What it is
Casetext was retired on April 1, 2025. Thomson Reuters acquired it in 2023 for $650M, began redirecting casetext.com on February 1, 2025, and shut the standalone product down two months after that. The technology did not disappear — CoCounsel ships today as CoCounsel Legal inside the Thomson Reuters stack, sold per attorney alongside Westlaw. This page documents Casetext as it existed, for historical context and for former subscribers deciding where to go next. If you are evaluating the product you can actually buy in 2026, read Thomson Reuters CoCounsel instead.
Casetext was the legal-AI assistant that pioneered GPT-4-powered legal research when it launched CoCounsel in 2023 — the first production-grade legal AI with real citation rigor, at a moment when the alternative was pasting case text into ChatGPT and hoping. It handled legal research, document analysis, deposition prep, and contract review. Critically, it sold self-serve at a small-firm price, which is why solo attorneys and two-partner shops adopted it years before their peers could get an enterprise legal-AI contract approved.
Why it showed up in Legal Ops stacks
- First-mover legal AI quality. CoCounsel was the first production-grade legal AI assistant with strong citation rigor and professional-grade output, and it ranked at the top of independent legal-AI evaluations through 2024.
- Eight defined skills. Document review, deposition prep, contract analysis, legal research memo, summarization, draft correspondence, search a database, and contract policy compliance. Each was a structured workflow rather than a free-form chat — the reason non-technical lawyers adopted it without prompt training.
- Self-serve at a small-firm price. This was the real differentiator, and it is the part that did not survive the acquisition. A solo attorney could sign up with a credit card and be working the same afternoon, with no procurement cycle and no Westlaw contract.
Pricing reality (historical)
Casetext sold standalone from roughly $200/user/month, with solo and small-firm tiers available self-serve and enterprise pricing quoted custom. When Thomson Reuters retired the platform on April 1, 2025, existing subscribers were migrated onto Thomson Reuters pricing; subscribers holding older “for life” Casetext rates have reported being moved onto fixed-term promotional pricing with no guaranteed renewal rate.
The successor costs materially more. Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel Essentials runs roughly $639/user/month for a solo attorney on a one-year term — better than 3x the old standalone rate, for a product that now assumes you want the Westlaw research corpus underneath it. The $200 self-serve tier no longer exists in any form. Treat any third-party listing still quoting it as stale.
What it was best for
Solo attorneys, small litigation shops, and lean in-house teams that wanted production-grade legal AI without an enterprise research contract. Casetext was the rare legal tool a one-person firm could buy on a Tuesday and use on a Wednesday. It was a weaker fit for firms already standardized on Westlaw or Practical Law — for them the value was always going to land in the bundle, which is precisely what Thomson Reuters built.
Where former Casetext customers go now
Thomson Reuters CoCounsel is the direct successor and the only path that preserves the CoCounsel skills you already know; expect a bundle conversation and a procurement cycle rather than a checkout page. LexisNexis Protégé is the like-for-like competitive alternative when you want a research-backed assistant but not from Thomson Reuters. Spellbook is the pick for transactional drafting and review in Word, at a price point closer to what Casetext used to be. Harvey is the enterprise-governance option for larger firms and is not a realistic replacement at solo scale.
Watch-outs (for teams still finding Casetext in a search)
- The brand outlived the product. “Casetext” still appears in review-site listings, procurement spreadsheets, and comparison articles with live pricing attached. None of it is buyable. Guard: verify against thomsonreuters.com before putting Casetext in a shortlist or a budget.
- Renewal price shock is the real migration cost. The move from a ~$200 standalone seat to Westlaw-bundled pricing is the largest single line-item change most former Casetext firms faced. Guard: if you are being renewed off a legacy Casetext rate, get the post-promotional renewal number in writing before you sign, not at renewal.
- Solo-scale self-serve legal AI is now a different shortlist. If what you valued was the credit-card, no-procurement motion rather than CoCounsel specifically, the successor is the wrong shape entirely and Spellbook or a general assistant like Claude fits the workflow better.