Casetext Replacement for Small Firms and Corporate Counsel: Casetext Alternatives After the Shutdown
Casetext closed on 1 April 2025 and its links now return 410 Gone. Here is the field priced honestly, which half of Casetext each tool actually replaces, and the migration step most firms miss.
How courts have ruled
Sample results, illustrative only. Informational research, not legal advice. Verify every citation.
In short
Casetext shut down on 1 April 2025 after Thomson Reuters acquired it for 650 million dollars, and its capability moved into the Westlaw ecosystem at Westlaw prices. That is why former customers are shopping rather than upgrading. Pick your replacement by which half of Casetext you used: for search, the self-serve tier runs 29 to 30 dollars a month; for CoCounsel-style drafting and document work, the nearest options start around 199 and reach 499. Before you buy anything, search your own briefs for casetext.com links, because every one of them now returns 410 Gone and a citation that resolves to nothing cannot be verified. This is informational research, not legal advice, and you should always read the case before citing it.
Last updated September 2026
How we checked this. Every price in the table below was read from the vendor's own page, and each row carries the date we read it. On 6 September 2026 we confirmed that an invented path on casetext.com returns 410 Gone, that an invented path on vlex.com returns a clean 404 exactly like its pricing page (so the absence of a Vincent price is real, not a bot block), and that Paxton AI publishes 499 dollars per user per month or 2,999 per user per year with a seven day trial. The midpage host would not answer us today, and its control path failed the same way, so its figures are labeled with the date we last read them rather than restated as current. Where a vendor publishes nothing, we say quote only rather than repeating a number we cannot see.
Published, reported, and quote only
Eight Casetext replacements, priced, with the seat minimum that decides most of them
We never merge published and reported into one column. A figure on a vendor page is a rate you can hold them to. A figure a journalist published about a vendor is a report, and it stays labeled that way no matter how specific and well sourced it is. Read the minimum column as carefully as the price column, because in this market the seat floor rules more purchases out than the monthly rate does.
| Tool | Price | Evidence | Minimum | Trial | What it actually replaces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cases | 29 dollars per month | Published | 1 seat, self-serve | Month to month, no sales call | The narrow job Casetext search did: asking a question in plain English and reading the decisions that come back |
| midpage | Starter 30 dollars per month, Pro 80 per month billed annually | Published, read 1 September 2026 | 1 seat | Two weeks | The closest like-for-like on price. Worth a look precisely because it is not us, and we are not going to pretend a one dollar gap is a reason to choose either |
| Clio Work | 199 dollars per user per month | Reported, LawNext, April 2026 | 1 seat since April 2026 | No length published | Firms that draft as much as they research, and firms whose matters already live in Clio |
| Westlaw Advantage | 256.75 single circuit, 399.75 all states plus federal, per month | Published, read 4 September 2026 | 1 seat, but online purchase is capped at firms of up to 10 attorneys | 7 days, no card | Anyone who needs KeyCite. This is the honest answer for citator-critical practice |
| CoCounsel | No published rate | Quote only | Not published | Not published | The literal successor. Casetext built CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters bought it, and it now sits inside the Westlaw ecosystem at Westlaw prices |
| Paxton AI | 499 per user per month, or 2,999 per user per year | Published, read 6 September 2026 | 1 seat | 7 days | Solos who want drafting and document analysis in the same seat and will commit annually, since the annual rate is half the monthly one |
| vLex Vincent AI | No figure published anywhere | Quote only | Not published | Offered, length not stated | Multi-jurisdiction and cross-border work, where the corpus is the argument |
| Clearbrief | 300 dollars per user per month | Published, read 3 September 2026 | 1 seat | None published | Proving what is already in your draft. It checks your citations rather than finding you new ones, so it replaces half of Casetext at most |
Two rows deserve a second look. Paxton AI charges 499 dollars a month or 2,999 a year, which means the annual commitment is genuinely half price rather than the usual token discount, so a monthly trial there tells you very little about what you would end up paying. And Westlaw Advantage publishes 256.75 dollars a month for single-circuit coverage, but its online purchase is capped at firms of up to ten attorneys, so a growing firm can age out of the self-serve price entirely. We keep the current field maintained on our legal research pricing page, and the trial lengths on which vendors publish a free trial.
Small firm and in-house pull apart here
The small firm and the legal department are not shopping for the same thing
Both groups lost the same product on the same day, and the searches they run afterwards look almost identical. What they need is not. A solo is protecting a budget and avoiding a sales call. A three lawyer department is protecting a security review and cannot buy a ten seat minimum no matter what the seat costs.
The small firm or solo
What closed with Casetext. A cheap, self-serve research subscription with an AI front end, bought on a card without a procurement conversation
What they are actually buying for. A published price, one seat, and the ability to cancel. Budget is real and the sales call is the thing being avoided
The expensive mistake. Buying a workspace when the job was search. The workspace products start near 199 a month and climb, and a firm that only needs to find authority funds three capabilities to use one
Corporate and in-house counsel
What closed with Casetext. Fast answers on questions that do not justify outside counsel, plus document review capacity inside a small department
What they are actually buying for. Security paperwork that survives an InfoSec review, predictable seat count, and something a non-litigator can use without training
The expensive mistake. Assuming the department can inherit the firm-side tool. Legora reportedly starts at a 10 seat floor and Harvey around 25, which puts both out of reach of a three lawyer department regardless of budget
The seat floor is the least discussed number in legal AI and the one that decides the most. Below ten lawyers, Legora is not expensive, it is unavailable, and the same goes for Harvey below roughly twenty five. Vendors that sell a single seat tend to publish a trial; vendors with a double-digit floor replace the trial with a demo, which is a sales call wearing a different name. We wrote up that pattern in full on the Clio Work pricing page.
The step most firms skip
Your old briefs still cite Casetext, and those links are dead
This is the part of a Casetext migration that has nothing to do with which tool you buy. A 410 Gone is not a temporary outage or a paywall. It is a server stating that the resource was deliberately removed and will not return. Every research memo, brief and internal note in your office that cites a casetext.com URL now points at that answer.
Find every casetext.com link in your own work product
Search your briefs, memos, engagement files and internal wikis for casetext.com. Every one of those URLs now returns 410 Gone, which is a server saying the resource was deliberately removed and is not coming back. A cite that resolves to nothing is not a verified cite, it is an unverifiable one.
Re-anchor those citations to a reporter cite, not a vendor URL
The lesson of the past three years is that vendor permalinks are not durable and reporter citations are. Where a memo leaned on a link, put the volume, reporter and page back in. This takes an afternoon and it removes a whole category of future embarrassment.
Decide who answers the good-law question now
This is the step firms skip. Casetext had a citator layer, and if you replace it with a tool that has none, nobody owns the question of whether a case is still good law. Either buy a citator, keep a Westlaw or Lexis seat for that check alone, or write down who runs it and how.
Check your bar benefit before you buy anything
A large number of US state bars include Fastcase or vLex library access in annual dues, so your baseline research may already be paid for. Read the benefit carefully though: it is generally the library, and Vincent AI on top of it is usually a separate purchase.
Buy one month before you buy one year
Annual discounts are real, and so is the cost of being locked into the wrong tool. Where a vendor sells month to month, a single month is the most honest trial there is, and it tells you more than a seven day sprint through a demo account.
There is a broader lesson in the 410, and courts have been making it expensive. The public database of AI hallucination cases maintained by Damien Charlotin recorded 2,022 decisions as of 5 September 2026, and the through line in the sanctions rulings is not that lawyers used AI. It is that filings went out with citations nobody opened. A dead link and an invented case fail in exactly the same way at the moment a judge clicks them. We keep the running detail on AI hallucination cases in court, and the step-by-step move on how to switch from Casetext.
So you can rule us out quickly
What Cases replaces, and what it does not
What we replace well
The search half. You ask a legal question in plain English, and you get US federal and state decisions back with citations you can open and read. It is 29 dollars a month, one seat, self-serve, cancel whenever. If what you miss about Casetext is typing a real question instead of assembling a boolean string, that is the part we rebuilt.
What we do not do
We are not a citator. We will not tell you a case was overruled the way KeyCite or Shepard's will, and we are not going to imply otherwise to close a sale. We also do not draft your brief. If either of those is the job, buy the tool that does it, and read our page on checking case citations before you decide who owns that check in your firm.
What people ask after the shutdown
Casetext replacement questions
Why did Casetext shut down?
Casetext did not fail. Thomson Reuters acquired it for 650 million dollars in August 2023, largely for CoCounsel, the AI assistant Casetext had built. The standalone Casetext research product was then wound down and closed on 1 April 2025, and its capability was folded into the Westlaw ecosystem. So the product did not disappear so much as move upmarket, which is exactly why its old customers are shopping: the thing that replaced it is not sold at the price they were paying.
What is the best Casetext replacement for a small firm?
It depends on which half of Casetext you actually used. If it was search, the cheap self-serve layer is where to look: Cases is 29 dollars a month and midpage was 30 a month when we read it on 1 September 2026, both one seat and both without a sales call. If it was CoCounsel-style drafting and document work, the honest answer is that nothing replaces it at that price, and the nearest options start around 199 a month.
What is the Casetext replacement for corporate counsel?
Small legal departments have a different constraint from small firms: seat floors. Legora is reported to start at a ten seat minimum and Harvey around twenty five, which makes both unavailable to a three lawyer department rather than merely expensive. That pushes in-house buyers toward the one-seat tier, or toward Westlaw Advantage, whose online purchase is capped at firms of up to ten attorneys and which publishes 256.75 dollars a month for single-circuit coverage.
Do my old Casetext links still work?
No, and this is worth acting on today. We requested casetext.com on 6 September 2026: an invented path returns 410 Gone, the status a server uses to say a resource was deliberately and permanently removed. Any brief, memo or research file in your office that cites a casetext.com URL now points at nothing. Re-anchor those to reporter citations rather than leaving links that a judge or an opponent cannot open.
Is there a Casetext citator replacement?
Not at Casetext prices, and you should plan around that rather than hope. The citators courts expect are KeyCite in Westlaw and Shepard's in LexisNexis, and both live inside full subscriptions. Cheaper tools, ours included, help you find and read authority but do not tell you a case has been overruled. We say so plainly because the alternative is a lawyer assuming a check is happening that is not.
Is CoCounsel the same thing as Casetext?
CoCounsel is the product Casetext built, and it is the part Thomson Reuters wanted. Casetext was the legal research platform it sat on. When people say Casetext shut down they usually mean the research subscription they bought as a solo or small firm, which is gone. CoCounsel continues inside Thomson Reuters, sold on quote rather than at a published rate, which for most former Casetext customers is the whole problem.
How much did Casetext cost compared to what replaced it?
Casetext was known for a self-serve subscription in the low tens of dollars per user per month, which is why its closure hit solos hardest. We will not quote an exact historical figure because the pricing page is gone and we cannot verify it, and inventing a number to make a comparison look better is not something we are willing to do. What is verifiable is the current field, priced in the table above, from 29 dollars a month up to 499.
Can I move my saved Casetext research to a new tool?
Realistically, no. There is no export path from a platform that has been switched off, and the permalinks that would let you rebuild a folder by hand return 410. What you can recover is whatever lives in your own files, which is why the first migration step is searching your own work product rather than trying to log back in. Treat the saved-folder loss as sunk and spend the time re-anchoring citations instead.
Keep comparing
Related vendor and pricing pages
If what you miss is the search box
Ask a legal question in plain English and read the decisions it returns. US federal and state case law, real citations, 29 dollars a month, no sales call.