Industry Awareness

Surfing the Data Wave: Endless Summer Insights into California Litigation Analytics

Claire Russell — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 18:59:00 GMT

Lex Machina now offers litigation analytics for 3+ million California cases—helping law firms and companies improve strategy, win cases, and land clients.(read more)

Legal Industry’s First Voice AI Assistant Steals the Show at 2025 Legalweek Conference

Sherica Celine — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:20:00 GMT

The 2025 Legalweek conference, which is the largest annual gathering of the legal technology industry, was stirred up this week by a product launch that touched off a buzz about new ways that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will transform legal work.

LexisNexis kicked off Legalweek with the announcement of the legal industry’s first personalized voice AI assistant for completing complex legal work, with the rollout of an enhanced version of LexisNexis Protégé.

Protégé is a personalized AI assistant that seamlessly connects across the LexisNexis product ecosystem and can also be grounded in customer data via secure integration with a Document Management System (DMS). It is available within the Lexis+ AI legal workflow solution and Lexis Create+ tool for legal drafting in Microsoft Word.

The new version of Protégé includes a voice-enabled AI experience for streamlined legal workflows. Users can ask a legal question, initiate a drafting task and request case law summarization using voice commands, seamlessly integrating speech input into AI-driven legal work.

Voice AI assistance and new advanced reasoning capabilities simplify AI use, allowing legal professionals to interact naturally with Protégé using spoke language, rather than manually entering prompts. This new, multi-modal experience provides users with greater workflow flexibility, making it easier for them to deliver next-level legal work even faster and making their workday more efficient.

“We want to make it increasingly effortless for our customers to collaborate with LexisNexis AI solutions to generate outstanding legal work,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK and Ireland, in a press release unveiling the enhanced product. “With the launch of the legal industry’s first personalized AI voice assistant, we are drawing on our deep technology expertise to make the human-AI exchange more intuitive, productive and beneficial to each individual customer for achieving better outcomes.”

News of the innovative technology breakthrough made a splash at Legalweek and touched off immediate reaction throughout the industry.

LawSites, the popular industry blog published by veteran industry journalist Robert Ambrogi, broke the news with a feature story that heralded the launch of “the industry’s first voice AI assistant in Protégé” as the big product announcement to kick off Legalweek.

Legaltech News reported the launch in the headline of its roundup story at Legalweek, noting that “the voice assistant will allow users to interact with Protégé verbally, and allows them to ask legal questions, initiate document drafting and request case summarization with spoken prompts.”

Protégé leverages proprietary agentic and generative AI technology from LexisNexis, and the tool is built with enterprise-grade security, compliance and privacy. In addition to the breakthrough voice AI assistance, the company also announced other new features coming to Protégé, including:

Higher-quality legal answers

Advanced AI-powered reasoning now offers superior results and fosters enhanced collaboration with legal professionals. Complex legal inquiries are systematically deconstructed into manageable components, ensuring thorough analysis. Interactive features empower users to adjust the AI's approach and select optimal strategies for customized outcomes. Self-assessment functionality enables the AI to evaluate and improve its document creation, resulting in higher quality drafts.

Context expert witness analytics

Litigators can now upload an expert witness deposition obtained during pre-trial preparation and Protégé will extract data insights from Context Expert Witness Analytics to deliver an AI-generated summary of the expert’s challenge record, experience, qualifications, and litigation and testimony history.

Legal prompt suggestions

User-customizable settings, enhanced prompt recommendations and new prompt options help legal professionals gain valuable insights quickly, without requiring advanced knowledge of how to effectively prompt AI systems.

Analysis of search results

Users can utilize AI capabilities on up to the top 10 search results or on single cases in legal research. This creates a seamless experience by integrating AI assistance directly into Lexis+ search workflows.

The new version of the Protégé Legal AI Assistant on Lexis+ AI delivers an even more personalized experience that will support legal professionals in making informed decisions faster, generating outstanding work, and freeing up time for them to focus on other efforts that drive value. All existing Lexis+ AI customers have access to Protégé.

To learn more about how Lexis+ AI can help legal professionals achieve better outcomes, or to sign up for the Lexis+ AI Insider program that provides the latest in Legal AI educational content, please visit www.lexisnexis.com/ai.

Click here to schedule a free trial of Lexis+ AI.

Launch of LexisNexis Protégé for Lexis+ AI Stirs Up Buzz at ILTACON 2024

cassieq — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 19:33:00 GMT

Learn about the recent announcement of LexisNexis Protégé for Lexis+ AI (read more)

LexisNexis Named Best Overall AI Company at 2024 AI Breakthrough Awards

Sherica Celine — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:00:00 GMT

LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal, corporate, government and academic data solutions, has been named the Best Overall AI Company at the prestigious 2024 AI Breakthrough Awards. This marquee honor recognizes LexisNexis' pioneering work in artificial intelligence and machine learning across its product portfolio.

The AI Breakthrough Awards received over 2,500 nominations from more than 20 countries this year, showcasing the incredible innovation happening in the AI field. An expert panel of judges evaluated nominees based on criteria like innovation, design, user experience and overall technological advancement. LexisNexis stood out for its wide-ranging AI capabilities that extract insights from massive data sets to empower better decision making.

"We are thrilled to receive this recognition as the top AI company from the AI Breakthrough Awards," said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK and Ireland. "AI is core to our mission of enhancing professional productivity and unlocking new opportunities through data-driven insights."

At the forefront of LexisNexis' AI efforts is Lexis+ AI, a legal generative AI virtual assistant launched in October 2023. This spring, LexisNexis released the second-generation of Lexis+ AI with enhanced features to the ask, draft, summarize, and upload portfolio.

Lexis+ AI leverages large language models and multimodal learning to understand complex queries, analyze documents, conduct research and provide summarized insights backed by authoritative linked legal citations. Since its launch last year, Lexis+ AI has been rapidly adopted by law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies.

"LexisNexis is transforming how legal professionals work by accelerating research, drafting and analysis through AI," said Fitzpatrick. "Our vision is for every professional to have a customized virtual assistant to enhance their capabilities and productivity."

Beyond legal, LexisNexis is infusing AI across its risk solutions, corporate intelligence, news and academic offerings. Advanced machine learning models power capabilities like:

Automated due diligence to rapidly surface risk signals
AI-driven monitoring for financial crimes and compliance
Intelligent searching and summarization of research publications
Extraction of insights from patents, public records and news data

"The past year has been a true breakthrough for AI with generative AI, large language models and multimodal capabilities revolutionizing applications across industries," said Steve Johansson, Managing Director of AI Breakthrough Awards. "LexisNexis exemplifies this excellence, pushing boundaries while delivering high-impact, practical AI solutions."

LexisNexis continues investing heavily in AI research and development, with over 500 data scientists working to advance the models underpinning its products. As a leader in professional AI solutions, LexisNexis is committed to developing AI responsibly and ethically. The company partners closely with customers to ensure its AI offerings are accurate, unbiased and aligned with the latest AI governance best practices.

This Best Overall AI Company award recognizes LexisNexis' decades of pioneering AI innovation and its vision for empowering professionals across sectors with virtual AI assistants. As breakthrough AI capabilities emerge, LexisNexis remains well-positioned to help its customers and society navigate and benefit from this transformative technology.

Stanford Study Finds Lexis+ AI Provides Accurate Responses at “More Than Three Times” the Rate of Thomson Reuters Product

Sherica Celine — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 18:00:00 GMT

A new research paper published by Stanford University's Center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), which is based on results from an independent empirical evaluation of AI-driven legal research tools, concludes that Lexis+ AI significantly outperforms Thomson Reuters’s Ask Practical Law AI in a number of important measures.

The study was conducted by researchers from Stanford’s RegLab and Stanford’s Center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). The team documented that “Ask Practical Law AI’s answers are incomplete more than 60% of the time, leading Lexis+ AI to provide accurate responses at more than three times the rate.”

Among other head-to-head comparisons reported in the study are the following metrics:

Lexis+ AI provides accurate (i.e., correct and grounded) responses on 65% of queries, while Ask Practical Law AI “refuses to answer queries 62% of the time” and “responds accurately just 18% of the time”;
Lexis+ AI and GPT-4 were “quite capable at navigating our false premise queries and often corrected the false premise without hallucination. Lexis+ AI steers the user towards the correct answer”; and
When looking solely at responsive answers, Ask Practical Law AI hallucinates at a similar rate to GPT-4 and “more than twice as often as Lexis+ AI.”

The researchers were somewhat limited in their ability do a true head-to-head comparison of products as LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters have to date charted different courses with their Gen AI product strategies.

Lexis+ AI offers users a single ecosystem drawing on the vast LexisNexis content set for AI-powered legal research, while Thomson Reuters offers two fragmented products — Ask Practical Law AI and Westlaw Precision AI — to customers. In fact, Westlaw Precision AI has not even been made available to law schools at this time, while Lexis+ AI was rolled out to law schools for testing in the Fall of 2023 and was made available to all faculty and law students in February 2024.

Continuous Improvement of Technology

The research paper is generally skeptical of the product claims by the leading legal research providers, finding a “more nuanced reality” to be the case with respect to the quality of the answers surfaced by Legal AI tools at this point in time. But the authors acknowledge that the products are improving, writing that “even over the course of our study, we noticed the responses of these systems — particularly Lexis+ AI — evolve over time.”

We are, in fact, pouring investment into our technology solutions and continuously refining safeguards that aim to deliver the highest quality answers. We are particularly committed to constantly improving the performance of our AI-powered solutions, as illustrated by the recent rollout of a second-generation legal AI assistant on our breakthrough Lexis+ AI platform.

For example, this new release of the platform featured an enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Model that addresses many of the service issues noted in the study. This model parses user queries and extracts key semantic concepts, then goes out and captures the most relevant answers to those queries by consulting the comprehensive LexisNexis collection of primary law, case law, regulations, analysis and more. RAG technology enables Lexis+ AI to minimize hallucinated or unsubstantiated answers; it is becoming more precise at an astonishing rate and users will continue to see performance improvements on a week-by-week basis.

There is another important element to understanding a key difference in the way that Lexis+ AI delivers its answers to legal professionals.

Authority-Backed Linked Legal Citations

When we announced the launch of Lexis+ AI, our new generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) solution designed to transform legal work, we described how our proprietary technology enabled us to deliver a Legal AI product “authority-backed linked legal citations” that are grounded in the world’s largest repository of accurate and exclusive legal content from LexisNexis.

The Stanford study raises questions about the risk of hallucinations with any AI-driven legal research tool, but it’s important to understand that our promise to you is not perfection, but that all linked legal citations are hallucination-free.

No Gen AI tool today can deliver 100% accuracy, regardless of who the provider is. Unlike other vendors, however, Lexis+ AI delivers 100% authority-backed linked legal citations connected to source documents, grounding those responses in authoritative resources that can be relied upon with confidence.

In the rare instance where a citation provided by Lexis+ AI does not include a link, users should always review the citation for accuracy. Remember, Lexis+ AI is meant to enhance the work of an attorney, not replace it. No technology application or software product can ever substitute for the judgment and reasoning of a lawyer. This is the same fundamental principle behind every tool in our tech stack.

When we built Lexis+ AI, our goal was to deliver the most authoritative content from LexisNexis back to inform the answer. Our technical architecture, combined with the world’s largest repository of accurate and exclusive legal content, allows us to make that happen. That is how we are able to deliver on the promise of delivering to you hallucination-free linked legal citations.

Lexis+ AI Leading the Way

The new study from researchers at Stanford University provides empirical data that Lexis+ AI is delivering superior results than our competitors’ AI-generated legal research tools in a number of key areas. To learn more or to request a free trial of Lexis+ AI, please go to www.lexisnexis.com/ai.

LexisNexis to Present Five AI-Focused Sessions at Legalweek 2024

Sherica Celine — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 03:00:00 GMT

Legal professionals who attend Legalweek 2024 will have the opportunity to be equipped with insights that go beyond the AI hype and help them to identify specific action items for capitalizing on the benefits of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) in the legal services industry.

LexisNexis has mobilized to lead the way with an educational initiative designed to accelerate industry awareness of Gen AI, kicking off the year by sponsoring five AI-focused sessions at the conference (January 29 - February 1) in New York:

“AI IRL: Practical and Effective AI Use Cases for Legal” (January 29, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., Sutton South)
This session will launch the Legalweek 2024 AI Workshop by exploring current, practical applications of AI in the legal sector, emphasizing real-world effectiveness over theoretical potential. Panelists will provide tips and insights on distinguishing between AI tools that offer genuine value and those that are merely overhyped solutions in search of a problem. Speakers include Danielle Benecke, founder of Baker McKenzie’s Machine Learning Practice; Julian Tsisin, director of legal technology solutions at Meta Platforms; Léo Murgel, COO and senior vice president at Salesforce; Steve Gong, patent counsel and head of data science, technology and operations at Google; and Jeff Reihl, EVP and chief technology officer at LexisNexis.

“What’s Next for Large Language Models?” (January 30, 2 to 3 p.m., Mercury Ballroom)
This session will evaluate whether Gen AI fulfilled early expectations for use with legal practice, new use cases, and the pace at which Large Language Models (LLMs) are advancing. Presenters will also discuss whether the technology has reached a point of accessibility that furthers access to justice opportunities. Speakers include Oz Benamran, chief knowledge and innovation officer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Danielle Benecke, founder of Baker McKenzie’s Machine Learning Practice; Melissa Prince, chief of legal operations at Ice Miller; and Jeff Reihl, EVP and chief technology officer at LexisNexis.

“Ethical and Legal Considerations for the Deployment of AI in Litigation” (January 31, 11:30 am to 12:30 p.m., Regent Room)
This session will delve into the unique ethical and legal considerations that arise from the use of AI in litigation. A panel of renowned legal tech experts will explore critical areas of concern, such as privilege and confidentiality, privacy rights, data security, transparency, algorithmic bias and liability issues. Speakers include Niloy Roy, shareholder at Littler Mendelson; Chris Chapman, director of litigation support at Dickinson Wright; Michelle Six, of counsel at Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart; Vanessa Barsanti, partner at Kirkland & Ellis; and Karl Harris, CEO of Lex Machina.

“One Year Later: What We’ve Learned, What’s Changed and What Lies Ahead for Generative AI in the Legal Sector” (January 31, 2 to 3 p.m., Petit Trianon)
This session will focus on the flurry of activity since the launch of ChatGPT in late-2022 and how the legal industry’s collective attention turned to Gen AI in 2023. Panelists will examine the latest updates, new milestones in LLM technology, adoption trends, the regulatory landscape and court policies. Speakers include Cassandra Coyer, legal technology reporter for ALM; Mike Swift, chief global correspondent at MLex Market Insight; Serena Wallen, senior director of product management at LexisNexis; and Simon Weierman, segment manager at LexisNexis.

“Transforming the Present: How AI and Machine Learning are Changing” (January 31, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., Rendezvous Trianon)
This session will explore how AI and Machine Learning (ML) are changing the practice of legal knowledge management. Experts will discuss the practical implications, opportunities and challenges presented by AI and ML, and how law firms, legal tech companies and corporate legal departments can effectively leverage these tools for improved efficiency and competitive advantage. Speakers include Joseph Mazzarella, president and general counsel at Mutualink; Todd Friedlich, director of knowledge management and innovation at Wilkie Farr & Gallagher; and Melissa Morrison, director of segment management at LexisNexis.

Gen AI continues to dominate conversations about the future of the legal industry. All eight of the boldest legal tech predictions for 2024 made by leading experts in the space were tied to the adoption of AI, according to a recent story in Law360 Pulse.

Lexis+ AI™ is our breakthrough Gen AI platform that we believe will transform legal work by providing a suite of legal research, drafting, and summarization tools that deliver on the potential of Gen AI technology. We look forward to sharing more information about this product and our vision for the future of the industry at Legalweek 2024.

Meanwhile, to learn more or to request a free trial of Lexis+ AI, please go to www.lexisnexis.com/ai.

Independent Study Validates Metrics Used by LexisNexis to Measure Product Claims

Sherica Celine — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 13:35:00 GMT

It’s no secret that the legal services industry is a highly competitive marketplace in which providers of content and software solutions try to put the best spin on the quality of their respective products. In an effort to distinguish themselves from other providers, companies tend to make all sorts of claims about their products being faster, better or easier than the others in their market.

But how do you know if these claims are based on legitimate methodologies or if they are just biased, self-serving marketing assertions designed to place imaginary distance between them and their competitors?

The only way to really know how much confidence you can place in a legal solutions provider’s product claims is to choose not to take their word for it. That means enlisting an independent third party to turn over every stone and objectively study the company’s product claims and the validity of their metrics. So, earlier this year, LexisNexis engaged PwC, a leading international professional services firm, to deconstruct all of our methodologies used for assessing our content reach, our customer satisfaction and our user preferences.

PwC rigorously reviewed the methodologies that LexisNexis uses to collect and analyze the data and customer feedback we rely upon to ensure product excellence across a broad range of products and services, with a particular focus on online legal research, practical guidance and analysis. Some of these specific competitive claims include:

LexisNexis has 22% more federal cases and 210 million more dockets than its closest competitor.
LexisNexis’ rigorous blind testing process for case law search relevance has resulted in continuous improvements to the search algorithm.
LexisNexis adds new cases faster than its closest competitor 79% of the time.
The flagship Lexis+ legal research solution had a 90% satisfaction rate among large law firms and a 92% satisfaction rate among corporate general counsel.
Lexis+ is preferred by 29% more law students than its closest competitor, with preference extending across all class levels.

The good news for us is that the PwC study independently validated the methodologies that we use to compare our performance across the market for legal search technology services. The good news for our customers and prospective customers is that they can have confidence that the claims we make about our products and services are backed by scientifically rigorous metrics that were tested for relevance, rigor, independence and robustness.

“Demonstrating industry leadership and distinguishing oneself from competitors often requires organizations to make bold claims about their competitive offerings – most of which are taken with a grain of salt by decision-makers, the media and other stakeholders,” added Sean Fitzpatrick. “Having successfully demonstrated the validity of our methodologies, we’re sending a clear, unequivocal message to the market that the claims we make are objective reflections of our product and service capabilities, and that they deliver on our customers’ needs better than the competition.”

Lexis+® is a modern all-in-one platform from LexisNexis that combines superior research and data-driven insights. The solution provides legal professionals with all of the tools and resources necessary to practice with confidence and efficiency through five content libraries: Legal Research; Advanced Legal Analytics; Brief Analysis; Legal News Hub; and Practical Guidance.

Experience Lexis+ for yourself by signing up for a free 7-day trial or go to www.lexisnexis.com/lexisplus for more information.

Why AI Adoption Challenges for Small Firms Aren't as Tough as They Seem

ellenh — Tue, 23 May 2023 13:21:00 GMT

Embracing automation is important for small law firms. AI-based legal research software mines archives of legal precedents to find supporting documentation for legal arguments.(read more)

Five Things Law Firm Owners Should Know About the Tax Implications of PPP Loans

ellenh — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 18:41:00 GMT

Over the last year, law firms of all sizes, from the largest in the world to small and midsize firms, have pursued funding from multiple rounds of the Payment Protection Program (PPP). For some, the PPP loans they received were insurance for rough pa...(read more)

Tracking US Residential Eviction Moratoriums

ellenh — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:57:00 GMT

On January 29, 2021, the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, officially extended the federal government’s moratorium on residential evictions until March 31, 2021. The moratorium bega...(read more)

Wills and Estates Planning for 2021: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

ellenh — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:20:00 GMT

There’s no time like the start of the year to plan for the future, even when it comes to estate planning. In fact, for trust and estate attorneys (not to mention their clients), that’s has never been truer than it is in 2021. For one thin...(read more)

Employment Litigation Tracker Details Rise in COVID-19 Lawsuits

ellenh — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 19:44:00 GMT

We all know that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a historic increase in filings for unemployment benefits. But those are not the only employment-related claims that have risen during the pandemic. Workplace lawsuits are also on the rise. As a result...(read more)

Ransomware: A Threat to Law Firms Big and Small

ellenh — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 20:43:00 GMT

Much of the world began to understand the enormous threat of ransomware attacks in 2017, when the WannaCry attack struck some 200,000 businesses across the globe. That notorious example—in which cybercriminals encrypted victims’ data (ema...(read more)

“Gray Divorces” Are on the Rise, Driven by Baby Boomers

ellenh — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 13:42:00 GMT

The wedding vow “till death do us part” is going by the wayside for a steadily growing number of married couples who are 50 and over. So-called “gray divorces” are becoming increasingly common in the United States, as many cou...(read more)

Rent Relief Efforts Continue During Pandemic-Fueled Economic Uncertainty

ellenh — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 13:42:00 GMT

Faced with continued economic uncertainty and the expiration of the federal Paycheck Protection Program for those fortunate to secure forgivable loans, many small businesses are still struggling to cover one of their largest fixed costs: rent. Busine...(read more)