Generative AI

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LexisNexis® Legal & Professional, has  announced the US Commercial Preview program for LexisNexis® Protégé™ Legal AI Assistant. Protégé is  the third-generation of Lexis+ AI and according to the press release “marks a substantial leap forward in personalized generative AI that will transform legal work, with personalization choices controlled by the customer.  This development is closely ties to the recent acquisition of Henchman, which enables the mining of internal Document Management Systems repositories to extract data and generate insights.

Customer-driven innovation is core to the company’s product development…” As with other recent releases, LexisNexis is taking a customer-first approach to the  evolution of its generative AI technology. LexisNexis is teaming up with leading Am Law 100 firms as part of the US Commercial Preview program to leverage continuous user  feedback.

Protégé builds on Lexis+ AI technology and market leadership. Lexis+ AI is commercially available in the US, US law schools, Canada, the UK, France, and Australia. Lexis+ AI is the only major legal generative AI solution available in 100 percent of US law schools.

Watch the slick Protege video here.

The press release states that “Protégé will continuously learn, improve, and anticipate new ways to support users based on personalization choices set by the user and/or their Continue Reading LexisNexis Announces Commercial Preview of Protégé Personalized AI Assistant

The American Association of Law libraries, Annual Meeting & Conference brought several harbingers of good news on the job market for law librarians and knowledge management professionals.

I don’t need to remind anybody that the “death of the law librarian” has been repeatedly predicted over the past 20 years.  Many law firm administrators and legal tech writers mistakenly believed that as print libraries shrank and morphed into digital resources, there would be no need for information professionals. Of course, this prediction made no sense to me because law firms are in an information business and their clients’ interests live and die by the quality of the legal, business, trade, legislative and scientific information at their fingertips.  Law librarians’ information management skills were never tethered to print, and became even more important in a digital world which introduced new challenges related to information, quality, as well as the increasing volume, velocity and variability of unstructured data. Library and KM Directors upscaled their staffs and seized the opportunity to generate strategic business and legal insights through the integration of internal and external data.  Zach Warren, eTechnology & Innovation Insights, Thomson Reuters Institute, provided a fascinating overview of a recent Thomson Reuters Staffing Survey which reported a remarkable spike in the demand for library and KM professionals. Before I dive into that I want to highlight another surprising development

The CIA wants you!

I have been going to AALL meetings for about 40 years and I can’t ever remember a time when any employer set up a booth in the exhibit area of the conference in order to recruit law librarians.  Even more stunning was the nature of this employer – The Central Intelligence Agency! Now the CIA knows a lot about research and it is really a testament to the special skill set offered by librarians that they came to the Conference to track down the real experts. The recruiting literature states that the CIA has created its first new directorate in 50 years. The Directorate of Digital Innovation. The DDI is looking to fill its team with “forward thinking digitally savvy professionals…’shapers’ and ‘connectors’ who will lead, inspire and turn ideas into action.”

Read full article on Legal Tech HubContinue Reading GAI Driving a Hot Job Market for Library and KM Professionals

LexisNexis® Legal & Professional,  announced over a dozen new Lexis+ AI  features during the American Association of Law Libraries Meeting & Conference this week.

Lexis+ AI offers conversational search, insightful summarization, intelligent legal drafting, and document upload and analysis capabilities in a seamless user experience. The new features highlighted in the press release were developed based on customer feedback.

In a live briefing during the conference, Serena Wellen, VP of Product Management emphasized the “human in the loop” aspect of LN’s AI development strategy in order to assure that responses are accurate, not hallucinated, responsive to the researchers intent, complete, authentic and composed using an appropriate “tone.” She also noted that Lexis + AI can now respond to up to 10 conversational “turns.” She claims that Lexis + AI is two times faster than their nearest competitor. I love these kinds of comparisons but I can’t wait for some 3 party market studies to verify the speed of various GAI product responses when performing similar tasks.

Here are the new features included in the press release:Continue Reading LexisNexis Enhances Lexis+ AI with New Features, AI Models, and Graphing

Will Generative AI awaken the need for serious focus legal research education?

The introduction of Generative AI to the practice of law has been anything but smooth. First there was the unfortunate case of Mr. Schwartz who used Chat GPT-3 to write a brief complete with hallucinated cases which he submitted to a federal  court in New York. Judge castell of the Southern District of New York noted that the attorneys had “abandoned their responsibilities.” More recently there have been the controversies related to a Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) team study criticizing the quality of the Lexis and WL generative AI products. The study was so roundly criticized that it was revised and reissued. The HAI study’s conclusions regarding the Westlaw Precision AI and Lexis+  AI products requires a nuanced understanding of the HAI benchmarking definitions.  The HAI studies flag a wide range of issues including some which appear to be subjective. Problems noted range from a “true hallucination” to a factual error e.g. name of a judge, to the length of responses. Everyone agrees that legal generative AI products require serious benchmarking studies, but Stanford fumbled the ball.

Selling any new legal technology to law firms is hard. Selling generative AI products to law firms appears to be moving at a glacial pace and this post will explore some of the obstacles to adoption of GAI in legal. There are probably more stakeholders in the mix than I have seen for any prior technology. Most noticeable is the presence of the General Counsel/Ethics Officer who in many firms is waving cautionary flags. Then there are clients who are sending conflicting signals limiting, requiring or banning use of GAI products on their matters.  Add to this stew of ambiguity, the proliferation of judges rules restricting or establishing requirements regarding not only the use of generative AI but AI products in general. (AI is probably in  90% of the products the average lawyer uses including their smartphone).

Why are law firms are holding off generative AI adoption for legal research?

Read the full post on Legal TechHubContinue Reading Generative AI Risk in Legal Research: Is the Fault in the Technology or in Ourselves? Answer is Both

It was only a year ago that the US based Fastcase was merged with a European legal information and technology company vLex. In what I have to assume is a move to compete with Casetext and Lexis + AI, Harvey would be positioning itself to take on the Generative AI strategies of Thomson Reuters and Lexis Nexis. Both companies have anchored their AI products in their proprietary “trusted” legal content which dramatically reduces the risk of “hallucinated” answers. For obvious reasons, hallucinations are intolerable specters haunting the growth of GAI in the practice of law.

A reader tipped me off to the rumor that Harvey is seeking $600 million so that it can purchase vLex. Fastcase was founded by former big law attorneys Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal in 1999. vLex was founded by attorney Luis Faus.

Harvey was founded by former big law attorney  Winston Weinberg, CEO, and Gabriel Pereyra, president, Harvey has a low media profile, The executives rarely give interviews, they didn’t exhibit at Legal Week tech conference in New York this year, their website is spectacularly understated. My colleague Bob Ambrogi has covered Harvey regularly on his website and earlier this month reported that the company was looking to acquire a legal research company.

Does this have a real potential for disruption of the Thomson Reuters/LexisNexis duopoly? Continue Reading Breaking Rumor: Harvey Seeking to Buy vLex? A Move for Global Dominance?

Today LexisNexis Legal & Professional®,  is unveiling its second-generation legal generative AI Assistant on  the Lexis+ AI platform. The new AI Assistant was developed based on user feedback. And now offers a more personalized experience All existing Lexis+ AI customers will have access to the enhanced AI Assistant. The AI Assistant features enables conversational search, insightful summarization, intelligent legal drafting, and document upload and analysis capabilities in an intuitive user experience.  

Recently launched and upcoming enhancements include: Continue Reading LexisNexis Launches 2nd Gen Legal AI Assistant on Lexis+ AI

LegalOn Technologies, has launched LegalOn Assistant, which can answer contract questions, draft clauses, summarize contract terms, and more. According to US CEO Daniel Lewis,  “LegalOn Assistant is an extension of your legal team. It saves you time, handles mundane tasks, and is easy to use in day-to-day work.”

LegalOn includes a suite  tools for streamlining contract review and drafting. Functionalities include redlining, practice notes, contract templates, and easy customization for companies with their own playbooks and templates. 

The new LegalOn Assistant will be available to all existing subscribers at no additional cost.

LegalOn Assistant is specially trained and tested for commercial contracting work. “Dozens of engineers and lawyers worked for months to take the power of GPT-4 and upgrade it with legal training and testing,” said Gabor Melli, VP of Artificial Intelligence at LegalOn. “We add to that

advanced security and privacy protections, including SOC II Type 2 compliance, so that companies can trust Assistant with their sensitive documents and questions.”Continue Reading LegalOn Launches Gen AI Assistant for Contract Questions, Summarization, and Drafting

Today LexisNexis Legal & Professional, released results from a survey of senior leadership at top U.S. law firms and legal professionals at Fortune 1000 companies. The survey   2024 Investing in Legal Innovation Survey: The Rise of GenAI at Top Firms & Corporations  explores  the business impact of generative AI technology on the legal industry.

I can’t recall any prior technology that has simultaneously trigged both of breathless enthusiasm and panicked resistance . While the technology shows game changing promise, there are significant ethical, client relations, security and intellectual property concerns which still need to be addressed. The C-Suite survey charts the issues of concern where are impeding adoption of GenAI.

Rapid Uptake and Generative AI investmentsContinue Reading LexisNexis Report: What Every C Suite Leader Needs to Know about Legal AI

Lawyers always want to be at least one insight ahead of their clients. Law firm librarians, marketing and knowledge professionals have been tackling the challenges of business intelligence with a continuously evolving marketplace of tools for aggregation and analytics. It was only a matter of time before someone designed a news and insights platform that…