CoCounsel is the Thomson Reuters brand for its generative AI assistants. It appears as CoCounsel Legal, CoCounsel Essentials, CoCounsel Core, CoCounsel Drafting and CoCounsel Tax, and as AI features inside Westlaw and Practical Law. The contract position is built from several documents that Thomson Reuters publishes separately: the General Terms, the Additional Terms for Services with Generative AI Skills (“GenAI Terms”), the AI Usage Policy, any product-specific terms, third-party AI provider terms and the Ordering Document. This article describes how those documents fit together and the limits they set.
Applicability and order of precedence
The GenAI Terms, Version 3.0 of 23 January 2026, apply to access or use of functionality in Thomson Reuters Services “powered by or otherwise enabled through artificial intelligence”, which they call AI Functionality.[1] Where the documents conflict, the GenAI Terms state the order as the AI Usage Policy, applicable third-party provider terms, the Ordering Document, product-specific terms, the GenAI Terms and then the Thomson Reuters General Terms.[1] The General Terms record a similar order, with generative AI additional terms ranking below product-specific terms and above the General Terms themselves.[5] The CoCounsel Core and Drafting product-specific terms use a slightly different list: Order Form, product-specific terms, GenAI Terms, annexes, schedules and General Terms.[3] A licence manager should confirm the order of precedence in the specific contract before relying on any one document.
Prompts, content and Output
The GenAI Terms define three terms. “User Content” is content or documents uploaded or provided by a user, or made available through an integration; “User Prompt” is an input guiding the Services to generate an Output; “Output” is any text, information or other content the AI Functionality generates in response.[1] The key commitments are these:
| Topic | What the terms say |
|---|---|
| Rights in inputs | The customer warrants that it owns or has the licences, grounds, consents or permissions for the prompts and content it provides [1] |
| Model training | Thomson Reuters will not, and will not permit its third-party providers to, develop, train or fine-tune generative or foundational AI models with prompts, content or Outputs unless agreed separately in writing [1] |
| Output ownership | As between the parties the customer owns Output, subject to third-party licensors’ rights and rights Thomson Reuters retains in its Property; Output that includes Property is licensed on a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free basis [1] |
| Similar Outputs | Other users may receive similar or identical Output, but not created using the customer’s prompts or content [1] |
| Training on Thomson Reuters content | The customer may not use Thomson Reuters or third-party property to train or develop AI or machine learning software [1] |
The General Terms add a separate point that a licence reader should note. Section 2(e) says Your Data may be used as an input to certain AI-based functionality and that the customer grants Thomson Reuters a licence to use, modify and adapt the Input as necessary to perform, and improve, the Services.[5] The GenAI Terms rank above the General Terms in the precedence list, and their commitment about foundation models is narrower than a blanket ban on any use of inputs to improve the Services, so privacy and data teams should read the two together.
The product FAQ for CoCounsel Essentials describes the vendor’s practices in plainer language: it does not use user content and prompts to train or improve CoCounsel Essentials or third-party large language models, retention is set at organisation level with a client manager, and processing and storage is in the United States with region-based hosting available in the UK, Australia and Canada.[7] Those statements are marketing-page FAQs, not contract terms, and the contract still controls.
AI Usage Policy
The GenAI Terms incorporate the AI Usage Policy, which the customer and its authorised users must follow when using AI Functionality and any Output.[1] Version 1.0 of the policy is dated 23 January 2026 and lists nine categories of prohibited use.[2] Those most relevant to a licence position are:
- Use for automated decision-making, or as a substantial factor in decisions with legal or similarly significant effects, or to assist in legal, financial, health, medical, tax or other professional advice, unless reviewed by a licensed or qualified professional.[2]
- Circumventing safeguards or representing that Outputs are solely human-generated.[2]
- Use for national security or intelligence purposes without prior review and approval, or to access from, or offer access from, China or Russia.[2]
- Removing or altering a mark in Outputs that confirms their provenance.[2]
Thomson Reuters may modify the policy, and a modified version is effective on posting on its website or within the Service; continued use is acceptance.[2] That differs from the 30 days’ notice in the General Terms, so the AI Usage Policy is the document most likely to change without a renewal event.
Third-party AI provider terms
The AI Functionality may be powered by third-party AI models, platforms or services, and the customer must comply with the acceptable-use or similar terms of those providers that apply to its use.[1] The published list names Amazon Web Services (Acceptable Use Policy and Responsible AI Policy), Anthropic (Acceptable Use Policy and supported countries), Google (Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy), Microsoft (Enterprise AI Services Code of Conduct) and OpenAI (Usage Policies and supported countries and territories).[4] The page states that use of the products constitutes agreement to those terms and that the customer must comply with usage restrictions such as limiting usage to supported countries and territories.[4] These rank above the Ordering Document, so a provider’s country restriction can limit where users may sit regardless of the order.
CoCounsel Core and CoCounsel Drafting product limits
The CoCounsel Core & CoCounsel Drafting product-specific terms (Version 2.1, 4 March 2025) apply when a customer buys a licence to use or access either product as set out in the Order Form, override similar terms in the Agreement for those Services, and treat a breach of the product terms as a breach of the Agreement.[3] They contain these measurable limits:
| Product | Limit |
|---|---|
| CoCounsel Core with the Syncly DMS service | No more than one terabyte of Your Data transferred in any annual period of the subscription term between CoCounsel Core and the customer’s document management systems; additional terabytes can be purchased [3] |
| CoCounsel Drafting with Clause Finder | No more than 10 GB of Your Data stored in the Integrations App site; excess to be removed at Thomson Reuters’ request [3] |
The Drafting terms also make the customer solely responsible for managing user accounts, including issuing user names and passwords; Thomson Reuters may suspend any user’s access for a breach without notice, and a user’s breach is deemed the customer’s breach.[3] Clause Finder requires an add-in and designated admin users who maintain Your Data through the Thomson Reuters Integrations App, and the customer must tell admin users that data made available there is visible to all of the customer’s users.[3] Integrations with third-party applications are governed by the customer’s own agreement with the third party, and the customer authorises Thomson Reuters to share Your Data with that provider.[3]
CoCounsel Tax Essentials
CoCounsel Tax Essentials is sold as an AI assistant for tax work. Its FAQ states that each user receives up to 20 citation-backed tax answers per week grounded in Checkpoint content, and that document uploads, summaries and standard AI conversations do not affect that allowance.[6] No Checkpoint subscription is required, and it does not include access to the Checkpoint Edge research library.[6] A Tax Research module can be added to unlock deeper research; it is priced per user, so only users who need advanced research require it, and Essentials is currently available for tax workflows only, with audit and accounting versions not yet available.[6] The counting unit is therefore the individual user, with a weekly allowance, and the research add-on is counted per user as well.
CoCounsel Legal
The CoCounsel Legal page describes it as reasoning from Westlaw primary law, Practical Law guidance and the organisation’s own knowledge, using generative and agentic AI.[8] The page publishes no licence metric or price, so the number of users and the entitlements come from the Ordering Document. For the legal products around it see Westlaw, Practical Law and CoCounsel Legal licensing.
Practical points
- Gather all five documents for each AI product: Ordering Document, product-specific terms, GenAI Terms, AI Usage Policy and the third-party provider list.
- Record the supported countries of the AI providers and compare them with where users work.
- Track the data limits (1 TB transfer, 10 GB storage, weekly answers) as consumption measures.
- Do not use Westlaw or other Thomson Reuters content as training data for an internal model; the General Terms and GenAI Terms both prohibit it. The only court ruling on a related scenario is summarised in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence.
Out of scope
This article does not assess the accuracy of the AI products or the vendor’s privacy statements, and it does not cover CoCounsel Audit or Accounting, which the CoCounsel Tax Essentials FAQ says are not yet available in that form.[6] The general index of pass-through terms is described in Thomson Reuters General Terms and Ordering Documents.[9]