Lexis and Westlaw both rolled out AI research and drafting tools in 2024.
Lexis+ AI Legal Assistant is a supplemental tool that can be used as a starting point for research and drafting. Unlike public AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Lexis+ AI Legal Assistant is grounded in trusted, authoritative content. Lexis AI also provides legal citations from the Lexis database with every AI response. At this time not all of Lexis' database is accessible to the AI tool. Therefore, it can be a good starting point for research but will need to be supplemented with traditional research.
Lexis+AI Legal Assistant can be accessed by going into Lexis and clicking on the "AI Assistant" and "AI" buttons
Lexis+ AI can answer general and some complex legal questions, assist in drafting documents, and summarize information. All of it backed and contained within the Lexis database. Search queries and answers will be automatically saved for 30 days, although you can delete them at any time. Information that you put into Lexis+ AI Legal Assistant should be private and secure.
Lexis has launched an Upload & Summarize function for Lexis+ AI. This feature allows users to upload up to ten 20MB documents. These documents will then form a database that can be queried, summarized, have relevant sections located, or compare and contrast document versions.
Westlaw's AI program is based on the technology developed by CoCounsel, an independent leader in legal research assisted by Artificial intelligence. Westlaw acquired CoCounsel last year and is integrating the technology into Westlaw's database.
CoCounsel is an AI assistant that can be used to summarize large documents, answer questions about uploaded documents, and compare the content of documents. CoCounsel can create a timeline of events from one or multiple documents and create drafts of legal materials such as deposition questions and client emails. CoCounsel can additionally be used to create a personal database, or document library, which can then be queried with questions such as, "Are there any documents in this database that indicate that corporate leadership knew of wrongdoing?"
Practical Law is a database devoted to practitioner tools including forms, guidelines, checklists, and contract clauses. Using Westlaw's AI tool will enable users to get to these resources by asking question of the AI, which will then point the user towards relevant resources and guidance. This tool is very limited and only sits on Practical Law. It may even be easier for users who want to use Practical Law to browser their content or conduct a basic search instead. Recent queries and answers are not automatically saved, so users should copy and paste these responses to their own computer.
Large Language Models (LLMs) have been taking the world by storm. Led by ChatGPT, these AI models produce human-like responses to questions asked of them. Some of the LLMs listed below can be tried out for free. Having trouble with some of the terms being used in the AI discussion? Check out law.com's Glossary of AI Terms:
Free Resources
Below are a few of the most popular generative AI chatbots.
Prompting
Context
For Writing
Information above derived from "AI Assistance in Legal Analysis: An Empirical Study" by Jonathan Choi & Daniel Schwarcz