“What if legal research was more human, more like a conversation, the kinds we have among ourselves?”
With that tantalizing query, Serena Wellen, senior director of research information at LexisNexis, revealed during a Legalweek media briefing that the legal research platform Lexis Advance will soon include chatbots to help guide users in their research.
“Our goal is to make legal research more guided in a more conversational experience,” Wellen said.
Called Lexis Research Assistant, the bot is slated to be released within the Lexis Advance platform within the next few months. Eventually, users will be able to interact with multiple sub-bots for various tasks related to their research workflow.
During a brief demonstration, Wellen showed that the bot is activated by clicking an icon in Advance. That opens an activity stream along the right side of the screen showing your recent research activity. Each bubble in the stream is a research thread you performed. All your work is saved as a thread within the bot. At any time, you can click a thread to engage conversationally with the bot.
The bot appears on the right of the screen. (Apologies for iPhone capture of projected image.)
Wellen showed some of the ways this could be used:
While performing research, you are interrupted by a call and lose your train of thought. Click on the bot to pick up where you were. A few days later, you enter a search query. The bot recognizes that you have searched on this topic before. It asks if you want to leverage that past work. It might also suggest filters based on your recent activity, such as limiting your search to a particular jurisdiction. A few months later, you simply ask the bot, “Help me understand this topic.” The bot may offer a suggestion in
