Today LexisNexis will be releasing a Generative AI survey at LegalWeek in New York. The survey which was conducted in March 2023 is based on responses from +4,100 US lawyers, law students and consumers.

“We’ve been delivering leading legal AI and analytics tools for some time, providing lawyers with data driven insights that make it easier for them to do their jobs,” said Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis Legal &Professional. “Generative AI and large language models have tremendous potential to transform the way legal work is done. Our R&D labs are continually experimenting and releasing new innovations, and this survey reflects how lawyers, law students, and consumers alike are embracing legal tech in new and exciting ways.”

Top highlights include:

Questions cover overall awareness of generative AI, current use of generative AI tools in daily work, and willingness to adopt generative AI tools for various legal matters. 

Lawyers/law student awareness

  • Awareness was significantly higher within the legal market vs consumers (88% vs. 57%)
  • Half (51%) of lawyers had either already used it in their work or were planning to do so
  • 84% believe generative AI tools will increase the efficiency of lawyers, paralegals, or law clerks
  • 61% of lawyers and 44% of law students also believe generative AI will change law schools and the way law is taught and studied

Consumer awareness

  • 57% of consumers are aware of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT
  • 32% said they have used generative AI, with half of these (15%) stating they had tried using GenAI for legal advice or assistance
  • Those most aware of the tech were wealthy, highly educated males under age 45

  • The top five ways law firms, corporate counsel, and law students are currently or would like to use generative AI tools in their daily work include:
  • • Increasing efficiency (61% of lawyers, 60% of law students)
  • • Researching matters (59% of lawyers, 55% of law students)
  • • Drafting documents (53% of lawyers, 43% of law students)
  • • Streamlining work (46% of lawyers, 40% of law students)
  • • Document analysis (40% of lawyers, 34% of law students)

LexisNexis will be hosting a  Generative AI panel at Legalweek on Monday at 1:30pm, including LexisNexis CTO Jeff Reihl and several other law firm and corporate execs.

Google’s core value statement is encapsulated in “10 things we know to be true.” It includes two rubrics that knowledge managers and librarians should embrace  as driving principles:  “Focus on the user and all else will follow” and “fast is better than slow.” 

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The lingering shadow of cost recovery has impaired the intelligent use of digital resources in many law firms. Long after Lexis and Westlaw switched to flat fee contracts much of their data remains locked in the prison of “cost recovery” even though there are technologies available to unlock targeted content for specific use cases. But the problem doesn’t end there. Even products that have never been associated with chargebacks are locked behind passwords. Passwords are an obstacle to access.

Lawyers forget their passwords, lawyers forget client numbers, lawyers forget what they learned at the last training session… Lack of access reduces ROI. This post will explore how information professionals can take down the barriers and enhance the ROI of the firm’s information resource investments.


“Focus on the user and all else will follow. “

  • No one wants to read a manual.
  • Everything needs to be intuitive.
  • Everyone has information overload.
  • Everyone is multitasking.
  • Everyone sees your solution in their own context based on their role, their prior experience, and their “go to” tools.
  • Passwords are a huge obstacle to optimizing workflow.

(Continue reading on LegalTech Hub)

Legal Tech insiders knew that something big was “cooking” at Casetext. Yesterday Casetext announced the Launch of Co-Counsel, which is described as the first AI Legal Assistant. The launch included some notable media appearances : a live demo on tv and a video interview Product Briefing with Nikki Shaver of Legal TechHub.

In another first, Casetext CoFounders, CEO, Jake Heller, and Chief Product Officer, Pablo Arredondo appeared on Morning Joe on MSNBC and conducted a live demo showing the power of the product. (To my knowledge, this also marks the first time Pablo appeared in public wearing a suit and tie.)

During the live demo, CoCounsel “read” the January 6th report and was asked if Donald Trump can be charged with conspiracy to make a false statement and whether the report contained any information which would exonerate the former President. In a few minutes CoCounsel delivered responses to both questions in well crafted prose. An attorney Greg Sisskind also appeared on the panel to describe how he uses CoCounsel in his immigration practice.

According to the press release , “The co-founders of Casetext saw the potential in this next-generation of generative AI and collaborated with OpenAI to use their latest, most advanced large language model, which can read, write and understand at a postgraduate level in any field, including law. CoCounsel pairs this model with Casetext’s proprietary technology and legal databases, for a first-of-its-kind product that has been developed to address the most important use cases in law.”

Heller also appeared in a more in depth discussion about CoCounsel with Nikki Shaver, the Founder of LegalTechHub .

I want to applaud Heller and Arredondo for positioning the product as an AI enabled Legal Assistant rather than engaging in the “eyeball roll” inducing “robot lawyer” hyperbole. CoCounsel is positioned as a tool that empowers lawyers rather than replacing them.

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, U.S.   has announced a suite of new and enhanced features in Legisway.  their legal management software for in-house counsel . Legisway is  an AI enabled SaaS solution which offers to steamline corporate workflows.

Legisway offers AI-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) that enables document creation, editing and version control, as well as self-service templates and a legal ticketing system. Outside of CLM, users can leverage a range of modules to manage legal entities and corporate governance, intellectual property rights, legal claims, real estate, outside counsel spend, and more. The solution enables flexibility to easily create and manage custom reports, operationalize business processes and create automated alerts on key milestones, and more.

“Users now have access to a suite of tools to enable more streamlined task management, faster contract drafting, and AI-powered risk management,” said Ken Crutchfield, Vice President & General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. “Wolters Kluwer has a strong, longstanding track record of providing best-in-class solutions for the corporate legal market. With these new additions, we are showing our customers that we are committed to continuously improving an already powerful, intuitive solution that evolves with their needs and brings them the best possible outcomes.”

Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Enhances AI Enabled Workflows in Legisway for In-House Counsel

Alternative legal services providers (ALSPs) now make up a $20.6 billion segment of the legal market and growth is accelerating dramatically, according to the The Alternative Legal Services Providers 2023 Report is being released today. The report is issued biennially by the Thomson Reuters Institute; the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law; and the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Continue Reading Thomson Reuters Report: Alternative Legal Services Providers (ALSP) at $20 Billion Market Share and Growing

Last week I wrote about the current market landscape for news aggregators. This week I’m providing you with a checklist of features and negotiation issues. 

Aggregation platforms are so varied and law firm priorities are so unique I recommend a formal RFP process. Here is a checklist of features and issues to consider when evaluating aggregation platforms.


Taxonomy. 

For some firms, it will be valuable if the solution comes with it’s own pre-built taxonomy to support tagging. For others who already have their own robust taxonomy, it will be more important for the system to be able to apply the firm’s taxonomy, or a different third-party taxonomy.

What to Ask

Does the platform have a pre-built taxonomy? Does it provide automated tagging? Can it integrate with an internal law firm taxonomy or apply a third-party taxonomy? Can it disambiguate company names? Does it enable searchers to curate alerts by subject, company, name, industry, geography, or other keywords? Does the platform leverage AI or machine learning to apply tags?

Ingestion and management of sources

The sources that are able to be ingested or integrated into the platform are the bread and butter of these solutions. Without the ability to ingest the relevant content for your audience, there’s no point investing.

What to Ask

If the product is owned by a content provider (Lexis/Bloomberg), can they integrate content from other publishers? Can it integrate both premium content and social media content? Can it “de-dupe” i.e. eliminate redundant stories? Can it flag negative stories? Can the platform provide relevancy ranking? Can the platform deliver a full table of contents for a publication, as well as providing custom topic and keyword alerts?

Content delivery

These days alerts can be delivered in different ways and on different schedules. Flexibility in delivery options can help with adoption. 

What to ask

Can RSS, XML, APIs, PDF, URLs, email newsletters tweets and website monitoring, be integrated? Can results be delivered to Slack, Teams or posted into SharePoint pages or mobile apps? Does the provider offer a mobile app?

Timing of alerts 

Can the platform provide real time monitoring and delivery? Can timing be managed at both the user and the alert level?

Formatting

If you’re sending alerts out – within the firm and especially outside of the firm, if you are going to use the platform to send client alerts – it will be important to be able to brand these appropriately.

What to ask

Can the results be branded using a firm template or logo? Can the formatting be customized at the alert level?

Moderation versus automation

Automation is great but it only takes you so far. A solution that allows for careful curation by your knowledge and research teams combined with automated options is more likely to provide the results that your users need.

What to ask

Does the platform allow for custom moderation and curation by a knowledge professional? Does the platform provide automatic updates? Can updates be customized for the individual user preference?

Dashboards

Enabling dashboard views of the content can be a real value-add for both users and administrators. Dashboards allow administrators to use the dashboard to customize and configure alerts, and users to set their own preferences.

What to ask

Does the product offer dashboards for both users and administrators?  How intuitive is it to manage individual subscriptions, topical alerts, and user preferences? Is there a user dashboard where subscribers can manage i.e. add and delete their own alerts and format and delivery preferences? Can users set up their own curated alerts?

Analytics: Trends and Prediction

Analytics are increasingly important for both understanding user behavior and content insights. 

What to ask

Does the platform have an intelligence engine that can provide graphic trends of both news and user activity? Can users interact with data? Does the platform provide sentiment analysis? Does the platform offer any predictive signaling capability? Can users change the predictive parameters to weight certain factors?

Technical 

As with any technology solution, there is no point moving down the path towards implementation unless you know it will work in the firm’s systems environment and meet the firm’s security standards.

What to find out

Can it pass the firm’s security screening? Can it be integrated with the firms HRIS system so that users will be automatically added and deleted as they come and go from the firm?

Licenses. Passwords and IP Authentication 

Does the platform offer features to limit access to only licensed users. Can it integrate with password management tools such as Onelog and Research Monitor?

*Note: a version of this checklist will be available on LTH Premium as the News Aggregator Evaluation Framework.


Legal Tech Hub has taken a big leap forward with the launch of a premium subscriptions service LTH Premium.  LTH provides insights for professionals across the legal spectrum (Innovation, KM/Research, Legal Ops, IT) who are tasked with monitoring the legal tech market or identifying the right resource for a specific workflow need. LTH provides “educational resources, objective reports and insights about legal technology, and tools to support the selection, evaluation, procurement, and implementation of legal technology. “

LHT offers quick access to resources such as checklists which can help legal and business professionals assess new tech solutions  across the procurement lifecycle– from assessment through adoption.

LTH Premium is built on the original Legal Tech Hub taxonomy and product profiles are enhanced practical guides commissioned from industry experts,

Continue Reading Legal Tech Hub Launches LTH Premium – Enhanced Procurement Expertise

At the dawn of the digital information age, I learned an exotic research tradecraft “Selective Dissemination of Information” (SDI). Platforms such as Dialog and Orbit contained dozens of databases which included abstracts and descriptors for scientific and business articles and reports. Curated topical updates could be harvested by using a set of complex commands and Boolean logic.

Here’s the catch: daily or weekly alert of new content could only be retrieved by logging onto the platform. There was no automatic delivery.

Everything sped up with the emergence of email and the World Wide Web in the 1990s.  In recent decades aggregation platforms have evolved from simply speeding up and personalizing alerts, to providing immediate real time notifications. The emergence of analytics, AI and neural nets has been a force multiplier to drive the development of exotic features such as predictive insights and sentiment analysis. Microtrends became detectable as social media flooded into the competitive landscape.

In 2004  I was interviewed by EContent magazine and asked — if I could accomplish anything in my career, what would it be. Here is my answer:

“I’d like to be an information climatologist. I’d work with vendors to design information services for determining what is likely to happen next by pulling trends together. Imagine if someone could have known that Enron was about to happen?”

In 2023, aggregation platforms stand poised to fulfill that dream.

Why Law Firms Need Curation Platforms.  

Lawyers are in an information business. The practice of law requires the relentless monitoring Continue reading on Legal Tech Hub

I always believed that Gavelytics was too good a product to disappear. I reported last summer that the pioneering state litigation analytics company was shutting down. Today’s  press release reports that Gavelytics will live again as the core of  Pre/Dicta‘s state court predictive litigation component. This transformation will fulfill founder Rick Merrill’s dream: “Pre/Dicta created what I always dreamed of for Gavelytics; a litigation analytics platform that was forward-looking rather than backward-looking, that could make predictions and not just provide generic descriptive statistics.”

Launched in summer of 2022, Pre/Dicta uses data science to predict whether a case will survive a motion to dismiss by identifying the factors that influence such a decision, including the presiding judge’s net worth, political affiliation, educational and work experience, and other biographical data points that are not intuitively significant and determine whether a case will move forward

The benefit for Pre/DIcta is that this acquisition “dramatically shortens Pre/Dicta’s timeline for creating a tool that offers instant and Continue Reading Gavelytics Lives Again! Acquired by Predictive Analytics Start Up Pre/Dicta

The 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market is being released today. The annual report is  jointly issued each year by the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the Thomson Reuters Institute. The report utilizes data from Thomson Reuters which shows the performance of U.S. law firms and analyses a variety of factors impacting that performance. Download the 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market here.

Several key drivers of the bad news include the decline in profitability which surged in the pandemic, only to stall  as firms absorbed “return to the office” costs.. Expenses further ballooned due to inflation. Law firms once again entered into the talent war “space race” which translates to higher unsustainable salaries for young attorneys whose work can’t be billed to clients. Will law firms ever learn how “not to take the bait?”

Here are the three key take aways: Continue Reading The 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market — Yup It’s Bad