CoCounsel vs Claude Pricing for Legal Research and Which Seat a Firm Should Buy
Thomson Reuters now prints a price for CoCounsel Legal, and it is about 39 times a Claude Team seat. Here is what the difference buys, what it does not, and the cheaper setup most small firms end up with.
In short
CoCounsel Legal costs 784 dollars per attorney per month on a 1-year plan with all states plus federal content, or 637 on a 3-year plan, and includes Westlaw, KeyCite and Practical Law. Claude Team costs 20 dollars per seat per month billed annually and includes no case law library and no citator. Claude is the better buy for drafting and document work; CoCounsel is the one that finds and checks US authority. This is informational research, not legal advice.
How we checked this. On 9 October 2026 we opened Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel Legal plans and pricing page for law firms and read the price for each combination of firm size, jurisdiction and term that the page offers online. A made-up product address on the same site returns a 404, so the page is genuine and not a catch-all. We read claude.com/pricing and Anthropic's legal solutions page the same day. Annual totals are our own arithmetic on those list prices, before tax and before any negotiated discount.
Thirteen rows, both columns sourced
CoCounsel Legal vs Claude side by side
| What you are buying | CoCounsel Legal | Claude |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | Yes, online for firms of up to 10 attorneys. 784 dollars per attorney per month on a 1-year plan, all states plus federal | Yes. Team 20 dollars per seat per month billed annually, 25 monthly. Pro 20 a month |
| Cheaper way in | 637 a month on a 3-year plan, or 679.20 for one federal circuit | Pro at 200 dollars a year for one person |
| Contract | 1, 2 or 3 years | Month to month or annual |
| Who can buy online | New customers, up to 10 attorneys. Larger firms and existing customers go through sales | Anyone, by card. Team needs at least 2 seats |
| US case law library | Westlaw. Thomson Reuters says it reasons across 1.9 billion Westlaw and Practical Law documents | None built in. Case law arrives through a connector you pay for separately |
| Citator | KeyCite, included | None |
| Practice guidance | Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set, included | Practice-area plugins you configure with your own playbook |
| Your own documents | Review Documents, Timeline, Litigation Document Analyzer | File upload and Projects; connectors to iManage and NetDocuments |
| Drafting | Live Draft and Agentic Drafting in Word | Claude for Word, general drafting |
| Underlying model | Next generation rebuilt on Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK, per Thomson Reuters in May 2026 | Claude |
| Use one inside the other | A CoCounsel Legal connector runs Westlaw research from inside Claude | Needs the CoCounsel Legal subscription to use that connector |
| Training on your content | Set by your Thomson Reuters agreement. Get it in writing | Off by default on Team and Enterprise; opt-out on Pro and Max |
| Independent benchmark | Vals Legal AI Report, Feb 2025, average 79.5 across four tasks | Not entered as a product |
Prices are US dollars per month before tax. CoCounsel figures are Thomson Reuters list prices for new law firm customers; existing Westlaw customers are told to call sales for their own number. We cover the full Thomson Reuters lineup on our CoCounsel Legal tiers page.
ยง PUBLISHED PRICES
What CoCounsel Legal costs per month by firm size and term
Read from Thomson Reuters' own configurator on 9 October 2026. Totals are for the whole firm, per month; the last two rows are the cheaper Thomson Reuters AI plans for one attorney, for scale. The page also offers 2 to 4 and 6 to 9 attorneys and every federal circuit; we read the combinations below. Where a cell says not read, the page has a price we did not record, not a missing one.
| Firm and content | 1-year plan | 2-year plan | 3-year plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 attorney, all states plus federal | 784.00 | 686.00 | 637.00 |
| 1 attorney, one federal circuit | 679.20 | Not read | 551.85 |
| 5 attorneys, all states plus federal | 2,461.60 | Not read | 2,000.05 |
| 5 attorneys, one federal circuit | 2,144.80 | Not read | 1,742.65 |
| 10 attorneys, all states plus federal | 4,224.00 | Not read | 3,432.00 |
| For scale, Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials, 1 attorney | 639.20 | Not read | 519.35 |
| For scale, CoCounsel Essentials alone, 1 attorney | 360.00 | Not read | 292.50 |
422
Dollars per attorney per month at 10 attorneys on 1 year, against 784 for a solo. The per-seat price falls with size.
18%
Off for a 3-year term, 12 percent for 2 years. The discount is the price of being locked in through 2029.
384
Dollars a month a solo pays for CoCounsel on top of Westlaw Advantage alone, which lists at 399.75 for the same content.
That last number is the useful one if you already know you need Westlaw. Advantage on its own is 399.75 a month for all states plus federal, so the AI layer, Practical Law and the drafting tools together add roughly 384 dollars a month for one lawyer on a 1-year plan. Whether that is worth it depends on how much drafting and document review you would actually hand to it, which our CoCounsel cost breakdown works through.
List prices times twelve
What CoCounsel and Claude cost a 1, 5 and 10 lawyer firm in a year
CoCounsel Legal on a 1-year plan with all states plus federal content, against Claude Team standard seats billed annually. The third column is the setup we see most often at small firms: Claude for writing and documents, plus a case law search seat for finding authority. That column uses our own Starter plan billed yearly, because it is the price we can vouch for.
| Firm size | CoCounsel Legal, 1 year | Claude Team | Claude plus a case law seat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 lawyer | 9,408 | 480 (2 seat minimum) or 200 on Pro | 488 to 768 |
| 5 lawyers | 29,539 | 1,200 | 2,640 |
| 10 lawyers | 50,688 | 2,400 | 5,280 |
The gap is not a fair fight, and it is not meant to be. CoCounsel carries Westlaw, which is the expensive part, plus a citator and a practice guidance library that neither of the cheaper columns has. The honest reading of the table is narrower: if your research volume is light and your bigger time sink is drafting, the third column covers most of the work for about a tenth of the price. If you litigate in front of judges who expect KeyCite-checked briefs every week, it does not.
The part that confuses buyers
Is CoCounsel built on Claude
The engine
Partly the same model
Thomson Reuters said in May 2026 that the next generation of CoCounsel Legal is rebuilt on Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK. So the reasoning underneath can overlap with what you get from a Claude seat.
The content
Not the same library
What the 784 dollars buys is Westlaw case law, KeyCite and Practical Law, which Thomson Reuters puts at 1.9 billion documents. A Claude seat reads none of it unless you connect a source.
The bridge
A connector, not a discount
The CoCounsel Legal connector lets you run Westlaw research from inside Claude. It needs a CoCounsel Legal subscription, so it is a convenience for existing customers, not a cheap side door.
This is why "which model is smarter" is the wrong question for a buyer. The model is converging. The library is not, and the library is where wrong citations come from: a model with no case law to read will still produce a case name when asked. We set out what the connector costs and the cheaper case law sources that also plug into Claude on our Westlaw Claude connector page, including one at a published 25 dollars a month on our Descrybe AI pricing page.
Start from the work, not the brand
Which one fits your practice
Litigators who brief every week
CoCounsel Legal
If authority and KeyCite flags are the core of your week, CoCounsel bundles them with the AI. A solo who would buy Westlaw Advantage anyway pays about 384 dollars a month more for the rest, and one federal circuit brings the total down to 679.20.
Transactional and advisory work
Claude Team
Contracts, letters, summaries and review of documents you already hold do not need Westlaw underneath. Claude Team at 20 a seat, with training off by default, covers that work, and a case law seat covers the occasional research question.
Small firms in between
Claude plus a research seat
Most firms under 10 lawyers research a few times a week and draft every day. Pay for the drafting tool and a research tool separately and revisit CoCounsel when research volume justifies a 3-year commitment. Our Westlaw pricing for solo practitioners covers that decision.
Before you commit to three years, run the same three research questions from last month through a CoCounsel trial and through whatever you would pair with Claude, and write down what each returns with citations. Then compare the result against the term. A 3-year plan saves 18 percent on paper, and it also means the price you lock in today is the one you pay while the market keeps moving, and AI research prices in this market have moved every few months since 2024. If Westlaw is not the deciding factor, the rest of the field with published prices is on our CoCounsel alternatives page.
What we sell, and what we do not
The research seat that sits next to Claude
Cases is not a CoCounsel replacement. We do not draft in Word, review your document set or carry Practical Law. We do one job: you ask a legal question in plain English and read the US federal and state decisions that answer it, as headnote cards with a citation you can open and export.
Starter is 49 dollars a month, or 288 a year billed yearly, with no seat floor, no sales call and no multi-year term. Pro adds the holding on every card and a good-law check that flags cases to re-verify, which is a prompt to look again rather than a citator like KeyCite. Verify every case before you file.
How a search works
-
1
Ask the question
Type it the way you would ask a colleague, no boolean strings.
-
2
Read the decisions
Federal and state opinions come back with a citation you can open.
-
3
Draft in Claude, verify, cite
Paste the authority into your drafting tool and check it before filing.
Questions buyers ask
CoCounsel vs Claude questions
Is CoCounsel better than Claude?
For finding and checking US case law, yes, because CoCounsel Legal reads Westlaw and flags authority with KeyCite, and Claude has no case law library of its own. For drafting, summarizing and reasoning over documents you supply, Claude is close and costs a small fraction. Most firms decide on the research question, not the writing.
Is CoCounsel built on Claude?
Partly. In a May 2026 press release Thomson Reuters said the next generation of CoCounsel Legal is rebuilt on Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK. What you pay Thomson Reuters for is the layer on top: Westlaw case law, KeyCite, Practical Law guidance and the legal workflows, which Claude alone does not include.
How much does CoCounsel cost per month?
On 9 October 2026 Thomson Reuters listed CoCounsel Legal online at 784 dollars per attorney per month on a 1-year plan with all states plus federal content, 686 on 2 years and 637 on 3 years. One federal circuit was 679.20 on 1 year. Online prices cover new customers at firms of up to 10 attorneys.
Can Claude replace Westlaw?
No. Claude has no Westlaw content and no citator, so on its own it answers legal questions from training data and the open web, which is where invented citations come from. Claude can sit on top of a research source through a connector, and Thomson Reuters sells one, but it requires a CoCounsel Legal subscription.
Does CoCounsel work with Claude?
Yes. Thomson Reuters and Anthropic announced a CoCounsel Legal connector for Claude on 12 May 2026. It lets you start a Westlaw research job from inside Claude and get a cited report back. You need both a paid Claude plan and a CoCounsel Legal subscription for it to work.
Is Claude good for legal research?
Claude is good at reading and reasoning over cases you give it and weak at finding authority on its own. Anthropic's own legal page routes case law through a Thomson Reuters connector. Pair it with a grounded case law source and open every citation before it goes into a filing.
Is Claude safe for confidential client information?
It depends on the plan. Claude's plan grid states no model training on your content by default on Team and Enterprise, and opt-out on Pro and Max. ABA Formal Opinion 512 treats this as a Rule 1.6 question, so a firm putting client material into Claude should be on Team at minimum.
Can I buy CoCounsel without talking to sales?
Yes, if you are a new customer at a firm of 10 attorneys or fewer. Thomson Reuters now sells CoCounsel Legal through an online checkout with 1, 2 or 3 year plans, and says most customers get access within one business day. Larger firms and existing Westlaw customers still go through a sales representative.
Keep comparing
Related CoCounsel and Claude pricing pages
Find the authority, then draft wherever you like.
Ask your legal question in plain English and read the US federal and state opinions it returns, with citations you can open. 49 dollars a month, month to month, no sales call.