Generative AI

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Yesterday I attended a press event hosted by Thomson Reuters where they announced an demoed a  suite  of four GenAI products and initiatives. Only three months after completing the acquisition of Casetext they are launching a suite of tools which are driven by the integration of Casetext and CoCounsel technologies with TRs legacy AI infrastructure.

Standing on the Doorstep of Change I have spent forty years watching legal research evolve, so my focus in this post will be on the Westlaw Precision AI functionality. During yesterday’s demo, I had to remind myself “we are not in Kansas anymore.” My default is to expect the product to be more like the research experience am used to in Westlaw Edge. This reminds me of the early days of Westlaw – it started out being a system which could only search the West headnotes and the key number system. It delivered efficiencies over print research but didn’t at all suggest the completely transformed and unimaginable changes that would come. No one was thinking about legal analytics in 1980, but now they are an essential part of legal strategy and legal research. I feel that we are in that same place with AI Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision, It offers a foundational move toward a new way of performing research and integrating research into workflow. I need to remind myself that there is a future of legal research I can’t yet imagine.

The new products include:

• AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision – Better, faster answers to complex research questions drawn from the industry’s most comprehensive collection of editorially enhanced content.

 • A new GenAI assistant connects all Thomson Reuters generative AI products, building on innovation from Casetext

• Thomson Reuters Generative AI Platform – A common development platform to design, build, and deploy GenAI skills with unparalleled speed • New GenAI capabilities for Practical Law – Customers to benefit from AI chat-type interface

• CoCounsel Core – Announcing the commercial offering of CoCounsel skills as part of the Thomson Reuters portfolio

“Thomson Reuters is redefining the way legal work is done by delivering a generative AI-based toolkit to enable attorneys to quickly gather deeper insights and deliver a better work product. AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core provide the most comprehensive set of generative AI skills that attorneys can use across their research and workflow,” said David Wong, chief product officer.

AI Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision is now available to Precision customers in the United States. It is described as offering a “best of” approach which combines the technology from both Casetext and the Thomson Reuters Generative AI Platforms. .AI-Assisted Research allows customers to ask complex legal research questions in natural language and  receive synthesized answers, with links to supporting authority from Westlaw content and links to further examine that authority. During a pre-launch event Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw Product  pointed out that although AI is an important component of the new product, the technology is rooted in and enhanced by “more than 150 years of Thomson Reuters classification, analysis, and editorial expertise contributed by subject matter experts and attorney editors”.

A few observations:Continue Reading Thomson Reuters Launches Generative AI-Powered Solutions  for Research and Workflow – Previews Generative AI Strategy

The 2023 Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory Future Ready Lawyer Survey Report includes insights from 700 legal professionals across the U.S. and nine European countries – namely Germany, the Netherlands, UK, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Hungary. The survey shows noteworthy differences between the countries surveyed.

The report documents the broad awareness of Generative AI’s promise and an expectation of a speedy adoption of Gen AI solutions over the next twelve months. The responders don’t seem to recognize the “headwinds” which are likely to slow both adoption and impact. Top of mind is the ongoing economic uncertainty combined with firms’ need to address the ethical, IP, security and privacy issues associated with using GenAI in legal practice.

Although the key trends below include many issues which have been around for decades, I can’t help but wonder how many of these challenges will be improved or resolved was GenAI matures and becomes pervasive across the business and practice of law.

Key trends expected to have a significant impact on legal in the next three years:

  • Growing complexity of compliance areas
  • Increasing importance of legal technology
  • Ability to recruit and retain talent
  • Increased demand for specialization and a decline in generalist work
  • Law departments moving more work in-house (insourcing)
  • Greater price competition/new and alternative fee structures/cost-containment pressures
  • Growing impact of generative AI/ChatGPT
  • Coping with increased volume and complexity of information
  • Meeting changing client/company leadership expectations
  • Emphasis on improved efficiency/ productivity
  • Growth of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs), including expansion of Big Four into legal services

I thought the two most interesting sections of the report dealt with Generative AI and ESG.Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Releases 2023 Future Ready Lawyer Report

Once Again We Must Ask –What business are we in?

Over the years when speaking to library and knowledge management audiences, I have often invoked the importance of knowing what business we are in.

,I became a librarian because “I loved books.” Yet on the day when I started my first law library job, a hulking piece of equipment was rolled through the door of the Pace University Law  Library. This was an omen, like a comet across the night sky, my career path would pivot in unforeseeable directions. The Lexis DeLuxe research terminal was the size of a washing machine, and it connected to Mead Data Central computers in Ohio via a dial-up modem. This “state of the art” equipment provided access to Ohio statutes and cases. Within 10 years the Lexis and Westlaw WALT terminals would shrink, the World Wide Web would be born and the stacks of books would be compressed into bits of data accessible on everyone’s desktop.

I love the “Black & Decker marketing strategy that recognized that their customers “don’t want a drill they want a half-inch hole in a board.” And librarians who thought lawyers and law firm administrators only needed books became flotsam in a surging tide of technology. Librarians and knowledge managers need to be aligned with what lawyers really need and  that they have the unique expertise to deliver: information that gives them a competitive edge, new clients, happy clients, predictive and  actionable insights , efficient workflow, and tools that make their lives easier. (Read the full post at Legal Tech Hub)

Seizing the Technology of the DayContinue Reading AI and the Future of Law Libraries : Opportunity or Armageddon

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

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

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

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.

This survey is intended to  gather feedback on both products and projects which you started or stopped during the past year. I had added additional 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 here in…

Today LexisNexis is announcing that their soon to be launched AI powered solutions will be integrated into Microsoft 365. The product integrations include– Lexis+®, Lexis ® Connect, Lexis ® Create, and Lexis ® Create Plugin with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Both companies are committed to providing legal professionals with “intelligent, AI-powered tools, enhanced capabilities, and more efficient, guided workflow experiences”  inside the suite of Microsoft products where they currently work: Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Teams.  Back in May Lexis announced two AI initiatives a commercial preview and the AI Insider Program as well as plans for incorporating generative AI into their product. Lexis announced its commitment to launching GPT enabled solutions with the Microsoft Azure Open AI Service which has already been rolled out to customers via Lexis+.

I recall Lexis as having a long history of integrations with Microsoft products. According to Jeff Pfeifer, LexisNexis Chief Product Officer Canada, UK and USA. “The company began working closely with Microsoft in the 1990s when we acquired the Jurisoft product line. These products were among the first legal market tools that delivered bespoke formatting tools integrated with Word. These solutions later evolved to become Lexis for Microsoft Office and later still, Lexis Create. Lexis Create is our first solution built entirely for the Microsoft 365 platform, a key technology enabler for delivery of generative AI in Word, Outlook and Teams. Our customers can expect integration of generative AI capabilities in Lexis Create in Q3 of this year and in Lexis Connect in Q4.”

Jeff Reihl, CTO of LexisNexis Legal & Professional is quoted in the press release “Microsoft and LexisNexis have a long history of collaboration, and we’re excited about how our Microsoft-integrated products will help improve the lives and work product of legal professionals. Lexis Connect, Create and Copilot truly embody our strategy of creating a fully integrated ecosystem, inserting world-class legal data, content and technologies directly into attorney workflows. To enhance this, we’re incorporating professional-grade generative AI capabilities into our current and future products to elevate legal work and help lawyers be more efficient at their jobs.”

LexisNexis Products Integrated with Microsoft include:

  • Lexis+: Azure OpenAI Service has been rolled out to customers via Lexis+.

Continue Reading LexisNexis Announces Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot/Generative AI Solutions