By Matthew Leopold, LexisNexis.
Most legal AI today still behaves like a vending machine. Feed in a prompt, wait, and hope the output resembles something useful. If you’re lucky, it does. If not, you’re fiddling with the buttons or slamming the side of the machine wondering where it all went wrong.
But law doesn’t work like that.
Legal reasoning is rarely linear. It builds in layers; part logic, part instinct and with plenty of meandering detours along the way. Lawyers shape ideas, test hunches and chew over problems. Yet most legal tech tools remain passive, waiting to be told what to do.
Which makes them impressive, but frustratingly static.
Generative AI has come a long way. Lexis+ AI, for instance, set a new standard when it launched. It can summarise, draft and research in seconds, complete with links to underlying citations. But even with the best tools, lawyers can still find themselves doing the heavy lifting, particularly with generic, non-legal models.
Ask the wrong question, and you’re stuck rewording the same prompt five different ways. Guide it too little, and it misses the point. Guide it too much, and you might as well have done it yourself.
This is where things begin to shift.
From Passive to Proactive
A new generation of legal tools is starting to behave differently. Not by waiting for instructions – but by offering them.
Protégé is the next evolution in the Lexis+ AI journey. Freshly launched in the UK, it’s a generative AI assistant designed with agentic capabilities. In plain terms? It doesn’t just answer your questions. It sees what you’re working on and suggests what comes next.
Start asking a research question and Protégé will offer suggestions and follow on questions. Not because you asked. Because it’s spotted what you might need.
It’s not a vending machine. It’s more like a switched-on trainee. The one who’s been quietly prepping documents while you were on a call.
Fewer Switches, More Momentum
This isn’t about speed. It’s about the cost of context-switching.
Most lawyers spend their day bouncing between tasks. Not just mentally, but digitally. Drafting, prompting, clarifying, formatting. Switching tools. Reframing commands. Fixing outputs that missed the point.
Protégé takes some of that weight off. It can run multi-step tasks and double-check its own work before it hands it back to you for the final polish. So you spend less time wrangling instructions and more time refining outcomes.
With Lexis Create+, it sits natively inside Microsoft Word. No pasting between platforms. No toggling windows. Just a layer of intelligence built into the tools already open on your desktop.
Knows The Law. Knows Your Firm.
The other thing that sets Protégé apart? It doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
Because it can connect with document management systems like iManage or SharePoint, it can draw on your firm’s internal knowledge as well as LexisNexis content when researching an answer or drafting a response. That means answers are shaped by real precedents, internal clauses and UK-specific material. Unlike generic models that are trained on who-knows-what.
Everything uploaded to Protégé’s secure Vault can be summarised, searched or turned into a draft. And it doesn’t forget. It can suggest tasks based on what’s been added, helping lawyers stay in flow without needing to retrace steps.
It’s already been trialled and shaped with firms including Eversheds Sutherland and Irwin Mitchell. As Eleanor Windsor at Irwin Mitchell puts it: “The technology will save our teams time and allow them to focus more on strategic client matters.”
That’s the point. Not bells. Not whistles. Time.
Legal AI Grows Up
Protégé signals a step-change. Not just in what AI can do, but in how it does it. It builds on the foundation laid by Lexis+ AI, extending its capability with initiative and flow.
It doesn’t just respond more fluently. It takes initiative. It reduces friction. It helps lawyers stay focused on what matters.
And when your assistant starts offering good suggestions before you’ve even asked the question, you stop treating it like a tool. You start treating it like part of the team.
Find out more here about Protégé.
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About the author: Matthew Leopold, Head of Marketing, LexisNexis (UK).
[ This is a sponsored thought leadership article by LexisNexis for Artificial Lawyer. ]
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