The stakes are high in any litigation , whether a corporation is engaged in a bet-the-company matter or an individual seeking compensation for a life-changing injury. Litigators devote countless hours to getting the facts straight so that they build their strategy on a solid foundation. Many are turning to tools powered by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to create more time to work on complex or strategic legal tasks.
Legal AI assistants are emerging as a reliable and transformative tool to help lawyers in all practice areas streamline their work and create more time to craft strategy and work with clients and colleagues. They can also lead to better outcomes as they help reduce errors and identify ways to improve work product. Transactional lawyers should see our companion blog post on how GenAI legal assistants can benefit their work.
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Legal AI assistant defined
A legal AI assistant is a GenAI system that reliably handles simple and complex tasks under the direction of a legal professional. CoCounsel Core handles a variety of legal tasks in a single, user-friendly interface. These tasks are:
- Surface relevant documents
- Review documents
- Summarise long, complex documents
- Compare documents
- Monitor contract policy compliance
- Draft correspondence and court documents
- Assemble timelines
- Prepare to take a witness statement
How litigators use a legal AI assistant
“CoCounsel helps improve the quality of our representation,” a senior lawyer at a legal aid nonprofit told Thomson Reuters. “It finds things in 2,000-page police reports and transcripts that humans miss. And it doesn’t just read, it interprets—that’s the game-changer.”
Legal AI assistant skills truly are game changing. Here are some ways litigators use CoCounsel in their practice.
Legal research: Instead of spending hours reviewing and interpreting case law, statutes, and regulations, ask CoCounsel to find relevant sources and get answers to your legal research questions in a fraction of the time. This helps you move from research to strategy more quickly, so you can focus on advising your clients. Document review and disclosure: One of the most expensive aspects of litigation. CoCounsel helps litigators work smarter and faster – with greater thoroughness and accuracy – during the evidence gathering and disclosure stage, cutting time and costs.
You can upload a set of documents and use CoCounsel to identify documents and synthesise information. For instance, you can ask CoCounsel questionsabout the content of case files and get a fast analysis that helps make sense of it.
Preparing to take witness statements and other investigative projects: You can develop a winning strategy for your case in a fraction of the time. Simply provide information about your case and receive a list of topics with pointed questions. After a hearing, use CoCounsel to identify key information in the transcript.
Drafting routine arguments: Knowing where to start is often the trickiest part of a drafting project. You can use CoCounsel to search through prior work product and quickly find briefs or documents addressing a particular topic, client, or claim. You can also provide CoCounsel with documents to draft a statement of facts.

CoCounsel Drafting
Powered by professional-grade GenAI for legal professionals
Cut drafting in half ↗Saving time and improving accuracy
Consider the last timeline of events you built. How long did it take? And how many times did you have to check the source material to be sure there were no mistakes?
CoCounsel created a timeline of events based on 644 pages of Enron emails, letters, memos, and attachments. What would have taken a person hours to read, annotate, and sort took just moments with the Timeline skill.
Working without GenAI, law firms are often reluctant to offer alternative fee arrangements because it is difficult to predict the time required to complete even standard tasks. A legal AI assistant powered by GenAI can complete common tasks like case preparation predictably faster, so firms can give clients more predictable legal spend estimates. Meanwhile, corporate clients are hungry for predictable pricing and eager to know that firms are working as efficiently as possible.
“Absolutely magical.”
Using a legal AI assistant helps litigators safely and strategically take advantage of GenAI advancements. Legal AI assistants allow lawyers more time to focus on more complex aspects of case strategy while creating improved efficiency, working more cost-effectively, and reducing errors in their work overall.
“CoCounsel is absolutely magical and I can never go back,” according to a partner in a litigation firm. |
Whether you’re streamlining tedious tasks like document review, looking to boost your productivity, or hoping to refocus your time on strategic work and respond to enquiries faster, CoCounsel can help you reduce the time pressure and deliver for your clients and organisations.
Ready to enhance your litigation practice with AI? Discover how virtual assistants can transform your legal work.