Using CoCounsel to Compare Documents

Have you tried CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters’s generative AI legal assistant, yet? CoCounsel can help users perform a range of legal tasks, including researching, reviewing, summarizing, and drafting. Today, we’ll look at CoCounsel’s Compare Documents skill, which can find and compare specific information across two or more documents.

What can you do with Compare Documents?

You could ask CoCounsel to compare the rulings, language, and reasoning between two or more court opinions. This could help you examine the nuances of the law and relevant differences in fact patterns, which can be helpful for preparing for class and forming arguments when considering hypothetical exam questions. When studying for exams, you could ask CoCounsel to compare your answers to practice questions with the model answers. Similarly, if you’re studying with classmates, you could ask CoCounsel to compare your responses with your peers’.

How do you use CoCounsel?

To begin, log into Westlaw and open CoCounsel. Start a new chat with CoCounsel by choosing the Compare Documents skill. Upload the documents you want to compare and tell CoCounsel what you want it to look for.

When you prompt CoCounsel, be specific with your request. Be sure to give it all relevant information, but do not overload it with unrelated material.

CoCounsel will respond by giving you a table with its findings, with citations to specific parts of the documents. Here’s an example response from Thomson Reuter’s website. The user provided CoCounsel with affidavits from two different witnesses, and asked CoCounsel to compare each witness’s relationship to Lance Armstrong. CoCounsel provided the following table:

How should you evaluate the output?

As with all generative AI platforms, it’s important that you double check CoCounsel’s output before using it in practice. Read the cited sections to make sure that they’re accurately reflected, and if something seems questionable, verify it with your own research. You should also make sure that you’re not violating any confidentiality agreements when you submit documents to CoCounsel. Thomson Reuters assures users that their data is protected, but CoCounsel is relatively new and the legal landscape regarding the use of generative AI is evolving. The ABA’s Formal Opinion 512 on Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools clarifies some considerations that should be assessed before using generative AI in practice. Finally, if using CoCounsel for class, make sure you comply with UNC School of Law’s Generative AI Tools Policy.