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21 July 2025
Issue: 8126 / Categories: Legal News , Profession , Legal services , Artificial intelligence
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Lawyers, meet your new Protégé

LexisNexis, working with law firms in the UK, has created a secure, accurately-sourced, personalised artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for lawyers

Protégé, which launches in the UK this week, has been developed in collaboration with Eversheds Sutherland, Irwin Mitchell and other law firms. One of its key features is that it has ‘agentic’ capabilities, which allow it to complete multi-step tasks, review its own output and suggest improvements.

For example, it can draft full, tailored transactional documents, and check its own work before turning to human legal professionals for a final review. It will prompt actions based on the type of documents uploaded, such as ‘draft a research note’, ‘summarise’, and will issue follow-up prompts to the lawyer.

Other useful features are that it can create a graphical timeline of events from uploaded documents, securely store tens of thousands of legal documents in a vault, and proactively suggest refinements to queries.

Gerry Duffy, managing director of LexisNexis UK, said: ‘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 to the UK through our world-class, fully integrated AI technology platform.’

Eleanor Windsor, partner and director of knowledge at Irwin Mitchell, said: ‘Working closely with LexisNexis during the development of Protégé has given us the opportunity to help shape a tool that genuinely addresses the practical demands of legal work.

‘The technology will save our teams time and allow them to focus more on strategic client matters.’

Protégé is available across a range of LexisNexis products, including Lexis+ AI® and Lexis® Create+, and has been built to the highest levels of security, compliance and privacy. It is tailored to each user via Document Management Systems.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Switalskis—Naila Arif, Harriet Findlay & Ellie Thompson

Switalskis—Naila Arif, Harriet Findlay & Ellie Thompson

Firm awards training contracts to paralegals through internal programme

Ward Hadaway—Matthew Morton

Ward Hadaway—Matthew Morton

Private client disputes specialist joins commercial litigation team

Thomson Hayton Winkley—Nina Hood

Thomson Hayton Winkley—Nina Hood

Cumbria firm appoints new head of residential property

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
Family law must shift from conflict-driven litigation to child-centred problem-solving, according to a major new report. Writing in NLJ this week, Caroline Bowden of Anthony Gold outlines findings showing overwhelming support for reform, with 92% agreeing lawyers owe duties to children as well as clients
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