Westlaw is known to be a credible platform for legal professionals to carry out in-depth legal research, which helps lift off today’s legal complexities.
What is Westlaw?
In 1975, Thomson Reuters Westlaw was launched for worldwide use by both upcoming and established lawyers to perform actions like case law, statutes, regulations, secondary sources, briefs, trial court documents, public records, expert materials, and more, which are all useful data attorneys need in their line of work. Indeed, it has served law practitioners around the world for over 51 years now and is still counting. Finding law-related topics is sorted in the West American Digest System to make research on the platform simple and less time consuming.
Platforms
Westlaw is a website based platform currently without an app for iOS or Android. Users can only access the platform with the domain thomsonreuters.com.
Available features on West explained
During its launch, it was solely articles based platform until recent years when AI became a new normal. The managers of the platform saw it worthy to implement AI innovations known as CoCo, which acts as a cocounsel to even simplify the research works and reduce research time. Legal services are, one way or another, needed in every aspect of life, and so for over 51 years of operations, Westlaw is ensuring to cover major parts, which could be very time saving for many attorneys. The platform has a straightforward design to make its navigation easy for visitors, and visitors who intend to make subscriptions are required to first register and login to the platform. Now let’s look at the features or resources Westlaw has to offer on its website.
Solutions
This section is one of the categories on the platform, and it contains subcategories that look at areas listed below.
- AI for legal
- Legal research & guidance
- Legal forms
- Business development
- Legal data & document management
- Business practice & procedure
- Drafting software, service & guidance
- Evidence
- Trial readiness, process & case guidance
- Business & commercial law
- Civil litigation
- Criminal defense
- Family law
- Labor & employment
- Mergers & acquisitions law
- Personal injury
- Draft, review & legal analysis
- Legal research & advisory
- Due diligence & compliance
- Spend & matter management
- Cross-border trade
- Periodic financial close
- Tax, research & insights
- Transactional compliance
- Collections & recovery
- Continuous monitoring & fraud detection
- Investigations
- Onboarding due diligence & fraud prevention
- Intelligent compliance network
- Chief financial officers and heads of tax
- General counsel and chief legal officers
- Chief risk officers
- City attorneys
- Courts
- Prosecutors
- Public defenders
Products
Products is also another important category on Westlaw and it focuses on merging AI with today’s complex legal research. Some of which include Cocounsel Legal, Practical Law, HighQ, Legal Tracker, Noetica, Case Notebook, Court Express, Strategic Insights, Westlaw, Edge with AI-Assisted Research, Drafting Assistant, Deadline Assistant, and more.
WestLaw AI
Westlaw has integrated AI known as CoCounsel into its platform to keep up with the current innovations people seek to have a feel of. It’s an AI that actually helps to simplify research, improve quality results, and also reduce the amount of time during research, making sure efficiency is improved.
Who is WestLaw for?
WestLaw is for anyone with legal interest. Especially for people who are already in the legal profession or aspiring to become one. And so it’s ideally recommended for students of law, attorneys, and law teachers.
WestLaw Login
To have the full complement of the platform, a user must register and sign in with the official Westlaw login page to any of the three available accounts on types on WestLaw namely;
Westlaw
It covers Westlaw Classic, Edge, and Advantage, as well as any Westlaw based product like Westlaw Doc and Form builder.
CoCounsel Tax & Audit
This account type is AI Assistant account type designed to help firms research, analyze, automate, and standardize work faster.
CS Professional
This account type is for tax and accounting professionals so that they can use powerful integrated software and services.
How to Register on WestLaw
Signing up on WestLaw is not straightforward like other platforms. To have a functioning account on the platform, visitors would have to contact the support team of WestLaw and tell them which account type they prefer before they can be directed to the appropriate representative. Another important credential that would be required during this process is country, zip code, full name, company name, phone number, email address, and billing address.