The law library vs. the data room

Westlaw The Library

Westlaw helps you understand the external legal environment. You ask it: "Is a non-compete enforceable in California?" It searches millions of court cases to give you the answer. It is indispensable for writing memos and advising on legal strategy.

Colabra The Data Room

Colabra helps you understand the internal target reality. You ask it: "Did this specific target company sign non-competes with its California employees?" We search the 5,000 files in the VDR to give you the evidence. You need Westlaw to know the rule; you need Colabra to know if the target broke it.

Why "AI Research" isn't "AI Diligence"

General vs. specific

Westlaw's "Precision AI" is trained on the corpus of US Law. It is excellent at general legal reasoning. Colabra's models are trained on the corpus of the Deal. We are excellent at specific document auditing—finding the exact expiry date, liability cap, or change-of-control provision in a messy PDF.

Negative assurance

Westlaw can tell you what the law says. It cannot tell you what the target company forgot. Colabra's Reconcile lens maps the data room against a diligence checklist to definitively flag missing documents—proving, for example, that the target failed to upload their 2023 Board Minutes.

The cost model

Westlaw is priced for "access"—you pay to access their proprietary database of case law. Colabra is priced for "processing"—you pay to process the proprietary data of the target company. They are complementary tools for different stages of the legal workflow.

See Colabra in action →