Overview
Practical Law is a premium legal know-how resource designed to provide lawyers and legal professionals with practical, up-to-date guidance across a wide range of practice areas and jurisdictions. Its core offerings include detailed Practice Notes explaining how to handle specific legal tasks, annotated Standard Document and Clause templates, step-by-step Checklists, curated Toolkits for common legal projects, timely Legal Updates, and market intelligence tools like What's Market. All content is created and continuously maintained by a large team of experienced former practicing attorneys. While fundamentally a human-expert-driven content platform, Practical Law is increasingly integrated with Thomson Reuters' AI tools (like CoCounsel) to enhance search relevance, enable AI-powered summarization or comparison against its content, and streamline workflows within the broader TR ecosystem.
Use cases
Primary: Quickly understanding how to approach an unfamiliar legal task or area of law; Drafting standard legal agreements, clauses, or corporate documents using reliable, annotated templates.
Other use cases:
- • Staying current with legislative and case law developments
- • Ensuring thoroughness using checklists for transactions or procedures
- • Comparing deal terms against market standards (What's Market)
- • Answering specific practice questions via the "Ask" service
- • Training junior associates.
AI capabilities
- → Integrated AI Features (primarily via CoCounsel): AI-enhanced search returning more relevant Practical Law content, Ability to use CoCounsel to ask natural language questions answered using Practical Law's trusted content, Potential AI summarization of lengthy Practice Notes or comparison of user documents against Practical Law clauses/standards. Key Distinction: The core content itself is human-expert generated; AI helps access and utilize that content.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- ✓ High-quality
- ✓ Reliable
- ✓ And current content; Significant time savings on research and drafting; Promotes consistency and reduces risk; Excellent resource for training and getting up to speed quickly; Broad subject matter and jurisdictional coverage; Integration with Westlaw search and AI features streamlines workflows.
Cons
- ! Subscription cost can be substantial; Content is standardized and may require significant customization for unique situations; Can be overwhelming due to the sheer volume of content if not navigated effectively.
Pricing
Model: Subscription-based. Typically licensed via modules based on practice area, jurisdiction, or content type. Enterprise agreements common.
Pricing details: Not publicly disclosed. Pricing is customized based on the specific subscription package, firm/company size, and number of users. Generally considered a premium, high-value resource.
Integrations
- • Deep integration with Westlaw Precision (search results surface PL content, seamless linking).
- • Integration with CoCounsel for AI-powered interaction with PL content.
- • Integration with other Thomson Reuters tools like HighQ (collaboration platform) and potentially TR drafting software (Contract Express).
What sets it apart
- ★ Content created and maintained by a large team of experienced former practicing attorneys
- ★ Rigorous updating and editorial process ensuring reliability
- ★ Breadth and depth of practical guidance across many areas/jurisdictions
- ★ Integration with Westlaw and other TR products (CoCounsel)
- ★ Focus on actionable
- ★ "how-to" legal knowledge.
Compliance & security
Falls under Thomson Reuters' corporate compliance certifications, which typically include SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and others relevant to handling sensitive data. Adherence to GDPR, CCPA, and other major privacy regulations.