LexisNexis® Legal & Professional has announced that Lexis+ AI™ is now available to U.S. customer’s Given the legal market skittishness about both the security and reliability of Generative AI, (GAI) the Lexis + AI launch meeting for the legal press focused on how Lexis+ AI will deliver encrypted, secure and reliable results. Jeff Pfeifer, Chief Product Officer, North America and UK, provided the overview an demo.

Reliable research results. Pfeifer explained that the new AI solution is designed to deliver trusted results because the system relies on Lexis authoritative primary and secondary materials combined with Shepard’s citations which provides direct links to supporting authorities for all GAI based answers.

Lexis announced its commercial preview program back in  May 2023. This provided a living laboratory where Lexis could get feedback from users across all segments of the legal market (global law firms, corporate legal departments, small law firms, and U.S. courts).

The Lexis+ AI press release asserts that Lexis+ AI answers offer the fastest GAI  “answers” solution in the market.” The “conversational dialog” can respond to up to five sequential questions.

Hallucination Free At the time of launch Lexis+ AI is the only legal generative AI solution with citations linked in its responses, “providing trusted legal results backed by verifiable authority.” This  minimizes the risk of invented content, or hallucinations, and checks all citations against Shepard’s to ensure citation validation. The solution also offers users the ability to input specific citations to verify accuracy and flag when a citation might be wrong. Customers can give instant feedback within the product to continually improve product performance, content relevance, and overall product accuracy.

Continue Reading Lexis+ AI Launch Promises Secure, “Hallucination Free” Generative AI Solution With Linked Legal Citations

Today vLex  is announcing a suite of AI tools in its research assistant platform Vincent AI. Since the merger with Fastcase in 2023, vLex has offered the “world’s most comprehensive AI legal research platform.”  vLex has launched an invitation-only beta which includes a suite of large language model (LLM) tools. The beta will be offered to additional users in the coming months.

This announcement ratchets up the already feverish competition taking place in the legal research market. Thomson Reuters recently purchased Casetext CoCounsel for 650 Million and is expected to launch an integration with Westlaw Precision before the end of the year. LexisNexis is testing AI tools with customers and Bloomberg Law has made AI tools available in an Innovation Studio. All are expected to launch LLM enabled AI tools in the near future. I anticipate that we are in for a year (or maybe a decade) of leapfrogging AI technology launches. .

“AI tools are only as good as the data they rely on,” said vLex CEO Lluís Faus, “and the vLex law library is one of the largest collections of structured law on the planet, including leading expert commentary. That leads to unprecedented insights for legal tasks. For legal LLMs, this release is a major improvement. It is as big as the jump from ChatGPT to GPT4. The results are astonishing.”

Continue Reading vLex Launches First Global AI Legal Assistant: Vincent AI for Research and Drafting

Lexblog, which was founded in 2003,  is the brain child of Kevin O’Keefe, a lawyer who has been on a mission to encourage  legal thought leadership through blogging. (Dewey B Strategic is published on Lexblog) Lexblog offers legal bloggers, lawyers and law firms a worldwide audience. Lexblog currently supports over 40,000 bloggers.

According to the press release “Lou is not designed to replace the lawyer as a writer—Lou amplifies the lawyer’s unique expertise, writing style and voice.”  Lou is powered by OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT technology,  and is designed to make lawyers and marketing professionals “quicker, more efficient and more effective communicators.”

Here’s How it Works I was given an overview of the new functionality by Colin O’Keefe. Lou is no substitute for authorship but is more like a really smart admin assistant who can write summaries, suggest titles and section headings, or perform routine updates on social media. It an also “play with style” by turning the tone from formal to informal.

Lexblog bloggers will get access to a Lou dashboard which lists a menu of functions it can assist with. Lout is built on Chat GDP 3.5 and 4, so bloggers will still need to check their own facts.

Here’s how Lou transforms the legal publishing experience:

Continue Reading Lexblog Offers Early Access to Lou – AI Enabled Publishing Assistant
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Legal Tech Mergers continue despite the uncertain economy. The recent acquisitions of Fastcase and Casetext inspired me to “take the temperature” of legal information marketplace. Thomson Reuters acquisition of Casetext for the breathtaking $650M was completed on August 17, 2023

The Survey I gave information professionals the opportunity to provide feedback on legal information mergers in a survey which was open from July 11th to July 18th. Eighty-six law librarians/knowledge professionals responded to open-ended questions asking them to identify mergers that they thought had either successful or unsuccessful outcomes. Although the majority of responders work in private firms (84%), there were also responses from academic (10%) and government law librarians (6%).

Librarians have long memories, and I was delighted to be reminded of dozens of deals. Over 40 company and product acquisitions, both large and small covering the past 30 years were noted by the respondents. However, the mergers of the last 15 years dominated the survey.

A post on the best legal information mergers, ”Don’t Kill the Golden Goose- Survey on 30 years of  Legal Publishing Mergers” was posted on Legal Tech Hub on August 2, 2023.

Today I am reporting on the mergers which readers regard as unsuccessful.  I also solicited advice for companies to consider in future information product mergers. There were 75 responders who “voted” for the “worst mergers.”

Here are the top factors which made the acquisition unsuccessful in the eyes of respondents.

  • Excessive price increases (24) 37%
  • Tying products together (16)  22.5%
  • Mismanaged integration and lost content usability (16)  (22%)
  • Ruined customer service, (15) 21%
  • Ruined product 14 (20%)

Publishers Most Often Identified with Negative Outcomes.( Read the full article on Legal Tech Hub)

On Thursday, September 14, 2023, Harbor is hosting the third annual Legal Information + Knowledge Services Conference (LINKS)— a full day of virtual thought leadership content especially curated for law firm information professionals.  Register and see full agenda HERE.

The conference is dedicated to exploring emerging issues, trends, and best practices to advance the legal information services function within your organization. While we’re still finalizing the agenda, here are a few highlights:

And, of course, timely topics such as:

Register at this LINK

The Dewey B Strategic blog has partnered with Harbor to bring you the latest Start/Stop survey. Please respond to the anonymous Survey here . The survey will close on Wednesday August 29th. Many thanks.

This survey is intended to  gather feedback on both products and projects which you started or stopped during the past year. For 2023 I have added new questions related to the emergence of generative AI.

Please take a few minutes to respond to the survey at this link. 

The results will be summarized and posted on my blog in late September.

A presentation focused on the survey results will be featured at Harbor’s third annual Legal Information + Knowledge Services Conference (LINKS) on Thursday, September 14, 2023. Proceeds from LINKS ticket sales will cover technology costs for the event and a donation to the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) George A. Strait Minority Scholarship & Fellowship fund.

LexisNexis Legal & Regulatory  has released the results of its International Legal Generative AI Survey. The survey asked 7,950 lawyers, law students, and consumers across the U.S., U.K., Canada, and France about their overall awareness, its anticipated impact on the practice of law, use of generative AI, and expectations of adoption.

“Our survey confirms what we hear from customers all over the world every day, that they are excited about the potential of generative AI to help improve their productivity, efficiency, and overall business and practice of law,” said Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis Legal & Professional. “Customer-driven innovation is core to the approach we take with product development, and LexisNexis is excited that our Lexis+ AI platform safely and securely provides critical generative AI tools to help legal professionals excel in their jobs.”

It is clear from the survey that relatively few lawyers have used Generative AI and I have to assume that even fewer have used it for their actual legal work. The market has become painfully aware of the “hallucinated cases” that can be generated using open source GPT Chat for legal research. Lexis Nexis will soon launch Lexis+ AI. All of its competitors (Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Wolters Kluwer, vLex) are laser focused on developing or launching Generative AI products that can not only drive efficiency but also address lawyers legitimate concerns regarding the ethics and security of these products.

Continue Reading LexisNexis International Legal Generative AI Survey – In House Counsel  Expectations Will Drive Law Firm Adoption

The American Arbitration Association (AAA®), the global leader in arbitration and mediation services and data analytics, announced that Steve Errick will join their international division, the International Centre for Dispute Resolution® (ICDR®), as Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer.

Steve has been a highly visible presence at legal tech conferences such as Legal Week, AALL and ILTA in his former roles virtually very legal publishing company. More recently he was Chief Global Content Officer at vLex , where he led global content teams, managed service partners, and led the Fastcase and vLex data and content integration efforts. Previously, he was Chief Operating Officer at Fastcase, Inc., where he successfully launched a number of publications and product lines, resulting in substantial revenue growth. At LexisNexis, Steve oversaw the Legal Research Information Division as Vice President and Managing Director, where he led the development of a large portfolio of legal research tools. He also held executive positions at Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters. Steve previously served as a member of the AAA’s Board of Directors.

“Steve’s leadership, relationships, and expertise in the legal market generally and the legal tech market specifically will fast-track our strategy implementation,” said Bridget M. McCormack, President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association. “Steve puts innovative ideas into service and drives growth.”

Steve in his own words

“In joining AAA, it reminds me of the roles I served at LexisNexis with then CEO Bob Romeo (now CEO of Anaqua), and most recently my role with Ed Walters at Fastcase.  Two “all in” CEO’s who added just enough external talent to reinforce their visions, but the focus was all about developing the talent within and daring to make decisions to best serve the program, the team and the clients.  

Brigitte too is one of those “all in” CEO’s and my role is to similarly add momentum in putting the program, team and AAA clients first, especially as every firm, business and peer chases and harnesses new technologies without losing focus on its core mission.   I’ve always been drawn to being a part of a program in transition where if you get it right, you have the chance to be part of something special that will stand the test of time and the AAA is one of those mission driven organizations where the Board, CEO and team all serve the mission and move as one.”

Good luck Steve. You will be missed!

Thomson Reuters has released its Future of Professionals Report. The research was conducted during the months of May and June 2023 via an online survey. More than 1,200 professionals from the legal, tax and accounting, and risk professions employed by corporations, firms, and government agencies completed the survey.

“We are at a unique moment where we have the opportunity to realize the benefits of human intelligence, thinking and collaboration differently, while using the potential of AI to overcome some of professionals biggest pain points.” said Steve Hasker, president and CEO, Thomson Reuters. “Through the application of AI to perform more mundane tasks, professionals have the unique opportunity to address human capital issues such as job satisfaction, well-being, and work-life balance. This will in turn unlock time for professionals to focus on complex work that adds value to their client’s needs.”

View of video of CEO Steve Hasker speaking about the Future of Legal Professionals at this Link.

One interesting feature of this study is a use of sentiment analysis for measuring and representing the impact of AI. Here is an expample

Highlights:

• Optimism for productivity: 45% of professionals pin their biggest AI aspirations on improved productivity, expecting benefits for their talent, customers, and environment.

Continue Reading Thomson Reuters Releases Report on Impact of AI of Future of Legal Professionals.

I reached out to Dan O’Day, Co-Founder and CEO of ECFX (which automates the delivery of both federal and state court filings) to get his reaction of the Eastern District of North Carolina’s Standing Order 3. Here is his response as well as a “fact sheet” from the company addressing issues raised in the order.

O’Day personally believes that the this is a step in the wrong direction for the Courts. “The real issue has been triggered by documents made accessible by the courts that are incorrectly published and sealed after the fact.  The courts have become aware that other some of the automation tools available and made popular for the convenience they offer lawyers, also publish these instantly so they can be accessed immediately by people who are not on the service list. The courts cannot control them like they could in the past.  The reality is the courts need to take responsibility for this – however since they are literally the judge of such matters they push the burden out to the lawyers.“

The order does not apply to ECFX for the following reasons:

  • We don’t store attorney credentials for PACER accounts.  Sealed documents must still be downloaded manually by those with access to the credentials. ECFX does not download sealed documents from PACER.
  • Unlike other vendors mentioned, ECFX is not added as an additional recipient on the CM/ECF account.
  • Unlike other vendors mentioned in the order, we do no resell or republish case documents and case information that we obtain. 

In addition to the above:

  • All documents are encrypted in transit and at rest by ECFX.
  • Client can enable SSO so we only have access to the your ECFX site via SSO set up by the law firm and cannot access case documents and case information except via the SSO login. 
  • ECFX and our clients have a broad and mutual NDAs in place.
  • ECFX does background checks on all employees and trains them in the proper handling of confidential information.
  • ECFX has been through an Information Security review by each of our clients that elect to vet our security before licensing the product.