A closer look at the agentic AI capability shaping legal research in Canada
Highlights
- Deep Research in CoCounsel Legal is an agentic AI capability that plans, executes, and delivers structured legal research reports.
- Transparent research logs, visible sources, and reviewable plans give lawyers the oversight and verification that professional work demands.
- Grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law content, it delivers trusted Canadian results instead of unverified information from the general internet.
A closer look at the agentic AI capability shaping legal research in Canada
Legal research has always demanded precision, thoroughness, and countless hours of meticulous work. Canadian legal professionals have navigated vast databases, pieced together case law from multiple jurisdictions, and manually synthesized complex legal authorities into coherent strategies. While digital tools made legal libraries more accessible, they didn’t fundamentally change the marathon nature of legal research—until now.
Deep Research in CoCounsel Legal is an agentic AI capability that fundamentally changes how legal professionals approach complex research questions. Rather than simply returning search results or generating quick answers, Deep Research stands out for its ability to reason through legal questions, generating a research plan, explaining its logic, and delivering a structured report.
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Understanding agentic AI in legal research
How Deep Research actually works
Built on trusted Canadian content
Experience Deep Research in CoCounsel Legal
Understanding agentic AI in legal research
Unlike traditional AI tools that simply generate answers, Deep Research operates like an expert legal researcher, understanding the question, selecting appropriate tools, and navigating multiple steps to complete a full analysis. Think of it as delegating a comprehensive research assignment to a tireless associate who works with the methodical precision of a seasoned legal expert.
Deep Research is an agentic tool, which means it does more than return a single summary in response to a single query. When you give it a full research question, it has the ability to do multi-step research process. The system generates multi-step research plans and explores alternative theories when its first approach fails —the kind of methodical, iterative work that deep legal research has always required, now handled at speed.
How Deep Research actually works
What makes Deep Research transformative is its methodical approach. When you submit a complex legal question, Deep Research works through four distinct phases:
Planning
Deep Research generates multistep research plans that users can review before execution. You can see exactly how the AI intends to approach your question.
Execution
Deep Research uses agentic AI to analyse legal questions through multistep planning and iterative searches. It systematically works through each component of your research question, using Westlaw’s comprehensive research tools—including KeyCite, the Canadian Abridgment Digest, Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, and expert commentary—with a level of precision and comprehensiveness that would take human researchers hours to replicate.
Transparency
Deep Research surfaces its sources, explains its reasoning, and allows follow-up questions to clarify or expand information when needed. Lawyers can review what the system is doing at any point, helping them know where the research is at. Each report includes a detailed research log outlining which questions were explored, what sources were consulted, and how conclusions were reached.
Delivery
It produces comprehensive reports that include sections on arguments typically made in support of and against legal positions, cases where similar claims have succeeded or failed, and related legal issues that might be relevant to the research question.
This level of transparency and structure is essential for maintaining the oversight and verification that professional legal work demands.
Built on trusted Canadian content
Deep Research delivers reliable results because of the authoritative legal content behind every query. While many AI systems scrape the general internet, often leading to outdated or incomplete information, Deep Research is founded in Westlaw’s curated database, supported by experienced lawyer editors who continually curate, validate, and organize legal materials. This is what makes true deep legal research possible—not a quick summary pulled from unverified sources, but analysis grounded in content built specifically for legal professionals.
This means when you ask Deep Research a question about Canadian corporate law or cross-border compliance issues, you’re getting answers derived from authoritative Westlaw content and expert Practical Law guidance, not random blog posts or outdated web pages.
Deep Research is also just one part of a broader, connected experience. Because it lives inside CoCounsel Legal, the same trusted content and reasoning behind your research carries through into drafting and document analysis, all within Microsoft 365, your firm’s document management system, and HighQ. That means a research question doesn’t have to end in a static report. It can move directly into strategy and execution, in the same environment where the rest of your work already happens.
Experience Deep Research in CoCounsel Legal
CoCounsel Legal is the only comprehensive AI solution for Canadian legal professionals that combines advanced AI capabilities with the authoritative depth of Westlaw content and the applied guidance of Practical Law, in a single integrated solution built for the way legal professionals work.
Discover how Deep Research can accelerate your practice while delivering the trusted, verifiable results your clients deserve. Learn more about CoCounsel Legal or request a demo today.
