iManage & Thomson Reuters expand legal AI partnership

iManage and Thomson Reuters have formed a strategic partnership to integrate their legal technology products, expanding links between Thomson Reuters tools and knowledge held in the iManage platform.

The agreement brings CoCounsel Legal further into the iManage environment and connects HighQ, Noetica, Contract Express and Legal Tracker with iManage-managed documents and matter records. The aim is to help legal professionals use AI tools and workflow software alongside internal knowledge already governed within iManage.

A central part of the partnership is support for Model Context Protocol, or MCP. This will allow approved Thomson Reuters AI tools to draw on content stored in iManage while preserving access controls, ethical walls and privilege boundaries applied to that information.

The move reflects growing demand from law firms and in-house legal teams for AI tools that can operate within the context of a specific client matter rather than relying only on general legal content. Legal teams increasingly want drafting, research and matter management systems to work with internal precedents, correspondence and work product without creating separate data stores.

Under the expanded integration, lawyers using CoCounsel Legal during drafting will be able to work with their organisation's own precedent documents and clauses alongside Thomson Reuters legal content. For transactional work, that includes market practice material; for litigation matters, case law.

HighQ, Contract Express and Noetica are also being tied more closely to iManage-held matter information. These links are intended to let legal professionals move between drafting, review and transaction workflows while keeping documents and related matter context connected to the same governed record.

Another element covers Legal Tracker, Thomson Reuters' legal task and expense management product. Its integration with iManage Work is intended to surface matter documents and correspondence alongside legal operations data, giving corporate legal departments a combined view of documents, tasks and spend in one workflow.

Documents will be able to move from iManage into Thomson Reuters workflows, with completed work product returning to iManage. This is intended to keep knowledge generated during legal work within the governed matter record over time.

Rawia Ashraf, Co-Head of CoCounsel Legal, described the partnership as a response to a long-standing problem for lawyers using multiple systems across a single matter.

"Ask any lawyer what slows them down and they will tell you the same thing: the work lives in too many places. This renewed partnership changes that across more of the places where legal work actually happens, including CoCounsel Legal, HighQ, Noetica and Contract Express. The integration is deeper than ever, with documents from iManage flowing directly into the workflow, work product flowing back automatically, and the connection staying current as matters evolve. Legal teams have spent years building their knowledge in iManage. We are making sure it works harder across everything we build," said Rawia Ashraf, Co-Head of CoCounsel Legal, Thomson Reuters.

Ashraf also pointed to the role of MCP in widening the ways both companies' systems can work together.

"The MCP will add another way for our systems to work together, complementing the integrations customers already use today," Ashraf said.

Open approach

The partnership is part of a broader push towards legal AI systems that can access trusted internal information without requiring duplicated repositories or separate governance structures for each application. That issue has become more pressing as law firms and corporate legal departments test a growing range of AI tools across drafting, review, knowledge management and legal operations.

For iManage, whose platform is widely used to manage legal documents and emails, the deal strengthens its role as a source of governed knowledge for third-party applications. For Thomson Reuters, it expands the reach of CoCounsel Legal and related products into the systems where many firms already store matter documents and internal know-how.

Ryan Begin, Vice President, Technology Partnerships and Ecosystem Strategy, iManage, said the value of the arrangement lies in combining external legal content with internal matter context under existing controls.

"Legal work depends on bringing the right sources of knowledge together in the right context. Through this partnership, Thomson Reuters' authoritative legal content, AI and workflow capabilities can work alongside the governed knowledge managed in iManage, giving legal professionals access to the organizational context relevant to the work at hand while maintaining the controls they rely on. As AI moves from answering questions toward taking on more complex work, that combination of context and governance becomes increasingly important," said Ryan Begin, Vice President, Technology Partnerships and Ecosystem Strategy, iManage.

API-based integrations linking the iManage platform with CoCounsel Legal, HighQ, Contract Express, Noetica and Legal Tracker are already available, while MCP support for approved Thomson Reuters AI tools is due to follow.