LexisNexis launches Protégé AI assistant for Australian lawyers

LexisNexis has announced the general availability of LexisNexis Protégé, a personalised artificial intelligence assistant set to support legal professionals in Australia with complex legal task completion.

The company stated that Protégé leverages both agentic and generative AI, drawing on a combination of customer and LexisNexis content, to enhance productivity and the quality of legal work. The assistant is initially available within Lexis+ AI and Lexis Create+ for Microsoft Word, with plans to extend its integration across further LexisNexis products.

Protégé's agentic AI features allow it to autonomously perform tasks based on user-defined goals, execute self-reviews of its outputs, and identify opportunities for improvement, all under responsible development and human oversight. According to LexisNexis, customers will benefit from simplified AI use, increased productivity, and enhanced value through these autonomous capabilities.

Users can instruct Protégé to draft fully tailored transactional documents and court filings, such as litigation motions and complaints. The AI system is designed to check its own work before submitting documents for final human review. Documents can also be edited directly within Lexis+ AI or exported to Word for further changes.

The AI assistant suggests actions within the legal workflow depending on the type of documents uploaded, for example, by prompting the drafting of a legal memorandum or producing a summary. Follow-up prompts are dynamically generated and personalised to each lawyer's workflow.

Protégé can also assist users by proactively suggesting refinements to their queries, aiming to help them reach their intended outcomes more efficiently. Additionally, the assistant can securely store and process thousands of documents via Protégé Vault, designed for keeping sensitive data. Users can perform actions such as summarising, drafting, and researching across all documents within their secure Vaults.

One notable feature is the ability to generate a graphical timeline of events from uploaded documents. According to LexisNexis, the AI assistant is capable of answering questions about or summarising large and complex documents of up to one million characters, or approximately 300 pages, which represents a 250% increase over the previous processing limit. Users can also upload transactional documents for systematic analysis at speed and with precision.

"LexisNexis is focused on improving outcomes and unlocking new levels of efficiency and value in legal work to support our customers' success," said Katy Fixter, MD of LexisNexis Asia Pacific. "Our vision is for every legal professional to have a personalised AI assistant that makes their life better, and we're delighted to deploy that through our world-class, fully integrated AI technology platform."

Protégé can be further personalised by grounding it in a customer's own documents and prior work, utilising Document Management System (DMS) integration, as well as the comprehensive repository of LexisNexis legal content. This provides users with more control over customisation, including sharing details such as role, practice area, jurisdiction, and style preferences, enabling a tailored drafting style and output.

The system also enables querying, clause extraction, and drafting from a firm's knowledge base, providing faster access to necessary precedents. Integrations include platforms such as iManage and Sharepoint.

LexisNexis highlighted that Australia's legal landscape played a critical role in developing Lexis+ AI with Protégé. The local availability of Protégé is presented as part of LexisNexis' approach to delivering AI-based solutions specifically designed for the needs of Australian legal professionals.

Through Lexis+ AI and Protégé, lawyers are expected to spend less time on repetitive tasks, enhance the quality and consistency of their legal work, and focus more resources on high-value client service. These developments are part of LexisNexis' global technology platform, which incorporates extractive, generative, and now agentic AI, aiming to deliver relevant insights, create content, and autonomously perform user tasks as required.

LexisNexis stated that its global technology platform integrates different forms of AI in a scalable infrastructure, supporting continuous improvements in answer quality, accuracy, and speed. The platform incorporates proprietary methods, such as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), to ground large language model outputs in a repository of trusted legal content, ensuring validated citations and high-quality responses. It also utilises partners including Mistral, Anthropic, AWS, and Microsoft to support this deployment.

The company employs over 2,000 technologists, data scientists, and experts to develop and validate its solutions, with product development guided by established responsible AI principles. According to LexisNexis, the introduction of Protégé builds upon its ongoing commitment to analytics and decision tools that address complex challenges and enhance value for legal professionals.