Generative AI burst on the scene and bestowed every 6th grader with the power to not do the reading and turn in a passable one-page essay anyway. It also provided some very lazy lawyers with some very embarrassing moments. That said, the technology held out so much promise if someone could pull the LSD off its digital tongue. And the brightest minds in legal technology have thrown a lot of energy and money into solving these issues.
But before we could even usher in the era of legal generative AI, we’ve already entered the Agentic AI era. Like LexisNexis’s newly launched Protégé AI assistant, which is commercially available today following a previously announced commercial preview. Since that preview, LexisNexis collaborated with more than 50 customers on the development of Protégé.
The result is an agentic AI capable of autonomously completing tasks based on user goals. “LexisNexis is focused on improving outcomes and unlocking new levels of efficiency and value in legal work to support our customers’ success,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK, and Ireland. “Our vision is for every legal professional to have a personalized AI assistant that makes their life better, and we’re delighted to deploy that through our world-class, fully integrated AI technology platform.”
While it sounds like a method for figuring out the next inbred failson Habsburg in line, Agentic AI is the next development in AI progression. Where generative AI wrote your homework when you asked, agentic AI looks at the syllabus and figures out the basic tasks that need to be done before the term paper.
In a legal setting, this translates a system that completing tasks based on goals without constant supervision. On top of that, customization options allow the user to control and get better results by sharing their role, practice area, jurisdiction, and style preferences to ensure the drafting style and output are highly personalized.
This would be welcome news for any lawyer and a godsend for anyone trying to manage an elite practice while also juggling four mistresses and a globetrotting underground poker career.
Lexis Protégé builds on earlier AI advances like Lexis+ AI, which prioritized simple, straightforward usability. Protégé is designed to integrate directly into workflows, providing a personalized AI experience grounded in a firm’s own document management system and drafting style.
This not only offers a fast-track through the drudgery — generative AI tools were already doing that — but assists particularly young lawyers by taking on some of the process-making decisions and performing the next steps the lawyer needs without the human having to take the wheel.
And with tools like Protégé proactively improving upon its own outputs, firms should reap the benefit of consistent, high-quality drafts that junior lawyers can refine rather than build from scratch.
Like most technology, the biggest problem with generative AI — well, the second biggest after the way it makes stuff up by design — remained between the keyboard and the chair. It can only deliver results as good as the query the lawyer provides. But a lot of the tasks firms can rely upon AI to perform will be managed by the most inexperienced attorneys. Agentic AI tools like Protégé aim to bridge that gap by knowing what the user wants before the user necessarily knows what they want all based on an understanding of the end goal.
Just the thing for a profession that historically struggles to translate tech into action.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post LexisNexis Ushers In New Era For Legal AI appeared first on Above the Law.
Generative AI burst on the scene and bestowed every 6th grader with the power to not do the reading and turn in a passable one-page essay anyway. It also provided some very lazy lawyers with some very embarrassing moments. That said, the technology held out so much promise if someone could pull the LSD off its digital tongue. And the brightest minds in legal technology have thrown a lot of energy and money into solving these issues.
But before we could even usher in the era of legal generative AI, we’ve already entered the Agentic AI era. Like LexisNexis’s newly launched Protégé AI assistant, which is commercially available today following a previously announced commercial preview. Since that preview, LexisNexis collaborated with more than 50 customers on the development of Protégé.
The result is an agentic AI capable of autonomously completing tasks based on user goals. “LexisNexis is focused on improving outcomes and unlocking new levels of efficiency and value in legal work to support our customers’ success,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of LexisNexis North America, UK, and Ireland. “Our vision is for every legal professional to have a personalized AI assistant that makes their life better, and we’re delighted to deploy that through our world-class, fully integrated AI technology platform.”
While it sounds like a method for figuring out the next inbred failson Habsburg in line, Agentic AI is the next development in AI progression. Where generative AI wrote your homework when you asked, agentic AI looks at the syllabus and figures out the basic tasks that need to be done before the term paper.
In a legal setting, this translates a system that completing tasks based on goals without constant supervision. On top of that, customization options allow the user to control and get better results by sharing their role, practice area, jurisdiction, and style preferences to ensure the drafting style and output are highly personalized.
This would be welcome news for any lawyer and a godsend for anyone trying to manage an elite practice while also juggling four mistresses and a globetrotting underground poker career.
Lexis Protégé builds on earlier AI advances like Lexis+ AI, which prioritized simple, straightforward usability. Protégé is designed to integrate directly into workflows, providing a personalized AI experience grounded in a firm’s own document management system and drafting style.
This not only offers a fast-track through the drudgery — generative AI tools were already doing that — but assists particularly young lawyers by taking on some of the process-making decisions and performing the next steps the lawyer needs without the human having to take the wheel.
And with tools like Protégé proactively improving upon its own outputs, firms should reap the benefit of consistent, high-quality drafts that junior lawyers can refine rather than build from scratch.
Like most technology, the biggest problem with generative AI — well, the second biggest after the way it makes stuff up by design — remained between the keyboard and the chair. It can only deliver results as good as the query the lawyer provides. But a lot of the tasks firms can rely upon AI to perform will be managed by the most inexperienced attorneys. Agentic AI tools like Protégé aim to bridge that gap by knowing what the user wants before the user necessarily knows what they want all based on an understanding of the end goal.
Just the thing for a profession that historically struggles to translate tech into action.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
