Humans vs Robots

LexisNexis has announced it is working on an intelligent assistant deemed “Lexis Research Assistant,” which they plan to release within several months' time.

The new tool will allow users to leverage up their search and activity history and query a chatbot within Lexis Advance. At a press event hosted at LexisNexis's New York offices on Monday, Serena Wellen, senior director of research information at LexisNexis, noted the bot will be “tracking the users' activities by Lexis Advance, and its purpose is to help you work more efficiently.”

She explained the intelligent assistant creates “an activity stream” to document all the users' actions that are connected with each search done on Lexis Advance. The goal, she added, is to be able to pick up with a search “where you left off and not lose time by repeating your work.”

Such documented history can also be leveraged by the research assistant to make recommendations on how a user can improve his or her search. For example, if a user has already searched a topic, the assistant can pull up past search results and work. Users can also query the intelligence assistant, for example, by asking it to provide more information on a particular subject area or topic.

Work on the assistant is the beginning of a larger push by LexisNexis to make legal research a more conversational experience. “The research assistant is going to evolve into a platform where our users can interact with multiple sub-bots,” which will connect with other services from LexisNexis, Wellen said.

“We believe conversational search is the next big breakthrough from Lexis Research,” she added.