LexisNexis unveils new legal research product with better insights, more modern visual design
LexisNexis has released a new product that it says will allow lawyers to conduct more comprehensive legal research and smoothly complete a variety of practical tasks.
Built on the foundation of the existing Lexis Advance, Lexis+, which was officially unveiled Wednesday, includes a bevy of new and enhanced features for users, many of which are powered by artificial intelligence.
One such new tool is Brief Analysis, which allows users to upload their briefs and quickly receive recommendations for other cases to cite and similar briefs to review based on the citation patterns and legal concepts in the original document. The relevant cases include highlighted passages that would be of interest, and users can filter the results by the legal concepts that they are prioritizing in their research.
“Users have been really excited about this ability of going directly into your document in a very targeted way in line with very actionable, powerful information to ultimately make your arguments stronger,” said David Ganote, senior director of product planning at LexisNexis, during a recent product demonstration.
Another new tool powered by machine learning that can help lawyers evaluate the strength of their arguments is called Shepard’s At Risk, which identifies cases an attorney is relying on that are in jeopardy of being overturned in the lawyer’s jurisdiction. These cases are deemed to be at risk because of the underlying points of law having been negatively treated by other decisions in the jurisdiction.
Company officials also say the Lexis Answers feature in Lexis+ has been significantly upgraded through technical enhancements. Users can type in their question in Lexis+ in natural language and will see the top three answers, along with an option to click on “Show More Answers.” The answers contain text from the relevant cases, as well as other key details about the cases where the answers were found.
“The overall focus is to provide users with better insights than they get from any solution that is available on the market,” said Jeff Pfeifer, chief product officer at LexisNexis, during the product demo.
Meanwhile, a feature called Practical Guidance, which is an upgraded version of Practice Advisor in Lexis Advance, provides expert information designed to help lawyers complete numerous tasks.
During the recent demo, Ganote showed how the Practical Guidance feature could be used to craft a written policy for a company governing the use of facial recognition data. Users can click the link, which takes them directly to a smart form that they can fill out to easily build a document. Users of the feature can also access helpful checklists for task completion, according to Ganote.
LexisNexis officials also highlighted that Lexis+ offers a much more modern visual design that should be more appealing to users.
“The imagery and the color choices are really intended to draw the user into the product and to signal there is something unique and different about this experience,” Pfeifer said.
Lexis+ is being rolled out to law school faculty in the United States this week and will be made available to law school students starting in August.
The product will be made available via subscription to customers in all market areas starting Sept. 1, according to Pfeifer. He said the pricing will depend on a customer’s content needs, and such information will be provided to potential customers by the company’s sales teams down the line.
“The feature capabilities broadly available in the product we believe are both attractive and applicable across all market segments,” said Pfeifer, who noted that the company worked with more than 2,000 clients in developing the product over 18 months.
He stated that additional analytics capabilities will be offered through Lexis+ later this year. As for Lexis Advance, which has been on the market for about eight years, it will remain available to customers.
