Playbook
Legal Research → Brief Workflow
A research workflow optimized for speed: build a plan, extract authorities, and produce a cite-checkable draft.
ContractsReviewSensitivity: mediumBudget: Free or paidPlatform: any
Recommendation
Based on your answers, we’d start with: Contract Review Quickstart
Your current page is a template. The recommendation below is the closest match for your matter type and workflow stage.
Recommended Stack
Start with 3–5 tools. Add more only if you can maintain the workflow.
Cocounsel
CoCounsel is Thomson Reuters' professional-grade legal AI assistant (built on Casetext), covering legal research, document review, drafting, and deposition preparation, grounded in Westlaw content. Sold to firms and legal departments; pricing is quote-based and enterprise, typically bundled with Westlaw. Retrieval-grounded, though outputs still require attorney verification.
Verifiedpaid
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Harvey
Harvey is enterprise legal AI for large law firms and professional-services teams, with purpose-built agents, a secure document vault, cross-domain legal research (Knowledge), and contract intelligence. Aimed at AmLaw firms and in-house teams rather than solo or PI practices. Enterprise, quote-based.
Verifiedpaid
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Legora
Legora (formerly Leya) is collaborative legal AI built around an agentic operating system for research, drafting, and document review, used by law firms and in-house teams. Quote-based, sales-led. Note: leya.law now redirects to legora.com following the 2026 rebrand.
Verifiedpaid
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Paxton
Paxton is a research-first legal AI assistant that also drafts documents, analyzes files, and builds medical chronologies and billing summaries, backed by a knowledge base of US federal regulations, state law, and case law across all 50 states. It is one of the few legal AI tools with public pricing: $499 per user/month or $2,999 per user/year, plus custom enterprise volume pricing. SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA certified. Retrieval-grounded with source citations.
Verifiedpaid
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Vaquill AI
Vaquill AI is legal data infrastructure: an open-source US primary-law API (REST and MCP) covering 3.5M+ sections of statutes, regulations, constitutions, and executive orders across 52 US jurisdictions, each returned with a citation and a link to the official source. Aimed at developers and legal-tech builders, with a free API key plus paid and enterprise tiers. Retrieval-grounded by design.
Verifiedfreemium
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Vlex
vLex (now part of Clio) is an AI legal research platform whose Vincent assistant works across a database of 1B+ legal documents from 100+ countries, aimed at firms from AmLaw 100 to boutiques. Retrieval-grounded. Book a demo or start a free trial; pricing is quote-based.
Verifiedpaid
- Commonly used in the "Legal Research → Brief Workflow" workflow.
Checklist
- [ ] Clarify question presented, jurisdiction, and standard of review
- [ ] Build an issue tree and a search plan (queries + sources)
- [ ] Extract holdings and key quotes (with citations)
- [ ] Draft outline, then draft sections, then run cite-check
Risk Notes
- Do not trust citations from AI without verifying the underlying source.
- Separate factual assumptions from legal conclusions in your draft.
Prompts
Legal Research Plan
Generate a research plan with queries, sources, and a short memo outline.
Citation & Quote Check Checklist
Create a cite-check checklist and flag statements that likely need authority or verification.
Skill templates
Source Check (Template)
A repeatable template for verifying legal citations and claims.
Advisory
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