In Part 1 of our series, we explored the cautious approach court professionals are taking toward AI adoption—with 31% expressing concern compared to just 15% showing excitement. We examined the legitimate hesitations driving this careful stance, from accuracy concerns to high-profile cases of AI-generated fabrications in legal filings.
Part 1: Responsible AI in courts: Problems to solve, questions to ask
Now in part 2, we turn from identifying the challenges to discovering the solution. While generic AI tools have created skepticism through unreliable outputs and hallucinated citations, professional-grade AI built specifically for legal environments offers a different path forward—one that addresses the precision and verification standards that justice demands.
Jump to ↓
| Next-level verification: moving beyond citation checks |
| Next-level research |
| The critical need for professional-grade AI |
| Making it flow |
| Moving ahead, but securely |
Next-level verification: moving beyond citation checks
So much depends upon the quality of databases that an AI system uses for outputs. A public-facing system like ChatGPT, which often is what comes to mind when people are asked about “AI,” lacks the means to reference and verify many case histories in depth. In particular, ChatGPT doesn’t have access to essential proprietary legal databases.
By contrast, CoCounsel Legal is grounded in authoritative and trusted legal content. Its systems draw upon trusted Westlaw content, our premier legal research solution, and Practical Law, our legal resource hub, one maintained by more than 1,200+ full-time attorney-editors globally who monitor the law to create and maintain resources you can trust.
CoCounsel Legal is also a key example of our commitment to enterprise-grade security and data protection. Our 225-year legal heritage and global infrastructure ensure that CoCounsel Legal meets the highest standards for data protection, confidentiality, and compliance. We maintain SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliance built into our development process, with zero-retention API architecture that ensures your data stays yours. Our dedicated security monitoring includes 24/7 threat detection, giving you the peace of mind that comes from partnering with a company trusted by all U.S. federal courts and 99.6% of Fortune 500 companies.
CoCounsel not only reviews a vast amount of relevant legal cases, statutes, regulations, and expert analysis; it also supports its findings with easily-verifiable citations and hyperlinked content. This enables the user to quickly and efficiently double-check any AI-generated case brief or regulatory review, for example. Every answer generated by CoCounsel Legal includes citations and sourcing, allowing lawyers to validate their results and build defensible arguments with confidence through our RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) approach that ensures answers are grounded ONLY in our trusted content.
Next-level research
Central to CoCounsel Legal is its ability to generate multiple interpretations and applications of cited cases. This reduces the risk that a lawyer will include misleading or irrelevant arguments in a brief and helps to ensure that all court filings are grounded in sound legal reasoning.
The next advance in research technology will further deepen the amount of information that lawyers have access to via CoCounsel. Deep Research on Westlaw Advantage is now available for use.
Deep Research aids users by mapping out research steps, moving from initial queries to supplementary review questions, and retrieving what the system considers to be the most relevant authority and analysis from Westlaw. This capability is particularly valuable for complex constitutional questions, determining standards of review and remedies within specific jurisdictions, navigating circuit splits, and researching new or interdisciplinary areas of law. The aim is to give users clear, supported conclusions grounded in authoritative legal content that they can easily verify. Deep Research encourages follow-up questions from users, as that enables the system to create even more nuanced analyses and refine the search process further.
The critical need for professional-grade AI
While numerous cases have exposed the risks of unverified AI reaching the bench, the recent Sylvia Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., et al. (Sept. 12, 2025) marks a significant turning point: courts are now taking stronger action to hold attorneys accountable for AI misuse.
In an otherwise standard appeal, the court found that much of the legal authority cited in plaintiff’s opening and reply briefs was often inaccurate or fabricated. Upon reviewing cases that plaintiff’s counsel cited, the court found quoted language that didn’t appear in the cited cases, cited cases with no relevance to the topics they allegedly supported, and a handful which were flat-out fictional, “hallucinated” by the AI tools that plaintiff’s counsel used.
The court imposed a $10,000 sanction on plaintiff’s counsel. But it also denied the opposing lawyer recovery of attorney fees, noting they had failed to catch fabricated quotes that their counterpart had submitted.
As judges crack down on AI misuse, they face a challenge: how do you hold attorneys accountable when you can’t easily distinguish verified AI from fabricated content? Professional-grade solutions like CoCounsel Legal give courts the standard they need—every answer includes verifiable citations and transparent sourcing from authoritative legal content. With this benchmark, courts can more effectively identify and penalize unverified AI submissions.
Making it flow
There is a limit to the value that AI can provide lawyers if the information that’s generated is siloed and difficult to merge into existing systems.
AI-powered solutions need to integrate seamlessly into workflows. The goal is to reduce the need for manual interventions while retaining “human-in-the-loop” interaction for questions of oversight. You want to ensure all actions comply with all professional and regulatory standards of practice, including the specific court’s policies.
Moving ahead, but securely
Greatly accelerate your legal work with a comprehensive, professional-grade AI solution that empowers your research, document analysis, and drafting, among other areas.
Although many court systems have been slow to adapt to AI, the shift is underway. That’s why your firm should be prepared to use the technology to its full potential, while being fully confident in the quality and accuracy of its outputs.
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