Online legal research is one of the longest-running mainstays in the legal technology arena, and Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis have historically been the biggest legacy players, though others have entered the market more recently.

Thomson Reuters made headlines earlier this week by entering into a definitive agreement to acquire one of those newer players, Casetext, for $650 million in cash. The move raised a few eyebrows in the market and has spurred more than a few conversations. At the core of most of them is today’s hottest technology, generative AI. In the past six months, Casetext made a big name for itself as being one of the earliest movers on generative AI, releasing CoCounsel, the first legal tech tool publicly announced to incorporate OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM).