CoCounsel Legal and Deep Research from Westlaw – making it the first company to provide this scale of ��fiduciary-grade AI access to law students nationwide. �������� serves more than 200 law schools across the U.S., including top-tier T14 institutions, extending a 150-year legacy of supporting legal education.

Hotshot has built a reputation as the go-to learning platform for lawyers at every stage of their careers. Hotshot now helps over half the Am Law 100, top law schools, and in-house teams provide on-demand learning, interactive learning, and experiential training programs in remote, live, and hybrid settings. Founded on the insight that even the smartest people who went to the best law schools don’t yet know what they’re doing when they start practicing law, Hotshot’s solution was to bring innovations in digital learning to the legal industry – things like short, practical videos, experiential, hands-on workshops, and mobile learning.

Together, these two organizations are combining the most advanced AI-enabled legal technology in the market with the most practical, skills-based legal training content available – and putting it directly in the hands of law students before they ever set foot in a law firm.

What the Partnership Delivers

Hotshot and CoCounsel Legal provide law students with hands-on experience to the very latest in AI technology, making them more appealing to employers and preparing them for practice right after graduation. By combining these resources, students gain exposure to cutting-edge AI tools, practical skills and essential methods to succeed from the start of their legal careers. With Hotshot videos, students learn substantive concepts, then use CoCounsel Legal to apply this knowledge – creating well-structured, research-driven work product that meets future workplace standards.

To give students a clear and structured path to practice readiness, �������� and Hotshot have together curated four “prepare to practice” learning tracks built around Hotshot courses: AI Foundations, Professionalism & Business Skills, Civil Litigation Basics, and Transactional Practice Overview. Available to the more than 120,000 law students across the country who already have access to ��������’ platform, each track brings together short, practical courses designed to deliver immediately applicable knowledge – and for every course a student completes, they earn a co-branded �������� and Hotshot Certificate of Completion that can be added directly to their LinkedIn profile.

These credentials signal to employers that a candidate has already developed the core skills and knowledge the profession demands. That foundational competence, paired with hands-on fluency in CoCounsel Legal, positions students to contribute meaningfully from day one – and to stand apart in an increasingly competitive market for legal talent.

The Future of Legal Education Starts Now

The legal industry is no longer asking whether AI will transform practice – it already has. “Professionals are not deciding whether to use AI anymore. They are deciding which AI they trust when their reputation and their clients’ data are on the line,” said Pat Eveland, general manager, Government,����������.

This partnership ensures that when today’s law students make that decision, they’ll do so with the experience, confidence, and skills to use these tools responsibly and effectively. The gap between law school and practice has long been one of the profession’s most persistent challenges. �������� and Hotshot are closing it.

“We couldn’t be more excited to partner with �������� in this way to help so many law students. By combining market-leading technology and foundational knowledge and skills, we’re helping make sure that students are as prepared for possible to shine in interviews, summer roles, and beyond,” said Ian Nelson, Co-Founder, Hotshot.

Rooted in Your Knowledge

Draft an Agreement Based on Your Precedent & Practical Law Content

Draft agreements faster without starting from scratch as CoCounsel’s drafting agent enables U.S. users to generate a comprehensive first draft in minutes using a trusted precedent or a Practical Law Standard Document. Simply upload source material, add key details and requirements, and CoCounsel analyzes the template, applies its structure and style, and produces a tailored multi‑page draft aligned to the instructions provided. The result is a quicker path from blank page to a client-ready draft in a streamlined workflow with less manual assembly allowing users to spend more time reviewing, negotiating, and advising. Review and then export to Microsoft Word when ready.

My Clauses

Using the new My Clauses in CoCounsel (U.S.), transactional lawyers can build a personal, searchable library of preferred contract provisions saved from playbooks, draft and modify outputs, or added manually so the right language is always within reach. Find what is needed in seconds, tailor it to the specific matter, and reuse it instantly across new agreements. That means less time hunting through old files, fewer drafting interruptions, more consistency across matters, and faster turnaround from first draft to final.

Built for How You Work

Draft Editor

Draft Editor is an integrated editing environment available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia that lets users refine AI-generated outputs directly in their browser – no need to export to Word or switch applications. Available across key skills including Review Documents, Draft, Summarize, and Timeline, simply click ‘open editor’ to start refining work. By enabling in-place editing, it keeps users focused on their work instead of managing workflow. The result: faster turnaround times, fewer interruptions, and a seamless path from AI assistance to polished work product.

Region Settings

Now available in the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia, lawyers can access a flexible, jurisdiction selection feature built directly into CoCounsel for Microsoft Word that enables seamless switching between region content and localization – regardless of regional subscription. Users also can access corresponding Westlaw and Practical Law content from existing subscriptions without purchasing separate regional entitlements or managing multiple logins. Additionally, an improved capability to switch between jurisdictions eliminates geographical limitations in the drafting workflow.

Citations Format Update

CoCounsel now delivers citations as endnotes (with hyperlinks) instead of footnotes in the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia – so your finished Word document reads cleanly from start to finish – a key preference often heard from customers. When exporting the output of any CoCounsel skill or workflow, citations appear at the end of the document, and each in-text citation links to the supporting source and back again. This creates less scrolling and fewer distractions while the work is reviewed, shared, and finalized, especially on longer drafts and research-heavy documents. The in-app experience stays the same; this update improves the readability of exported documents while keeping sources easy to verify.

Tabular Analysis

Tabular analysis is now available in Canadian French.�� Users can review up to 10,000 documents and 100 questions, viewing the results in a dynamic, filterable table format.�� This flexible capability enables users to add or remove files or questions mid-review, analyze results in a three-pane viewer, and run multiple tables simultaneously. The powerful solution significantly reduces document review time while enabling easy verification with clickable footnotes. This allows legal professionals to concentrate more on strategic, high-value tasks, and enhancing productivity while reducing valuable resource needs.

Explore These New CoCounsel Legal Features Today

Sign in to CoCounsel Legal today to enhance the speed and effectiveness of your drafting, document analysis, and review workflows. Or explore training options at the

To keep up to date on CoCounsel Legal new enhancements, sign up for the today.

* certain capabilities or integrations may require a subscription to other products

Smokeball and �������� to create a legal technology ecosystem that connects the business and the practice of law in a single, integrated experience. By bringing together Smokeball’s industry-leading practice management platform with CoCounsel Legal, our agentic AI solution for authoritative legal research, document analysis, and drafting, we’re giving legal professionals in small law firms something that simply hasn’t existed in the market until now.

Smokeball brings operational excellence to running a firm; �������� brings two centuries of legal expertise – the driving force behind the power of CoCounsel Legal – purpose-built for the rigor the practice of law demands. Law firms finally have both in one place.

Why This Partnership Matters for Our Customers

For too long, legal professionals have had to stitch together disconnected systems. They rely on one tool to manage matters, another to do research, another to draft documents, and another to bill. Every handoff between systems is a place where time is lost, errors creep in, and client service suffers. This partnership changes that.

Smokeball’s platform already handles the full operational layer of running a legal practice: case management, document automation, billing, time tracking, calendaring, and client communications. Right away, our joint customers in the U.S. will be able to connect matter documents directly to CoCounsel Legal in bulk, saving significant time, reducing the risk of errors, and streamlining workflow like never before.

This is only the start of the journey, as additional exciting integration phases are in progress. The trajectory is to create a unified interface where legal professionals can effortlessly access �������� legal content, AI, know-how tools, and current matter data – all in one seamless interface.

Built on a Foundation of Trust and Proven Scale

This partnership does more than just create an ecosystem, it connects a shared commitment to serve legal professionals at the highest level and with solutions they trust.

�������� recently announced that one million professionals have chosen CoCounsel, the company’s professional-grade AI technology, across 107 countries and territories. That milestone is a testament to something important: AI is moving from experimentation to production. Rather than standalone solutions, firms are embedding AI directly into daily workflows where accuracy, sourcing, and data protection are essential.

Professionals are not deciding whether to use AI anymore. They are deciding which AI they trust when their reputation and their clients’ data are on the line. CoCounsel is built for exactly that moment.

The next generation of CoCounsel Legal, entering beta soon, is designed around conversational task execution, meaning the best is still ahead for our customers.

Leading the Industry Forward

With Smokeball and CoCounsel Legal, no other combination of technology in the small law firm market brings together this depth of legal content and AI capability with this breadth of practice management functionality. This is what legal tech leadership looks like – not just building great individual products, but creating ecosystems that meet lawyers where they are and give them the resources they need to serve their clients at the highest level.

The legal industry is moving fast. �������� is committed to making sure our customers don’t just keep up, but that they lead. Our partnership with Smokeball is a continued step in delivering on that, and we’re just getting started.

Aaron Rademacher is the general manager of Small Law Firms at ��������.

Legal AI has moved beyond the stage where it can be considered an experiment.

We have watched AI transition from pilots and into the core of real legal work that is relied on, billed, filed, and defended. As this shift occurs, the AI conversation changes. It is no longer about curiosity or efficiency; it becomes about whether the system is truly dependable when the stakes are high.

That’s why the fact that more than one million professionals now use CoCounsel marks such an inflection point. This is not simply a vanity metric, but rather evidence that AI is being trusted with real workflows. Firms are no longer just testing solutions; they’re reshaping how work moves through their organizations, how expertise scales, and what clients experience as value. The gap between law firms that embrace that model and firms that don’t is already apparent, and it’s not going to close.

What’s becoming clear is that not all AI belongs in legal work.

The AI Line That Matters

Speed and fluency are easy to demo. They’re also the wrong bar. Legal professionals don’t operate in a world where “close enough” is acceptable. They operate in a world where answers have consequences for their clients, their firms, and the justice system itself.

General‑purpose AI is designed to sound plausible across almost anything. That’s impressive, but it’s also exactly the risk. In legal work, plausibility without grounding is a liability. Vertical AI startups focus on a specific domain, but are missing critical components including proprietary content depth, trusted workflows and enterprise-grade infrastructure.

This is where the difference between interesting AI and reliable AI shows up. At ��������, we use the term fiduciary‑grade AI very intentionally. It means the system is built for environments where accuracy, accountability, and trust aren’t optional. Where sources matter. Where outputs need to be explainable. Where professionals have to stand behind the work. That’s the standard we built CoCounsel to meet. CoCounsel Legal is grounded in authoritative legal content refined over decades, not scraped public data. It draws directly from trusted sources like Westlaw and Practical Law, and it can connect to a law firm’s own knowledge and documents. Its outputs are transparent and citation‑backed because that’s what professionals need in order to rely on the result.

Equally important, the system itself is shaped and validated by domain experts who understand how legal work must be done, and what standards it must meet. Customer data is protected by design, not retrofitted through policy. Governance, accountability and oversight are built into the architecture.

CoCounsel Legal Reimagined: Built for How Legal Work Really Happens

The next generation of CoCounsel Legal reflects a simple belief: lawyers shouldn’t have to adapt themselves to AI.

For too long, legal AI has asked professionals to manage the system and choose solutions, craft prompts, stitch together workflows, and move work between platforms. That’s busywork. A lawyer’s value is not in learning how to operate software. It is in judgment, experience and strategy.

CoCounsel Legal removes that burden entirely.

With CoCounsel Legal, legal professionals describe what they need in plain language. The system determines how to get there by pulling the right sources, analyzing the relevant documents, applying jurisdiction‑specific guidance, and delivering work product that’s ready to be reviewed and used. Tasks that once took hours across multiple systems can now happen in a single workflow.

This is not an interface upgrade. It is a re-architecture of legal work execution.

“Lawyers don’t want to just operate software, and that’s not what great AI should do. CoCounsel keeps them in the analytical mindset they were trained for: going back and forth, challenging answers, and steering the work. With sourcing directly from Westlaw and Practical Law, they’re not wasting time second-guessing the results. We’re seeing adoption from associates to partners across every practice area. When it spreads that quickly, the experience just works.”

– Andrew P. Medeiros, Managing Director of Innovation, Troutman Pepper Locke

Trust Is What Turns AI into Infrastructure

What we hear consistently from customers reflects that shift. They’re no longer asking whether to use AI. They’re asking which AI they’re willing to trust when the work actually matters.

Trust is what allows AI to move from the edges of practice into daily execution. It’s what enables law firms to embed AI into workflows that carry real legal, financial and reputational risk. And it is why one million professionals across more than 100 countries and territories now have access to CoCounsel.

That milestone isn’t the destination. It’s a signal that the profession is converging on a new operating model where AI becomes infrastructure, not novelty, and where advantage compounds for law firms that adopt dependable systems early.

The Future Is Already Taking Shape

The next chapter of legal work is not theoretical. It is already taking shape inside law firms that are using fiduciary-grade AI every day and moving faster, reducing friction and focusing more of their time on judgment rather than mechanics.

That’s the shift underway. And CoCounsel Legal is built for it.

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The new CoCounsel Legal is entering beta in the United States soon, with general availability planned for later this year. More regions and territories will follow.��

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Fewer Steps. Bigger Outcomes. A fundamentally better way to practice law.