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Transforming Legal Operations with AI: Introducing LexisNexis Protégé in CounselLink+

September 23, 2025 (5 min read)

By: Thomas Moore, Sr. Product Manager

Summary

Why AI Matters in Legal Operations

Corporate legal departments are expected to manage growing legal workloads while continuing to deliver strategic business value to their organizations. One key way they have realized greater efficiency and productivity in recent years has been “thanks to the rapid growth of the legal department operations function,” according to a 2025 Deloitte Report.

LexisNexis® has just integrated its intelligent AI assistant, Protégé, into CounselLink+. Designed specifically for in-house legal teams, Protégé™ in CounselLink+™ delivers real-time, AI-powered matter and invoice summaries, extracting key details and providing recommended action items for leadership to make strategic decisions. This launch marks the initial integration of Protégé in CounselLink+ workflows.

Introducing LexisNexis Protégé in CounselLink+

LexisNexis Protégé, the next chapter in legal technology innovation, is our secure legal AI assistant that leverages the power of agentic and generative AI to transform legal work. Protégé understands individual preferences and then draws upon our comprehensive repository of authoritative legal content — as well as the user’s own proprietary work product — to serve as grounding data for providing deeply personalized answers, drafts, summaries and more.

The LexisNexis Protégé in CounselLink+ launch last week, represents a significant leap forward in the corporate legal technology landscape by seamlessly integrating AI into the daily workflows of in-house legal professionals. The personalized AI-powered assistant delivers meaningful insights that enhance productivity and decision-making capabilities.

This new enhancement builds upon the CounselLink+ Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform, which already serves as a comprehensive in-house legal operations hub. Now, with the addition of AI capabilities from Protégé, users gain unprecedented visibility and power across their entire legal ecosystem.

Driving Corporate Legal Ops Transformation

This breakthrough product integration will drive new levels of legal operations transformation and workflow productivity in legal departments by providing actionable insights and summarizations, conducting advanced financial analysis, and securely integrating into existing workflows.

Key Features of Protégé in CounselLink+

Key capabilities available in Protégé in CounselLink+ include Intelligent Matter Summarization and Advanced Invoice Analysis, each designed to surface context, trends, and recommended next steps.

Intelligent Matter Summarization

One of the most powerful features in Protégé is the ability to provide comprehensive matter summarization. Protégé analyzes complex matter data to deliver contextual insights, including overview information, financial snapshots, key takeaways from journal entries, budget analysis, and participant details. Most importantly, Protégé goes beyond simple data presentation by suggesting actionable items that users may want to consider.

This intelligent summarization capability transforms how legal teams approach matter management. Instead of spending hours sifting through documents and data points, legal operations professionals can quickly understand the current state of any matter, identify potential issues, and determine next steps — all through a single, AI-generated summary.

Advanced Invoice Analysis

Financial oversight represents another critical area where the Protégé integration delivers exceptional value. The AI assistant provides detailed invoice summarization with contextual insights that help legal teams better understand their spending patterns and identify opportunities for cost optimization.

The AI-powered invoice analysis includes comprehensive financial overviews, detailed observations about billing patterns, evidence-based conclusions about spend efficiency, and specific recommendations for improvement.

This level of detailed analysis empowers legal operations professionals to make more informed decisions about outside counsel relationships, billing guideline enforcement, as well as budget allocation across different practice areas and matters.

The Future of AI in Corporate Legal Operations

Protégé in CounselLink+ represents more than just another legal AI tool; it's the foundation for the next generation of corporate legal operations technology. The system is designed to evolve and expand its capabilities over time, moving from intelligent summarization toward a more powerful, conversational experience that can handle increasingly complex legal tasks. As Protégé in CounselLink+ expands, it will become increasingly valuable and personalized to each organization's specific needs and workflows.

What’s Coming

Looking ahead, Protégé in CounselLink+ will deliver charge-level detail, helping teams quickly break down individual charges, understand billing rule applications, and track adjustments with precision. Future enhancements will extend deeper benchmarking and analytics, and emerge in workflows across the CounselLink+ platform. By continually building on this foundation, CounselLink+ ensures that innovation evolves with the changing needs of modern legal departments.

Experience CounselLink+

The CounselLink team has more than 30 years of experience developing innovative solutions designed to help legal departments organize their work and make better decisions. On average, CounselLink customers can achieve an ROI of 13x their CounselLink spend and 100% of surveyed organizations experienced an increase in productivity compared to before they implemented CounselLink.

CounselLink+ is a cloud-based enterprise legal management solution trusted by leading legal departments. The platform acts as a legal operations hub, bringing together various functionalities to address common challenges faced by legal departments, which improves efficiency, enhances collaboration, reduces risks, increases visibility and supports better decision-making. CounselLink+ also offers one-click access to the entire LexisNexis ecosystem, offering a centralized legal platform to manage the entire workday.

FAQs on Legal AI and CounselLink+

  1. What is Protégé in CounselLink+?
    Protégé is LexisNexis’ secure AI assistant, designed to summarize matters, analyze invoices, and provide actionable insights for corporate legal teams.
  2. How does Protégé improve matter management?
    By generating AI-driven summaries, Protégé helps legal professionals quickly understand case status, budgets, and risks without manual review.
  3. Can Protégé help with legal billing and cost control?
    Yes. Protégé provides detailed invoice analysis, identifying trends, compliance issues, and opportunities for cost optimization.
  4. Is Protégé secure for legal departments?
    Yes. Protégé uses proprietary data protection measures and trusted LexisNexis infrastructure to keep sensitive legal information secure.
  5. How does CounselLink+ differ from other ELM platforms?
    CounselLink+ integrates AI-powered insights, CLM, and ELM in one hub — offering a complete, connected solution for in-house legal departments.

Click here to request a free demo of the CounselLink+ solution for in-house legal departments.