Casetext pioneered AI legal research with CoCounsel before Thomson Reuters bought it for 650 million dollars. See what happened to it and where its tools live…
Casetext was founded in 2013 by Jake Heller, Pablo Arredondo, and Laura Safdie, launching out of Y Combinator in October of that year with roughly 1.8 million dollars in seed funding and a mission the founders often described as making the law free and understandable. In its first decade, Casetext built a legal research product that undercut the pricing and rigidity of incumbents like Westlaw and LexisNexis, adding features like SmartCite, which used machine learning to analyze how later court decisions treated a given case, and growing its customer base past 10,000 law firms and corporate legal departments by the early 2020s.
The company's trajectory changed dramatically in March 2023 with the launch of CoCounsel, an AI legal assistant built on OpenAI's GPT-4 model. Casetext was one of a small number of companies given early access to GPT-4 specifically to explore legal applications, and CoCounsel's ability to review documents, draft research memos, and analyze contracts using generative AI generated significant industry attention at a moment when generative AI was just becoming a mainstream business topic. That momentum led directly to Thomson Reuters's acquisition offer: announced in June 2023 and closed in August 2023, Thomson Reuters paid 650 million dollars in cash for Casetext, one of the largest legal technology acquisitions on record and one of the largest AI-related acquisitions of that period.
For roughly a year and a half after the acquisition, Thomson Reuters kept Casetext running largely as it had operated before, as a self-serve, month-to-month product with published per-seat pricing, a notable contrast to the multi-year enterprise contracts typical of Westlaw and LexisNexis. That arrangement ended on April 1, 2025, when Thomson Reuters formally shut down the standalone Casetext platform, migrating existing customers onto its broader product line. In August 2025, Thomson Reuters launched CoCounsel Legal as the successor, fully integrated into its Westlaw ecosystem rather than offered as an independent, self-serve product the way Casetext had been.
The practical effect for anyone researching Casetext today is that it is a retired brand rather than an active product. Visiting casetext.com now redirects to Thomson Reuters's CoCounsel hub, and the closest comparable offering, Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials, comes at a meaningfully higher price point (reported around 639 dollars per user per month for a solo practitioner) and under more traditional term-contract conditions than Casetext's original self-serve pricing. Some former Casetext customers who had locked in older promotional or for-life pricing have publicly reported being shifted onto new fixed-term Thomson Reuters pricing without assurance that those legacy rates would be honored going forward, which is a relevant consideration for anyone still referencing Casetext's old pricing as current.
No, not as a standalone product. Thomson Reuters shut down the original Casetext platform on April 1, 2025, after acquiring the company in 2023. Its technology now operates as CoCounsel Legal within Thomson Reuters's Westlaw product line.
Thomson Reuters acquired Casetext for 650 million dollars in cash, in a deal announced in June 2023 and completed on August 17, 2023.
CoCounsel was Casetext's AI legal assistant, launched in March 2023 and built on OpenAI's GPT-4, capable of document review, legal research memo drafting, deposition preparation, and contract analysis.
As of 2026, casetext.com redirects to Thomson Reuters's CoCounsel hub, reflecting the shutdown of the standalone Casetext platform in April 2025.
Casetext was founded in 2013 by Jake Heller, Pablo Arredondo, and Laura Safdie, launching out of Y Combinator with roughly 1.8 million dollars in seed funding.
Thomson Reuters launched CoCounsel Legal in August 2025 as the successor product, integrated into its Westlaw ecosystem rather than offered as an independent self-serve tool the way Casetext was.
Standalone Casetext research plans were reported at roughly 65 to 99 dollars per user per month, with CoCounsel itself available separately at either 500 dollars per month for unlimited use or 50 dollars per task.
The closest current equivalent, Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials, has been reported at around 639 dollars per user per month for a solo practitioner on a one-year term, though Thomson Reuters generally quotes pricing individually.