Follow these monthly updates to keep up with the next generation of CoCounsel Legal
Highlights
- Over one million professionals use CoCounsel across 107 countries and territories.
- CoCounsel Legal Reimagined enables completing legal tasks through a single conversation.
- The platform transitions from prompt-driven AI to fully agentic infrastructure for efficiency.
More than one million professionals across 107 countries and territories have chosen CoCounsel to be their professional-grade AI solution, marking a decisive shift in how high-stakes work gets done. AI has moved from experimentation to production, from testing to trust, from pilots to daily practice. CoCounsel Legal, a comprehensive AI solution designed specifically for legal professionals, has proven that AI can handle complex legal work with the rigor and reliability the profession demands.
But proving capability was only the beginning. The next generation of CoCounsel Legal answers a new question: What if completing any legal task required just one conversation?
That’s exactly what this reimagined version delivers. Simply describe what you need in plain language, and CoCounsel Legal automatically understands what skills and workflows need to be engaged, seamlessly planning research or drafting steps and executing. CoCounsel Legal is moving from prompt-driven AI to a fully agentic infrastructure, meaning fewer steps and bigger outcomes.
We’re building this next generation in public. From beta launch on April 20 through general availability later in 2026, this blog will document the process. Each month, we’ll share what we’re building and why, from the customer insights that sparked development to the challenges we’re solving, and what makes CoCounsel Legal Reimagined different.
Ask first, build second: Reimagining CoCounsel Legal, starting with the work
When we talk about building the next iteration of CoCounsel Legal, the conversation doesn’t start with features or models — it starts with the work. What are legal professionals doing every day? And where can AI make the biggest difference without disrupting how lawyers actually practice?
“This isn’t ‘build first, ask later.’ It’s ‘ask first, build second,'” says Tyler Alexander, Director of CoCounsel AI Reliability. The CoCounsel development teams and over 100 Practical Law attorney editors began with extensive market and customer research to home in on the next step in legal AI: not just point-in-time capabilities, but support for complete workflows — the kind that takes a matter from research through drafting, revision, and formatting in a single, coherent experience.
The data was clear about where development focus should begin. Across a range of 14 different practice areas, over 40 legal processes were identified by research participants as strong opportunities for further AI development. These use cases spanned from core legal work such as drafting and legal research to more specific use cases like patent application preparation or document-heavy written discovery review.
In addition to the quantitative study around use cases, our development team also conducted in-depth interviews with 30 participants to understand the nuances involved in the tasks they perform. It’s not enough to identify legal research as a key use case for AI — that’s a given. But hearing an attorney say “There are so many legal updates… you can spend your whole day reading,” surfaces a tangible need in research efficiency, current awareness, and synthesization. And accessing everything an attorney needs to complete a task can be messy business. “You’re toggling between tabs, notes, PDFs… It’s hard to see the bigger picture when it’s all so disjointed,” one interviewee said of their current process. These findings became the foundation for building the next generation of CoCounsel Legal and creating a truly unified, intuitive experience capable of handling nuanced legal work reliably.
Speaking with over 500 legal professionals helped our teams prioritize what matters most across firm sizes, corporate legal departments, and government roles and shaped how the next generation of CoCounsel Legal is being built.
When we set out to build the next iteration of CoCounsel Legal, we didn’t consider product limitations. We said: this is what attorneys want to do.
Director of CoCounsel AI Reliability
Because legal AI should adapt to the work, not the other way around.
What we’re hearing from early beta participants
As the next generation of CoCounsel Legal continues to take shape, one of the most valuable inputs has been direct feedback from attorneys using it in beta. These are real workflows, real matters, and unfiltered reactions from firms putting the system into practice.
Three early participants capture what is emerging.
In litigation, the feedback centers on the depth of analysis. Brooke Conkle, Partner in Consumer Financial Services at Troutman Pepper Locke LLP, shared:
“In my testing of next-generation CoCounsel Legal, I was impressed by the quality and speed of the analysis it generated. It immediately zeroed in on the precise ascertainability nuances between the two circuits — the kind of careful parsing that typically requires significant time. The underlying legal analysis genuinely blew me away and made me rethink what is possible with AI in complex litigation work.”
That idea of needing to rethink what AI can do has come up consistently in early testing. The reaction is not framed as incremental improvement, but as a shift in expectations.
In transactional work, the discussion looks different. It is less about analysis in isolation and more about how the system performs when the pressure is on.
“I’ve been impressed with CoCounsel Legal’s drafting capabilities; when I provide high-level bespoke provisions, the output is consistently strong. The next-generation of CoCounsel Legal could be a real advantage for our clients in transactional work. It helps our teams tackle complex drafting projects more efficiently, which matters when deals are moving quickly and timelines are tight.”
Partner, Private Equity at Troutman Pepper Locke LLP
Here, the value is tied directly to client work. The ability to maintain strong drafting under time pressure is where the impact becomes clear.
The third shift shows up in how attorneys are choosing to use the platform. Dan Block, Director at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox PLLC, put it simply:
“The new version of CoCounsel Legal is now the first tool I turn to get stuff done. I used to just use CoCounsel Legal for specific tasks. Now I start everything with new CoCounsel Legal.”
That change in behavior matters. Moving from a tool used for discrete tasks to a starting point for work reflects a different level of trust and integration into the workflow.
Across these perspectives, a pattern is emerging. The feedback is not centered on a single feature or isolated improvement. It reflects a broader shift in how attorneys interact with the technology. Analysis that surfaces the right distinctions without extensive setup. Drafting that holds up in real-world conditions. A workflow that becomes part of how work begins, not just how it gets completed.
We will continue to learn as more firms engage and more use cases are tested. At this stage, what stands out is not just what CoCounsel Legal Reimagined produces, but how quickly it begins to change expectations for what legal AI should be able to do.
This post marks the first chapter in an ongoing look at how CoCounsel Legal is evolving. Follow along as we highlight specific aspects of the build, key wins and learnings, and more insights from our engineering and product teams.
