Practical Law
The Thomson Reuters platform Solicitors use to access standard-form agreements, drafting guides, practice notes, and transaction checklists — reducing the time spent building legal documents from scratch and ensuring drafts reflect current law and market practice.
What it is
About Practical Law
Practical Law (owned by Thomson Reuters, the same company that operates Westlaw) is a subscription legal know-how service that provides practitioners with a curated library of standard-form documents, drafting guidance, practice notes, and transaction checklists maintained by a team of lawyer-editors. Its primary purpose is to reduce the drafting overhead for commonly occurring legal transactions: instead of constructing a share purchase agreement, a commercial lease, or an employment settlement agreement from first principles, a Solicitor opens the relevant Practical Law standard document, reads the accompanying drafting notes explaining the purpose of each clause and the market practice for negotiating it, and adapts the document for the specific transaction. This is not template-filling — the standard documents are sophisticated, heavily annotated precedents that reflect current law and market norms, and understanding the drafting notes is as important as the document itself. The service is organised by practice area (Corporate, Finance, Commercial, Real Estate, Employment, Litigation, Tax, Private Client) with separate UK and international content streams; subscribers typically access only the practice areas relevant to their work. Beyond standard documents, Practical Law's most-used content types are practice notes (plain-English explanations of a legal topic, statute, or procedure written for the working practitioner rather than the academic reader), checklists (step-by-step transaction or procedure guides — a due diligence checklist for a property acquisition, a conditions precedent checklist for a leveraged finance deal, an employment tribunal claim process checklist), and "What's Market" resources (data on market practice from recent transactions — what percentage of recent M&A deals included specific warranty provisions, what is the typical retention period in an escrow arrangement). The Practical Law daily update emails alert subscribers to recent case law, legislative changes, and regulatory updates that affect the documents and notes they use, functioning as a curated regulatory monitoring service alongside the document library. For junior Solicitors and trainees, Practical Law is as much a learning resource as a drafting tool — the practice notes explain why the law works the way it does, not just what the law says.
What you can do with it
Capabilities
Find the Practical Law standard form share purchase agreement for a small private M&A deal — opening the Corporate practice area, selecting the SPA standard document for a private company acquisition, reading the drafting note for the warranty schedule to understand which warranties are considered market standard for a deal of this size and which are typically negotiated, then exporting the document to Word and beginning to adapt it for the specific transaction
Use a Practical Law practice note to understand an unfamiliar area of law before advising a client — searching for the relevant topic (e.g. "restrictive covenants in employment contracts"), reading the practice note's plain-English explanation of the enforceability test (the restraint must go no further than is reasonably necessary to protect a legitimate business interest), and using the note's case references as the starting point for research in Westlaw
Run through a Practical Law due diligence checklist when reviewing a target company for a corporate acquisition — opening the corporate due diligence checklist, working through the items sequentially (constitutional documents, share structure, material contracts, property leases, IP ownership, employee arrangements, litigation history, regulatory licences), marking each item as reviewed, outstanding, or flagged for further investigation, and attaching the completed checklist to the deal file
Check current market practice for a specific negotiating point using Practical Law's "What's Market" data — searching for the relevant transaction type (e.g. "earn-out provisions in private M&A"), reviewing the most recent What's Market survey to see what percentage of recent deals included deferred consideration, what the typical earn-out period was, and what performance metrics are most commonly used, then using this data to advise the client on what is commercially reasonable to request or accept
Use a Practical Law checklist to manage a commercial property transaction — opening the commercial property standard form lease negotiation checklist, assigning responsibility for each item (heads of terms agreed, form of lease agreed, searches ordered, replies to enquiries obtained, licence for alterations agreed), tracking completion of each item as the transaction progresses, and using the checklist as the basis for the client status update at each milestone
How to learn it
Learning Resources
Practical Law training resources (uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/Browse/Home/PracticalLaw/PracticalLawTraining) — Thomson Reuters provides free training webinars and recorded tutorials covering how to navigate Practical Law, how to use standard documents effectively, and how to use the update alerts; typically available to all subscribers
Practical Law "Start with Practical Law" onboarding guides — each practice area has an onboarding guide designed for users new to that area; these explain the key document types, how the content is structured, and how to find what you need; the Employment, Corporate, and Real Estate guides are the most comprehensive
Trainee induction at law firms — virtually all UK commercial law firms include Practical Law as part of their trainee induction; trainees are typically given a structured exercise (find the standard document for a specific transaction type, read the drafting note for a specific clause, locate the relevant practice note) to build familiarity before using the platform independently
Reading alongside Westlaw — the most effective way to develop Practical Law proficiency is to use it in parallel with Westlaw on real work: use Practical Law for the practice note overview and the standard document, then go to Westlaw for the underlying case law and legislation that the practice note summarises; seeing the relationship between the two tools builds the analytical skill that distinguishes a practitioner from someone who copies precedents without understanding them
Pro Tip
Never use a Practical Law standard document without reading the accompanying drafting note for every clause you retain. The standard documents are deliberately drafted to be balanced between buyer/seller or landlord/tenant — they are not drafted in your client's favour. The drafting notes explain which provisions are typically negotiated, which are considered aggressive, and which represent market standard for different deal sizes and sectors. Using the document without the notes is the equivalent of using a map without reading which roads are one-way.
Skills that use this tool
Roles that use this tool
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