Event Recap | Lexis+ AI Forum: Busting AI Myths, Building Trust

What happens when you bring Hong Kong’s legal community together in a heritage venue to talk about the future? At the Lexis+ AI Forum: Busting AI Myths, Building Trust, that took place on 5 September 2025, the answer was clear: curiosity, candor, and a shared sense that the AI era of lawyering is already here.

Instead of debating whether AI belongs in legal work, the conversation focused on how to use it well, what trustworthy adoption looks like, where it delivers value today, and how to keep ethics and client confidence at the centre. Throughout the afternoon, one idea kept resurfacing: when AI is designed for lawyers, it gives you back time for what truly matters—building relationships and adding value. That’s exactly where Lexis+ AI^TM Hong Kong with Protégé^TM shone.

Introducing Lexis+ AI with Protégé

Michael Sit, Managing Director, Greater China, LexisNexis introduced Lexis+ AI with Protégé with a simple promise: make everyday legal work faster, clearer, and more confident. It searches, summarises and drafts using trusted LexisNexis content, tuned for Hong Kong from the language and citations to the way answers are structured. One newly-introduced feature stood out: OCR for scanned PDFs, turning legacy scans and images into usable text in seconds.

The audience was most impressed by how the product meets lawyers where they are. Answers arrive with hyperlinked citations you can easily verify. Drafts follow local writing conventions. The experience feels private and controlled, thanks to a closed, enterprise-grade environment that keeps your work your own.

A Keynote That Set the Tone

Law Society of Hong Kong Vice President Amirali Nasir offered a constructive message in his inspiring keynote to the audience of over 130 legal professionals: AI is not a cure-all, but it can be a very good colleague when used thoughtfully. His call to “Inform, Engage, Implement”, on a loop and not a straight line, set the tone for the day: learn the tool, try it in safe ways, then broaden your use as confidence grows.

Panel 1 — How AI Makes Lawyers Irreplaceable

Myth addressed: “AI will replace lawyers.”

This conversation moved quickly past fear and into practice. A divide is emerging: larger firms are already building tailored tools, while smaller practices are getting inventive with trusted commercial solutions. But the more important shift is how senior lawyers are using AI: for faster case research and summaries, quick checks on regulatory updates, bilingual translation, and even ideating a speech in minutes when a deadline looms. It’s not about shortcuts; it’s about thinking faster and designing better firm‑level systems.

The mindset takeaway was pragmatic. As Maria Elms, Group General Counsel, Vitasoy International Holdings Limited put it, “AI will not replace lawyers, but it’s an effective tool lawyers must learn to use.” 

Dominic Wai, Partner, ONC Lawyers, urged peers to experiment across platforms and models to build confidence. Throughout, Lexis+ AI with Protégé was the practical bridge: Hong Kong-specific answers, verifiable citations, and drafting that matches how Hong Kong lawyers write.

Panel 2 — Why Legal AI Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

Myth addressed: “All legal AI tools are the same—generic chatbots can handle my legal work”

In a fireside chat, the LexisNexis team behind Lexis+ AI Hong Kong explained why a generic chatbot can’t keep pace with legal nuance. Lexis+ AI Hong Kong with the agentic capabilities of Protégé is built on Hong Kong primary and secondary sources and uses retrieval techniques to ground answers in what’s authoritative, not just what sounds plausible.

Dorothy Tian, Director of Data Engineering, LexisNexis, described the quiet guardrails under the hood, while Jamain Yeung, Senior Manager of Core Products for Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, walked through live examples where the product’s “legal brain” really came through. The point wasn’t that AI writes for you; it’s that it helps you start from something solid so you can spend less time on the mechanical and more time on the meaningful.

Panel 3 — Why Ignoring AI Puts Your Practice at a Strategic Disadvantage

Myth addressed: “I don’t need generative AI—I’ll wait until AI matures.”

By mid‑afternoon, patience sounded less like prudence and more like risk. As moderator Samantha Tam framed it, AI is already reshaping legal work as it drafts in minutes, reviews at 10× speed. 

In‑house teams are adopting fast to keep work inside the firewall and trim external spend. That raises the bar for outside counsel: clients now expect bespoke, sophisticated advice, not boilerplate. Firms that partner human judgment with the right tool, like Lexis+ AI Hong Kong, deliver that quality faster, with citations and structure that inspire trust.

There was an honest talent discussion between panellists Adam Au, General Counsel, Toys”R”Us Asia; Basil Hwang, Managing Partner, Hauzen LLP; and Janice Chew, Partner, JC Legal, too. Some routine junior tasks will be automated, and what matters most, and always will, is the human edge: judgment, initiative, creative thinking, and client empathy. AI clears the undergrowth so those skills can shine.

Panel 4 — How Smart AI Use Minimises Risk

Myth addressed: “AI is too risky to use—the downsides outweigh benefits.”

This panel, featuring Do Do Chan, Associate Legal Director, Emperor Group, and Philip Kwok, Partner, JunHe, reframed risk as a design choice, not a deal‑breaker. Copyright and bias concerns are real, but not new; the better answer is guardrails, not avoidance. The best‑practice playbook was refreshingly concrete: redact client data before uploading; demand citations for every factual claim; keep audit trails of prompts and outputs; and coach juniors to trace answers back to the source case or statute, not just copy and paste a neat paragraph.

One line captured the room’s mood: “I treat AI as my little trainee—24/7 help, but I’m still the principal in charge.” That’s exactly how Lexis+ AI Hong Kong with Protégé is built to be used: private by design, no customer data used for model training, well encrypted, and grounded in authoritative, local content so you can check the work with one click.

Key Takeaways

Across every session, the message was consistent: AI is not replacing lawyers; it is re‑prioritising their time. And when the AI is built for Hong Kong, grounded in sources you already trust, and wrapped in a closed, enterprise‑grade environment, it goes beyond just efficiency. It raises the quality bar while giving you back the hours to do your highest‑value work.

Want to see what that looks like for you and your team?

• Book a walkthrough of Lexis+ AI with Protégé.
• Join the Lexis+ AI Insider community for early features and best‑practice tips.