Valiant Law

Solo and small-firm attorneys face a structural disadvantage in legal research: finding relevant precedents requires reading through large volumes of case law manually, a process that is both time-intensive and cognitively demanding. For Safa Riadh, a solo practitioner at Valiant Law in northern Idaho with seven years of experience, this constraint had a direct business consequence — he limited his practice to bankruptcy, criminal, and family law, avoiding cases outside those specialties because he lacked confidence navigating unfamiliar legal territory quickly enough to serve clients well. In a profession where thoroughness and speed directly affect client outcomes, the traditional research workflow created a ceiling on both practice scope and revenue.

Riadh integrated Westlaw with CoCounsel's AI-Assisted Research feature — built on large language models and generative AI — into his daily workflow. The tool allows attorneys to pose natural language questions and receive answers grounded directly in statutes and verified case law, replacing the manual process of reading through stacks of cases. Rather than a phased pilot, Riadh adopted it as an everyday tool within four to five months of the feature becoming available, using it for standard research tasks as well as in real-time during live court proceedings. Because the system is embedded within Westlaw's existing research platform, there was no separate integration effort — it extended a tool he had relied on since law school. Thomson Reuters positions CoCounsel as a purpose-built legal AI, emphasizing that its outputs are grounded in authoritative legal content rather than general web data.

AI-Assisted Research removed the practice-area ceiling that had previously constrained Riadh's client intake. He now accepts cases outside his core specialties, reaching working proficiency in unfamiliar areas of law in a fraction of the time previously required. The most concrete demonstration came during a live trial: when an unexpected legal question arose mid-proceeding, Riadh queried the tool in real time and received an answer the presiding judge accepted. Qualitative outcomes include:

• Expanded client base through willingness to take on cases outside bankruptcy, criminal, and family law
• Faster research turnaround, replacing open-ended case reading with targeted, source-backed answers
• Stronger client satisfaction and community reputation, driven by faster problem resolution

• AI-assisted legal research enables solo and small-firm attorneys to compete across a broader range of practice areas without sacrificing research quality.
• Real-time access to grounded legal answers changes courtroom dynamics — attorneys can address unexpected questions on the spot rather than requesting continuances.
• Attorneys retain full ethical responsibility for verifying AI-generated citations; the tool accelerates research but does not replace attorney judgment.
• Failing to adopt available AI research tools may itself represent a competitive and ethical risk, given the efficiency advantages they provide to opposing counsel.
• Platforms that ground AI outputs in authoritative legal content — rather than general web sources — reduce the risk of citation errors that could harm client outcomes.