CoCounsel Legal vs Legora: how they compare in 2026

The artificial intelligence is the product. CoCounsel Legal exists only as a generative and agentic layer, rebuilt in 2026 on an agent framework so it plans, reasons and executes multi step legal work. Remove the models and there is no product, only the underlying Westlaw and Practical Law content, which the parent sells separately as its own products.

The models are the product. The workspace is AI native rather than a document system with a model attached, and every surface the vendor sells, review, drafting, research and workflows, is a generative capability. Remove the models and nothing remains to sell.

CORRECTED 29 Aug 2026, second correction to this row. Previously graded B on the finding that no accuracy measurement was published, and carrying a remark that the largest company on the index published less measurement than far smaller vendors. That finding was wrong and the remark was the opposite of the truth. It came from searching only the vendor's own surfaces and not the independent evaluator's. Grounding was already strong and is unchanged: the retrieval method is described rather than asserted, with the research agent identifying key legal concepts, selecting Westlaw tools including KeyCite, the Key Number System and annotated statutes, running multiple search cycles and synthesising a structured result. Output grounds to primary authority the reader can open, with inline citations, a Sources tab carrying direct links and highlighted excerpts, and KeyCite validity flags shown with the authority. A citation level verification feature, Deep Research Verify, is published, prompting guardrails restrict output to human validated content rather than the open internet, and all of it sits under a named published framework. What is now added is measurement, and it is independent. CoCounsel participated in the February 2025 Vals Legal AI Report, a third party benchmark against a measured lawyer baseline, and scored between 73.2 and 89.6 percent across four tasks, each exceeding the lawyer baseline by more than 10 points, with a 79.5 percent average that was the highest of any participating vendor and a top score of 77.2 percent on document summarisation. Those figures sit on the evaluator's own site and the vendor also publishes them on its legal blog, so a buyer can reach them from either direction. The vendor separately publishes CoCounsel Bench, its own evaluation framework, under which experienced attorneys reviewed performance across 50 complex tasks each estimated at six lawyer hours, reporting that the product produced a stronger response than the expert written reference answer on nearly 40 percent of them. Two limits recorded rather than deducted for: the February 2025 study measured task accuracy such as document question answering and summarisation rather than citation validity or hallucination rate specifically, and this vendor did not participate in the later Vals study that measured citation authoritativeness.

Grounding is claimed in vendor material, which describes reliable and verifiable answers and cells linked to their source. Searched the vendor site, blog, newsroom and trust center on 29 Aug 2026 and located no published accuracy measurement, no evaluation framework, no hallucination rate and no description of the retrieval method. Third party directories describe a citation verification capability, which is not vendor material and does not move this axis.

A real published commitment with documented review surfaces, short of the full control structure. The vendor states that its AI is built with human oversight at its core, publishes a Fiduciary-Grade AI framework built around transparency and accountability, and the product is described as showing its plan before executing: it interprets a request, builds a matter specific plan, and returns work product with traceable citations the reader can open and check. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: the threshold at which an agent stops and returns to a lawyer, and what the vendor commits to when an agent is wrong. The August 2026 shift from structured skills to a fully agentic experience makes the missing threshold more material than it would have been a year ago.

Human oversight is asserted as a governing principle in vendor material and is covered in the abstract by an ISO 42001 certification of the AI management system. What is not published is the mechanism: where the review point sits, what an agentic workflow does on its own, at what threshold it stops, and what a supervising lawyer must approve. Searched the vendor site, blog and trust center on 29 Aug 2026. Oversight appears as a stated principle rather than a described control.

Named customers, dated, with figures and an assessable method. The vendor publishes individual case studies naming Justly Prudent, reporting five times return on investment and a doubling of litigation capacity, and Brinks on reducing outside counsel spend, alongside a commissioned Forrester Total Economic Impact study dated 2026, which is a published methodology an outside reader can assess and whose commissioned status is disclosed on the page. Also publishes aggregate figures with the population stated, including 2,700 corporate customers using the CoCounsel family and a 61 percent reduction in time to draft correspondence. Deeper than anything else on the index so far on this axis.

Named customers appear in vendor material, including a published Grant Thornton UK forensic investigations story, and the vendor states more than 1,000 customers across 50 plus markets. Additional named users including Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Linklaters, White and Case, Dentons and Barclays appear in vendor recruiting material. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: dated outcome figures with a method a reader could assess, which is what separates this from an A.

Substantive published commitments, and unusually the answer is given directly in a published FAQ rather than implied. The vendor states plainly that customer content and prompts are not used to train or improve the product or the underlying models, that third party model partners including OpenAI and Google are contractually prohibited from training on customer data, and that systemic controls turn off those third parties' abuse monitoring so there is no human access to customer data. Also publishes a zero retention API architecture and data residency controls. Two gaps hold this off an A. Attorney client privilege and work product handling is not addressed directly in located material. Matter level segregation is not documented on the vendor's own pages, although the product is matter centric by design.

Substantive published commitments, and unusually for this market they sit in openly published contract documents rather than only on a trust page: general terms and conditions in EU and US versions, a data processing agreement, and a security measures annex covering least privilege access, personnel confidentiality obligations, authorization controls and retention on customer instruction. The security page states the vendor will not use customer data to train or fine tune models. Two gaps hold this off an A. Attorney client privilege and work product handling is not addressed directly in located material, and matter level segregation between users is not documented.

The claim is made and the documentation is not published. The product is sold squarely to licensed professionals, is distributed to more than 200 law schools and 120,000 law students, and the vendor's framing is that the system works at the level of a senior associate under professional supervision. Searched the product page, the AI hub, the trust center and the legal blog on 29 Aug 2026 and located no published position on the advice line, no treatment of competence and supervision duties, and no statement of jurisdiction limits. The senior associate framing is a capability claim rather than a professional responsibility position, and for a product marketed to students it is the place a position would matter most.

The intended audience is unambiguously lawyers, firms and in house teams, and vendor material describes the product as working with lawyers rather than replacing them. Searched the vendor site, the published acceptable use policy, the general terms and the blog on 29 Aug 2026 and located no published position on the advice line, no treatment of competence and supervision duties, and no statement of jurisdiction limits.

A published governance framework with real substance, short of testing results or a named owner. The vendor publishes a named standard it calls Fiduciary-Grade AI with a buying framework attached, describes a dedicated research organisation of more than 1,000 specialists, states a figure for annual responsible AI investment, and answers a direct published question on bias: prompting guardrails restrict output to a clearly defined and limited set of human validated content rather than the open internet. That is a stated mechanism, not a principles page. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: a named internal owner of model governance, published pre release testing results, or any disclosure of uneven output across matter types, parties or populations. The bias answer describes a content restriction rather than testing for disparate output.

Holds an ISO 42001 certification covering its AI management system, independently audited with ongoing surveillance, and publishes what the certification covers: how AI is designed, deployed, supervised and monitored, with human oversight and structured governance named as the operating principles. That is a published governance framework with real substance and independent validation, which is rare in this market. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: a named internal owner of AI governance, published pre release testing results for model behaviour, or any disclosure about uneven output across matter types, parties or populations.

Substantive published policy covering most of the ground. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 maintained, ISO 42001 certification referenced for the AI management system, a zero retention API architecture published, data residency controls, 24 hour security monitoring and threat detection, corporate identity management integration, and a corporate trust center carrying the information security framework. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: a current named subprocessor list for this product, and a stated incident and breach notification practice. The two named model partners are disclosed in the AI FAQ rather than in a maintained subprocessor list, which is the remaining element of the A bar.

The published security measures annex covers access on a least privilege and role based model, centrally stored logs traceable to unique usernames with security logs retained at least 12 months, data integrity signing, personnel background checks and confidentiality agreements, and retention set by customer instruction. The published data processing agreement commits the vendor to assist with the customer's own breach notification obligations, so incident practice is addressed. ISO 27001:2022 is audited yearly. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: a current named subprocessor list, which is the remaining element of the A bar.

Searched the product page, the AI hub, the trust center, the corporate terms of use and the segment plans pages on 29 Aug 2026. No published indemnity scope, liability cap, carve out, warranty on output or insurance position was located for this product. Commercial terms are reached through a negotiated subscription agreement. The Fiduciary-Grade AI framework speaks to accountability as a design principle rather than to who bears the loss when output is wrong, and a fiduciary framing without a published liability position is exactly the shape this axis exists to record.

A real published position, which is uncommon here. General terms and conditions are published openly in EU and US versions and carry numbered liability clauses, aggregate caps that apply across the subscriber and its affiliates, a separate cap of 100,000 Euro on beta features, and a carve out concept the terms call an Enhanced Claim. A buyer can read the allocation of loss before entering a sales process. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: indemnity scope for third party claims arising from output, any warranty on output, and any insurance position, so the full picture is short of an A.

Real and documented integrations, short of implementer level depth. Named connections span document management with iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint, Microsoft 365, the parent's own HighQ collaboration platform and Legal Tracker, contract lifecycle through Icertis, plus DeepJudge, Supio and Smokeball, and a Word add in carrying a personal clause library. An MCP integration lets a lawyer reach the product from a separate AI client without switching platforms, which is a genuinely forward integration surface. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: documentation describing what each integration moves, in which direction, and what an administrator must configure.

Real and named integrations: an iManage technology partnership working through iManage APIs with an announced expansion, SharePoint, Box, a Microsoft Word add in for drafting and redlining, Outlook, EDGAR, and import from virtual data rooms and contract lifecycle systems. The vendor is explicit that it integrates with document management systems rather than replacing them. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: implementer level documentation describing what each integration moves, in which direction, and what an administrator must configure, which is what the A bar asks for.

Deployment is stated clearly with partial residency detail. The vendor publishes data residency controls that keep information within required geographic boundaries, operates a rollout sequenced by country across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, and holds FedRAMP In Process status for the underlying Westlaw and Practical Law products with stated investment toward authorization for this one. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: the list of available regions, the tenancy model, what changes between tiers, and where processing happens as distinct from where data is stored.

The claim is made and the detail is not published. Vendor material states flexible storage options matched to data sensitivity, and separate EU and US contract documents indicate region specific arrangements, with the technical team in Sweden operating under GDPR. Searched the vendor site, the security pages and the published legal documents on 29 Aug 2026 and located no list of available regions, no tenancy model, and no statement of where processing happens as distinct from where data is stored.

Certification is real and stated, short of accessible evidence. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 are stated as maintained, ISO 42001 is referenced for the AI management system, FedRAMP In Process status is published for Westlaw and Practical Law with authorization stated as an investment goal for this product, and a corporate trust center publishes the information security management framework. What is missing is what a reader can actually pull: no attestation report, no coverage period, no audit scope, and no named auditor was located as of 29 Aug 2026, and no route to request the reports without a sales conversation was located either. Certifications are also stated at the parent company level rather than scoped to this product, which is the distinction a buyer's security team asks about.

Three current independent certifications, ISO 27001:2022 audited yearly, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 42001 for AI management, with a public trust center at security.legora.com carrying a resources section and a data flow diagram, plus security whitepapers and a security measures annex published openly with no gate at all. The open publication of the security annex is full credit rather than a request flow. The certifying auditor is not named in located material, which is the one thing a peer in this category does publish.

The supply chain is partly disclosed and the disclosure is unusually specific. The vendor names Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK as the architecture of the current release, names OpenAI and Google as third party AI partners in a published FAQ, and states the contractual position imposed on them. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: which model serves which task, where the models run, a maintained subprocessor list for this product, and any commitment to notify customers before the model supply chain changes. That last gap is material here because the product was re architected onto a different vendor's agent framework within the past year.

Vendor material refers to how it implements, supervises and evolves AI without identifying what sits underneath. Searched the vendor site, the trust center, the published general terms, the data processing agreement and the security measures annex on 29 Aug 2026 and located no named model provider, no subprocessor list and no commitment to notify customers when the supply chain changes. Third party sources describe a multi model approach running on Microsoft Azure, which is not vendor material and does not move this axis.

The shape is visible and the number is not. Tier names and feature splits are published and reachable from the main navigation: CoCounsel Essentials, Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials, Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set with CoCounsel Essentials, and CoCounsel Legal, each with its own plans and pricing page and segment specific variants for law firms, corporations and government. Third party analyses report that the pages run a configurator returning a figure for firms up to ten attorneys and route larger firms to a sales quote. The configurator could not be verified directly on 29 Aug 2026 because that subdomain blocks automated access, so no vendor published figure is recorded here and this grade rests on the tier structure being public while the number was not confirmed. The unit of charge is per user per month by third party report rather than vendor statement. Rebuttable in either direction with one screenshot of the configurator.

Searched the vendor home page, product pages, newsroom and legal pages on 29 Aug 2026. No pricing page, no published rate, no stated unit of charge and no published tier structure located. The only commercial entry point is a demo request, which is sales gated and earns no credit. Several independent third party pricing analyses state the same, and one reports a consumption based tier that was not located on the vendor site. Third party per seat estimates are not vendor published and do not move this axis. Note that the vendor does publish its general terms openly, which is transparency of terms rather than of price and is graded on the liability axis instead.

Who the product serves is documented precisely, across more segments than any other record on this index. Published navigation splits law firms under ten attorneys from firms over ten attorneys, and separately addresses corporations, government including courts, prosecutors, public defenders, city attorneys and law enforcement, and academic use across more than 200 law schools. Practice area coverage is enumerated with its own pages spanning business and commercial, civil litigation, criminal defense, family, labor and employment, mergers and acquisitions and personal injury. The limits are stated structurally rather than in prose: the tier table shows exactly which content each plan reaches, so a buyer can see where coverage stops.

Segment coverage is described with substance: large law firms, in house legal departments, and professional services including a published forensic investigations customer story, spanning more than 1,000 customers across 50 plus markets with multi jurisdiction and cross border work as a stated strength. Practice coverage spans review and diligence, research, drafting and investigations. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: any statement of the boundaries, meaning which firm sizes or practice areas the product is not built for.

A published FAQ answers the question directly and in the negative, stating that user content and prompts are not used to train or improve the product or the underlying models, and that third party AI partners including OpenAI and Google are contractually prohibited from using customer data to train their models. The vendor also states it has established controls to turn off those third parties' abuse monitoring so there is no human access to customer data. The commitment as located sits on a public FAQ and trust page. No matching term was located in a published customer agreement as of 29 Aug 2026, and the subscription agreement is not published.

The vendor home page and security page both state that customer data is not used to train or fine tune any AI models. The vendor publishes its general terms and conditions and its data processing agreement openly, and a training prohibition was searched for in those documents on 29 Aug 2026 and not located, so the commitment as recorded rests on the security and marketing pages rather than on a located contract term. The full agreement text was not read end to end.

REGRADED 29 Aug 2026 after the value set was amended; previously recorded at disclosed without a period, following an earlier correction on the same row. The vendor publishes a direct answer in a product FAQ: retention of user content and prompts is customised to the customer, set at the organisation account level with the support of a client manager, and the vendor deletes in accordance with the customer's own retention policy. Users can additionally delete their content and prompts in the product at any time. That is real customer control over the window and it is now recorded as such. Two qualifications kept it below the top value and are worth a buyer's attention: no retention period is published, so the window is whatever the customer negotiates rather than something disclosed in advance, and setting it runs through a client manager rather than an administrator control the customer operates alone. The separately published zero retention statement covers the model provider API layer rather than the product's own storage.

REGRADED 29 Aug 2026 after the value set was amended; previously recorded at disclosed without a period, following an earlier correction that established the customer control exists. Rechecked against the source document. Section 17 of the published security measures annex, dated 31 Jan 2025, states that during the term of the data processing agreement personal data is subject to the retention requirements the subscriber instructs from time to time, and that after termination or expiry clause 11 of that agreement governs. Retention is therefore customer instructed and the commitment sits in a contract document rather than a policy page, which is the contractual form of control this value describes and is enforceable in a way a policy page is not. Recorded at customer controlled rather than the top value because no retention period is published and no zero retention setting was located. Also confirmed on the same document and worth factoring in as a retention floor: subscriber environments are logically separated at all times, and full production backups are taken every four hours.

Searched the product page, the AI hub, the corporate trust center, the legal blog and the published integration announcements on 29 Aug 2026. Integrations with iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint are named, and corporate identity management integration is stated, but no vendor material was located addressing whether retrieval enforces source system permissions at query time per user, or how ethical walls and matter level segregation are handled. A third party review refers to granular roles and ethical walls, which is not vendor material and was not treated as evidence.

Searched the vendor site, the iManage partnership announcement, the security page, the published security measures annex and the trust center on 29 Aug 2026. No vendor material was located addressing whether retrieval enforces document management system permissions at query time per user, or how ethical walls and matter level segregation are handled. The security annex documents least privilege access for vendor personnel, which is a different question. A partner case study describes per query authentication, which is not vendor material.

Searched the product page, the AI hub, the corporate trust center and the corporate terms of use on 29 Aug 2026. No clause addressing government or law enforcement requests for customer data was located for this product, and no transparency report was located. Noted for a future reader: a commitment to inform the customer of third party data access requests, audited under ISO 27701, was located on the trust center for a different Thomson Reuters product line, ONESOURCE Pagero. It was not treated as covering this product and does not support a value here.

Searched the published EU and US general terms and conditions, the data processing agreement, the security measures annex and the acceptable use policy on 29 Aug 2026. No clause addressing government or law enforcement requests for customer data was located, and no transparency report was located. This records a search that did not surface the clause rather than a reading of the full agreements end to end.

The corpus is named consistently and prominently: output is grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law, both proprietary databases the vendor owns and sells separately, maintained by attorney editors, with the editorial population stated at more than 1,200 full time attorney editors. Vendor material is explicit that the system draws on this content rather than scraping the public internet. The rights basis is ownership rather than a stated licence, and no update cadence or lag for the underlying corpus was located as of 29 Aug 2026.

Research coverage is described by jurisdiction, reported at twelve, and the vendor announced the acquisition of Qura, a Stockholm legal database covering case law, legislation and regulation, which it is extending to larger markets. What is not identified is the corpus itself: which publishers or public sources the law comes from, the licence or public domain basis for each, and the update lag. Searched the vendor site, newsroom and product pages on 29 Aug 2026.

Treatment signals come from KeyCite, the vendor's own named commercial citation service, and appear with the authority. Vendor engineering material states that reports carry inline citations, KeyCite flags and excerpts, and that the research agent uses KeyCite warnings to flag questioned or overruled cases and adjusts its strategy accordingly. Separate vendor material describes the system recognising red and yellow validity flags and factoring them into its analysis rather than only displaying them. First value on this signal in the index that rests on a licensed commercial citator.

Searched the vendor site, product pages, newsroom and blog on 29 Aug 2026. No vendor material was located addressing whether authority returned by the product carries a treatment signal, whether subsequent history is checked, or whether any commercial citator is licensed. A third party directory describes a citation verification capability, which is not vendor material and was not treated as evidence.

Searched the product page, the AI hub, the legal blog, the engineering blog and the trust center on 29 Aug 2026. Vendor material describes transparent research logs, step by step reasoning, an audit trail and prompting guardrails that restrict output to a defined set of validated content. None of that states what the product does when it cannot ground an answer. No explicit no answer or abstention path was located, and no confidence or grounding score exposed to the user was located either.

Searched the vendor site, blog, newsroom and trust center on 29 Aug 2026. No published material was located describing what the product does when it cannot ground an answer, whether an explicit no answer path exists, or whether any confidence or grounding signal is exposed to the user.

A court record exists in which a predecessor brand of this product is mentioned. In Fletcher v. Experian Information Solutions, No. 25-20086, the Fifth Circuit sanctioned appellate counsel $2,500 on 18 Feb 2026 after a reply brief was found to contain 16 fabricated quotations and 5 further misrepresentations of law or fact. The court's findings address counsel's conduct: failure to verify, and evasive and misleading responses to the show cause order, which the court treated as conduct unbecoming under FRAP 46(c). The products counsel identified as the possible source were named by the court as Casetext and vLex, described as generative AI products. Casetext is the brand Thomson Reuters acquired in 2023 and no longer sells under its own name; this record is filed here because CoCounsel is the surviving product. The court made no finding about either product's own output. Instrument also searched: the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin.

No court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming this product has been located as of 29 Aug 2026. Instrument searched: the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin, which tracks court decisions worldwide involving AI generated hallucinated content and records the AI tool implicated where it is known. Also checked published 2026 sanctions summaries and secondary sanctions trackers. The entries located name filers, and in some rows other products, rather than this one. This is a statement about the public record on the date shown and not a clearance, and it is bounded by what that database covers.

Searched the product page, the AI hub, the legal insights hub, the legal blog and the published Fiduciary-Grade AI material on 29 Aug 2026. The vendor publishes a substantial named framework and a buying guide addressed to professional standards in general terms, and markets a responsible AI position to courts and government. No engagement with any named ethics opinion was located, including ABA Formal Opinion 512 and state bar guidance.

Searched the vendor site, blog, newsroom and resource pages on 29 Aug 2026. No engagement with any named ethics opinion was located, including ABA Formal Opinion 512 and state or national bar guidance. The vendor publishes substantial governance and certification material, which addresses its own AI management system rather than the professional responsibility obligations its buyers are bound by.

Vendor material leads with time compression and quantifies it: a 61 percent reduction in time to draft correspondence, a customer story reporting a task that took an hour completed in five minutes or less, and a commissioned return on investment study. Searched the product page, the AI hub, the legal blog and the customer stories on 29 Aug 2026 and located no per matter record of AI assisted work intended for fee purposes, and no published guidance on billing, fee or client disclosure treatment. The savings figures are published without anything on the client's side of the equation.

Vendor material is framed around speed and volume, describing analysis of thousands of documents in minutes and teams moving faster. Searched the vendor site, blog and legal pages on 29 Aug 2026 and located no per matter record of AI assisted work intended for fee purposes, and no published guidance on billing, fee or client disclosure treatment.

A published FAQ names the third party model providers that may process customer content, OpenAI and Google, and states the contractual prohibition imposed on them, which is the substance of a model provider disclosure and is available with no agreement in place. A corporate trust center publishes the information security framework. What was not located as of 29 Aug 2026 is a maintained subprocessor list for this product, and any client facing consent or notification pack a firm could forward to its own client. Recorded at the model provider disclosure level rather than the full pack.

Read against the artifacts this signal turns on, the picture is mixed and the value understates one half of it. Openly published with no gate and forwardable to a client today: general terms and conditions in EU and US versions, a data processing agreement, a security measures annex and an acceptable use policy. Not located as of 29 Aug 2026: a current subprocessor list, any statement of which model providers see client content, and any client facing consent or notification pack. The trust center carries a resources section that routes document access through a request.

Several elements of a disclosure record are available and documented. Vendor material states that each research report includes transparent research logs with verifiable citations and step by step reasoning, that sources are hyperlinked with highlighted excerpts in a dedicated tab, and that KeyCite validity flags appear with the authority, which together evidence what was retrieved and its status. Two elements are missing: the model used is not identified per output, since the vendor states the system is model agnostic across multiple providers, and no per document export covering model, sources and human verification together was located as of 29 Aug 2026.

Searched the vendor site, product pages and published legal documents on 29 Aug 2026. Partner material describes citations being preserved when work is exported to Word, and the security annex documents security logging traceable to unique usernames, which is an infrastructure control rather than a record of AI assisted work. No per document record covering model used, sources retrieved and human verification was located.