You can now connect the Everlaw MCP Server to Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant, to securely search your Everlaw projects. This means that you can securely bring in your Everlaw evidence layer when you use Copilot for drafting or analysis.
In this article we'll cover:
- Guidance for Admins to deploy the Everlaw connector within Microsoft
- How to connect to Everlaw from within Copilot
- Background details on how Everlaw and Copilot connect
Requirements
Pre-requisite: Before a Microsoft admin can deploy the Everlaw connector, an Everlaw Organization Admin must switch on the OAuth2 setting within Everlaw. Once it's switched on, the connection to Copilot can be enabled from within the Microsoft admin center.
To search Everlaw from within Copilot, you must have the following:
- A Copilot account within an enterprise-level Microsoft tenant that has deployed the Everlaw connector
- An Everlaw account with access to at least one project: The searches and evidence you have access to within Copilot are limited to the project(s) and documents you have access to.
Note
At this time, this connection is only available to users in our US environment. It is not available to Everlaw GovCloud users or those using our Canada, EU, UK, or Australia environments.
Data privacy and security
Your data privacy and security is our priority. Your use of Everlaw and our data privacy and security commitments to you are governed by our Terms of Service and Data Processing Addendum.
Your interactions within your Copilot environment are governed by your specific customer agreement with Microsoft, which also outlines Microsoft’s security and data privacy practices.
Note
The connection between Everlaw and Copilot is read-only, meaning that you cannot make any changes to, export, or delete documents from within Copilot.
Connect Copilot to Everlaw
Connecting Everlaw to Copilot happens in three steps.
Step 1: Everlaw Organization Admin Enables OAuth2
This step must be done by an Everlaw Organization Admin. Instructions for how to do so are in the Organization Admin: Everlaw API article.
Step 2: Microsoft Admin deploys the Everlaw connector
Once OAuth2 is enabled in Everlaw, a Microsoft Admin can deploy the Everlaw connector. Follow the steps in Microsoft's Deploy connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center article for instructions on how to do so.
Step 3: A user authenticates their Everlaw credentials
After a Microsoft admin has set up the Everlaw connector, any Copilot user within that Microsoft tenant with access to at least one Everlaw project can use it. Currently, MCP connectors (such as the Everlaw one) connect in the following Copilot experiences:
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
- Copilot in Excel
- Researcher agent
To connect from within Copilot Chat:
- In your Copilot Chat account, go to Settings > Sources.
- In the Browse Sources menu, search for Everlaw.
- Select the Everlaw app and then Continue to Everlaw. This will take you to your Everlaw login.
- Log into your Everlaw account to autheticate the connection. Now you can search your Everlaw projects using Copilot.
See Microsoft's Federated Connectors Overview article for more details on authenticating your credentials and using enabled connectors. Once you connect, you can start using Copilot to search and analyze your data.
For users on projects in multiple organizations
Copilot's ability to search Everlaw projects is based on the owning organization's enablement of OAuth2 in Everlaw. If you have access to projects owned by multiple organizations, you will only be able to use Copilot to search the projects for which OAuth2 has been enabled at the Organization level.
You only need to follow the steps to form the connection within Copilot once. When an additional organization enables OAuth2, the projects within that organization that you have access to will immediately become searchable within Copilot.
Enabled search terms
The following terms are enabled by the Everlaw MCP:
- The Contents term
- The Binders term
- The Bates/Control # term
- Terms in the Metadata category of the Everlaw search page, such as email participants, custodians and, dates
Within Copilot, you can write queries in natural language that reference these terms. Copilot will translate them into Everlaw syntax and return the results.
For more technical details on the Everlaw MCP server, see our Everlaw MCP Server article.
Supplemental information: How Everlaw and Copilot connect
This section provides a bit of technical background on the connection between Everlaw and Copilot. It's not necessary to understand this section before using Copilot to search your Everlaw documents, but if you're interested in some background information on how Copilot and Everlaw connect, read on.
The connection between Everlaw and Copilot is formed through a Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCPs have emerged as the standard tool that software companies use to securely connect AI tools with service providers like Everlaw. The Everlaw MCP server provides a secure, standardized, and reliable connection, with defined tools that allow the Copilot AI agent to search your Everlaw documents. At this time, the MCP tools that Everlaw has developed allow Copilot a read-only connection to Everlaw, meaning that you cannot take actions such as modifying, exporting, or deleting documents from within Copilot.
Because the MCP server is authenticated based on each individual user's Everlaw permissions, Copilot's responses never share information beyond what a user has access to within Everlaw.
Once a connection to the MCP server is established, you can ask Copilot your natural language questions, and Copilot will then:
- Interpret the question to identify the information it needs from Everlaw.
- Translate the question into Everlaw Search and send the query to Everlaw through the MCP.
- Use the information received from Everlaw to answer your question.
Because Copilot understands natural language and can synthesize across documents, your searches are not limited to pulling together a specific set of documents based on their characteristics. Instead, you can ask targeted, analytical questions to understand and draw insights from your data.
While Copilot does not use the API directly, the tools it has access to mirror those of the Everlaw Search API endpoints for retrieving binders, Bates information, metadata, and text (contents) searches.
Developers can check out our Everlaw MCP Server article, which has technical details about our MCP implementation.