NEW YORK, June 25, 2026 – On a recent episode of the Best Practice podcast, Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO LexisNexis Legal, shared his perspective on the forces reshaping legal AI, the growing importance of trust and validation, and what it takes to build AI solutions that legal professionals can confidently rely on.
With more than 21 years at LexisNexis, Sean has had a front row seat to every major technology shift in legal – from digital to cloud to AI – and brings a unique perspective. Key themes and takeaways from the conversation include:
- AI Represents the Most Significant Technology Shift Yet for Legal Professionals
Unlike earlier transitions from print to digital and then cloud computing, the transformation from AI is fundamentally different from previous technology waves. Earlier shifts primarily changed how information was delivered, while AI is changing how legal work itself is performed.
The legal industry is not simply adopting a new tool. It is entering a period where core legal workflows, from research to drafting and review, are being reimagined.
Legal professionals should use AI so they can experience firsthand AI's strengths and weaknesses and develop sound judgment about when and how to apply it. Waiting for the technology to mature brings the risk of falling behind as adoption accelerates.
AI literacy is rapidly becoming a professional competency rather than an optional skill.
- Validated, Verifiable Data Produces More Defensible Outcomes
The quality of AI output is directly tied to the quality of the grounding data. LexisNexis's strategy is built around authoritative legal content, which is continuously updated and paired with validation tools such as citators and citation verification systems.
The real value comes from combining proprietary content with AI systems that can verify, explain, and validate outputs. The differentiation – and value – comes from turning proprietary and authoritative data into trustworthy legal answers.
- Model Advances Are Becoming Increasingly Commoditized
Innovations that once required significant time to replicate can now be reproduced much faster as foundational AI capabilities become broadly available. As a result, pure technology leadership is becoming harder to sustain.
Competitive advantage increasingly comes from unique assets that cannot be quickly copied – trusted content, workflow integration, long-standing customer relationships, and deep domain expertise. Lexis+® with Protégé™ is built specifically for the way lawyers work, with continuous enhancements and changes guided by ongoing customer feedback.
- "Probably Right" Is Not Good Enough for Lawyers
There is an important distinction between general-purpose AI systems and AI solutions designed specifically for legal work. Even as frontier models continue to improve rapidly, becoming faster and cheaper, their grounding open web content creates reliability and liability problems that are unacceptable in legal practice.
In law, "probably right" can become malpractice. Legal AI is judged on accuracy, verifiability, and defensibility first, model intelligence and efficiency second.
Technology alone is vulnerable to disruption, but a workflow solution built around proprietary legal content is significantly harder to replace. LexisNexis combines exclusive legal content with technology and embeds that into customer workflows, with built-in validation – including automatic citation checking and Shepard’s status.
- Hallucinations Are Becoming a Governance Issue, Not Just a Technical Issue
The growing number of hallucinated citations appearing in court filings and judicial opinions bring financial and reputation risk for legal professionals. Professional responsibility rules, case law, and bar guidance increasingly require lawyers to verify AI-generated work before submission, so verification moves from being an afterthought to being built directly into legal AI systems and workflows.
Future legal AI adoption will depend as much on compliance, validation, and auditability as on raw AI capability.
Looking ahead
As frontier models improve with every new version release, durable advantage comes from combining authoritative content, trusted workflows, validation systems, and deep customer integration. The conversation is shifting from "Who has the best model?" to "Who can deliver the most trustworthy legal outcomes at scale?"
We are moving toward a future where legal work will be a collection of thousands of workflows that will increasingly be automated, allowing legal professionals to focus more time on higher-value judgment and advisory work.
Listen to the podcast episode: Best Practice – Is owning the data still the moat in Legal AI.
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Media Contact:
Anuj Baveja
Director of Communications
LexisNexis Legal & Professional
anuj.baveja@lexisnexis.com