Over 100 years of research on legal research
We do the research on legal research. See what's shaping the technology and methods around legal research authority and defensibility, curated across thought leadership, best practices, industry news, and AI innovation.
Why this matters
Not every answer deserves your trust
A confident-sounding answer isn't the same as an authoritative one, so knowing where an answer comes from matters as much as the answer itself.
Black-box reasoning doesn't hold up
When you can't see how an AI tool reached its conclusion, you end up re-verifying the work yourself, which erases the time it was supposed to save.
The world of legal research keeps changing
New tools and new methods emerge constantly, so staying current means following the research behind legal research as closely as the law itself.
Authority in legal research
- Authority comes from the source, not the confidence of the answer, so knowing where information originates matters as much as what it says.
- Verifying that a case, statute, or regulation is still valid has to happen before it supports an argument, not after.
Putting Westlaw with CoCounsel to work to protect clients
A solo disability-rights attorney explains why she trusts her research tool: "I trust Westlaw, because Westlaw has always been trustworthy."
How trustworthy content transforms legal deep research
Creating and maintaining Practical Law’s legal know-how
AI built for defensibility and explainability
- An AI research tool is only as trustworthy as the reasoning it's willing to show, so transparency has to be part of the answer, not an afterthought.
- Every finding should trace back to a source you can open and check yourself, not a summary you have to take on faith.
Transforming a civil rights litigation law firm with CoCounsel
Justly Prudent can quickly identify persuasive and binding authority on complex civil rights issues
Legal research trends and best practices
- Research methods and technology keep evolving
- The best practices of five years ago don't always hold up today, which is one reason ongoing research on research matters.
Transforming legal practice with Thomson Reuters AI solutions
Follow how a two-attorney Wyoming firm adopted AI research tools to take on 10 more clients a month without adding headcount.
Most AI gives you answers. CoCounsel gives you a defensible one.
Every answer is grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law and backed by citations you can verify. See the reasoning path from start to finish — no black box, just defensible answers built on 175+ years of trusted legal knowledge.
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Frequently asked questions
Explainability, or defensibility, means AI shows its reasoning, not just its conclusion: what it searched, what it found, and how each source supports the answer. AI built for defensibility usually takes the form of a visible research plan, cited authorities, and links you can open to verify each source yourself.
A citation verification tool like KeyCite checks a case's subsequent history and flags negative treatment, such as being overruled, reversed, or superseded, with a visual indicator at the top of the document. This should happen before citing any case in a brief, since a court opinion's precedential value can change after it's decided.
AI allows a shift away from manual keyword legal research. Legal professionals can now use agentic tools that build a research plan, gather authority, and return a structured report with citations. The most reliable legal tech grounds answers in verified legal content, such as Westlaw and Practical Law, rather than the open internet.
The right platform depends on a firm's practice areas, budget, and whether AI-assisted research is a priority, but the leading options are generally evaluated on the depth and currency of their case law, statutes, and secondary sources, plus the reliability of their citation-checking tools. The best research platforms combine that content with AI research capabilities, such as Deep Research, that plan and execute multistep research questions grounded in verified legal sources.
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