LexisNexis today (12 April) launches Lexis Create, which aims to create a single hub for fee-earner drafting within the Microsoft environment, avoiding the need to switch platforms.
Fee earners can access the LexisLibrary, precedents and drafting notes from within Lexis Create, as well as build and share a bank of clauses that can be accessed in the right-hand pane of the screen. There is an inbuilt calculator for checking the likes of currency conversions and users can redact information within Create.
Perhaps the loudest music to knowledge managers’ ears, Create has an in-built proofreading function that validates the legal status of citations and recommends alternatives if needed. We’re told that it also picks up missed definitions, recognised terms, skipped numbering or inconsistent identifiable information.
Lexis Create, which integrates with iManage Work 10, is being launched in the UK and will shortly launch in Australia and New Zealand. We’re told that it has a different focus and use case to Lexis for Microsoft Office, which is a US product. However, as part of launching Lexis Create in the US, Lexis will explore how to align Create and Lexis for Microsoft Office, where there are significant overlaps.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, LexisNexis UK’s director of solutions, Danielle McCormick, said: “When our users are creating a document or writing a piece of advice, they want to mix their art with our intelligence: those are two primary needs, no matter who we speak to; they want actionable insights. They say, ‘help me because I’m having to switch context and go to different browsers or apps,’ and what is fantastic about Create is that it solves those problems.”
With regard to Create living in the Microsoft environment, McCormick said: “We know the majority of our users are embedded in that environment. Lexis Create has modern architecture based in Microsoft Office 365 and it features in Word and Outlook.”
When drafting a contract, many lawyers will find a contract they have drafted and are happy with and edit it. McCormick said: “We give them the ability to save snippets of contracts in their bank and mix it with our bank – our guidance and drafting notes give actionable insights and they can insert them with one click. They can also share their prior drafting, so if they have drafted a clause on Brexit and want to share that they can do it easily and they can tag it and date it.”
Create, which is a new standalone product sold per user licence, has been in beta and McCormick, who started at Lexis in 2018, says: “We have spoken to hundreds of users.” The response, she says, has been very positive and a number of firms are already signed up.
Lexis has since 2013 sold Lexis Draft, which lives in the toolbar and helps fee-earners to draft faster by checking for inconsistencies, all within Word. It appears unlikely that customers will use both products but Lexis told Legal IT Insider: “For those that elect to continue to use (or to choose) Lexis Draft, we will provide the ongoing support to offer them this flexibility.”
Lexis has yet to calculate a rough ROI of using Create, but McCormick says: “We know there is a huge time saving because it avoids the context switching problem and a lot of that time is around trying to find what you’ve drafted.”
McCormick, who is a former lawyer, added: “The product manager is also a lawyer, and we had an engineer who is a lawyer working on it, so it really is a by lawyers for lawyers solution.”
For more information, visit www.lexisnexis.co.uk/Lexis-Create
Caroline.hill@legalitlexicon.com