June 9, 2023 • 27 mins
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis Legal & Professional, and part of RELX, takes a deep dive into the subject of generative AI and the law. What are the opportunities and risks for lawyers? What are the use cases? What will legal work look like in years to come?
LexisNexis Legal & Professional recently launched a generative AI platform designed to transform legal work. Unlike ChatGPT which creates hallucinations, Lexis+AI is built and trained on the largest repository of accurate and exclusive legal content.
This podcast is brought to you by RELX.
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Episode Transcript
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YS Chi (00:00):
The unique contributions podcast is brought to you by
RELX. Find out more about us byvisiting relx.com.
Mike Walsh (00:09):
We're on the cusp of something that's really quite
profound in its impact. I thinkone thing is that lawyers who
embrace this change and adopt itand use it to their advantage
will have a significantadvantage overall in the
marketplace.
YS Chi (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to a special episode on AI and
generative AI, a topic that hasbeen at the top of people's
minds since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT. A few months ago,
RELX was named by Bank ofAmerica as one of the 10 global
companies most likely to benefitfrom generative AI. The company
(01:02):
is a big user of AItechnologies, where we invest
more than $1.6 billion a year intechnology and employ about
10,000 technologists. Justrecently, RELX's legal business
LexisNexis Legal & Professionallaunched Lexis+ AI, which is a
generative AI platform designedto transform legal work.
(01:24):
Unlike ChatGPT, which cangenerate hallucinations. Lexis+
AI is built and trained on thelargest repository of accurate
and exclusive legal content, andis the world's most
comprehensive global, legal,generative AI platform.
This will have majorconsequences for the legal
(01:45):
profession. Mike Walsh, CEO ofLexisNexis, Legal & Professional
and his team are on the frontierof the transformations that
generative AI are bringing tothe legal field. Mike, welcome.
Mike Walsh (01:57):
Thank you. YS, it is great to be here.
YS Chi (02:00):
And it is great to have you. Thank you. Before we start
talking about generative AI, canyou please set the stage for us?
Most lawyers will know whoLexisNexis is of course. But for
those who aren't familiar, canyou just give us a little
snapshot of the company and howyou've emerged as the leader at
the centre of this generative AImoment?
Mike Walsh (02:21):
Well, LexisNexis Legal & Professional is actually
made up of three distinct butinterrelated businesses. Legal
Information is our largestbusiness, which provides
information, analytics anddecision tools, primarily to
lawyers. But we also serveprofessionals beyond the legal
(02:41):
industry. Our IP analyticsbusiness is the largest
technology provider to the USPatent and Trademark Office for
more than 50 years. Nexisprovides the largest collection
of aggregated news and businessinformation in the world.
Altogether, LexisNexis has oneof the largest content
(03:02):
repositories in the world. Andif you add it all up, we're
about 150 times the size ofWikipedia. Our 11,000 plus
employees serve customers inmore than 150 countries. And we
serve them via our ultra moderntechnology infrastructure. About
2000 of the technologists thatyou mentioned, are part of our
(03:24):
team. And many have advancedtech skills. So it's that
combination of accurate,comprehensive, citable content,
technology, leadership and 50plus years of experience,
safeguarding and protecting ourcustomer privacy and IP that has
led us here today.
YS Chi (03:45):
Sounds very sophisticated, Mike, and very
expensive to run?
Mike Walsh (03:51):
It's quite sophisticated. And it's been
built over years. And we'vespent years building a leading
technology platform that enablesus to deliver with all the
content, and we're able todeliver it quite rapidly and
efficiently to our customers.
YS Chi (04:11):
And then I think we want to talk about that in the
context of generative AI. Thishas taken the world by storm,
and its consequences are likelyto be felt in all aspects of our
personal and professional lives.
So I feel that this is a seminalmoment in our history and some
possibly calling it as being asimportant as the invention of
the internet itself. But howwould you define generative AI?
(04:34):
And how does the legalprofessional perceive this
moment in relation to generativeAI?
Mike Walsh (04:42):
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you
know, we're on the cusp ofsomething that's really quite
profound in its impact. And Ithink its impact is going to be
felt significantly in the legalprofession in terms of
transformative impact over manyyears increasing efficiency.
(05:02):
Enabling lawyers to be able todo things that they never were
able to do before much moreeffectively, and significantly
changing the speed of how thepractice is conducted. And I
think one thing is that lawyerswho embrace this change and
adopt it and use it to theiradvantage will have a
(05:23):
significant advantage overall inthe marketplace.
YS Chi (05:26):
And would you say that large or small or specialised
law firms or lawyers may getspecial advantage? Or do you
think this is a prettydemocratic platform?
Mike Walsh (05:38):
I think all size firms and in-house legal
institutions will, will benefitfrom it. And they'll all get
advantage, I don't think sizenecessarily will be the big
determinant of who captures themost advantage, I think it will
be more around willingness toadopt, get ahead of the
(05:59):
technology curve, embrace thesetechnologies, bring them into
their work in a way that'seffective and responsible. And I
think the ones who do thateffectively the ones who use the
right tools to do that, I thinkthey'll get the advantage.
YS Chi (06:13):
Speaking of this adoption, as LexisNexis Legal &
Professional has revealed ourplatform, has this created new
opportunities for the lawyers orsome may look at it as more
risk?
Mike Walsh (06:29):
Well, it certainly creates new opportunity for
lawyers. And it also createsrisk. You know, I think, first
of all, it's important to putthis in context around us and
what we've done. We've beenworking on AI for a decade, and
we've been importing extractiveAI tools into our products for
(06:49):
many years now. And you know,it's it's now this shift to
generative AI, that has fueledthe, the launch of Lexis+ AI.
And that's really what bringstransformative technology to our
customers. There are risks, therisks are basically, you know,
it's been well documented thatChatGPT creates hallucinations.
(07:15):
If you're not usingauthoritative content, if you
don't know where the sources arecoming from out there, you run
risks of having wrong and badinformation. That's where our
offering really can providedifferentiation. We have the
largest repository of accurateand reliable content, our tools
(07:37):
interact with that content, wehave human review in the
process. And all these elementsand steps are designed to create
a reliable and trustworthyexperience. There have been news
articles now about lawyers whohave used ChatGPT. And they've
found that it's createdfictitious cases.
YS Chi (07:58):
That's right.
Mike Walsh (07:59):
And now they're even being cited in courts for it,
facing potential disciplinaryactions. So that's why it's
really important to rely ontools that are authoritative,
have high quality content, andhave human assisted review in
the process.
YS Chi (08:15):
I think that's a really important point, that there's
got to be a quality base for anyquality tools to work.
Mike Walsh (08:24):
Absolutely. That's the that's the foundation of it.
You have to have accurate, highquality content that's reliable.
Otherwise, you don't know whatyou don't know what you're
getting.
YS Chi (08:33):
Right, which is the base of LexisNexis Legal &
Professional over a century,right?
Mike Walsh (08:39):
Absolutely. You know, our business stretches all
the way back to actually 1818,which is the oldest part of our
business - Butterworths in theUK - that's when Butterworths
was built. And that's when westarted publishing legal
content. And we've just builtupon that expertise over decades
and decades and decades indifferent countries, all with
(09:01):
the point of view of beingreliable and accurate, and
something the legal professionknows that they can they can
depend upon.
YS Chi (09:10):
Wow. So this is obviously something we have a
lot of experience in. Could RELXcome up with its own version of
generative AI like a ChatGPT? Ordo we just rely on other
companies for this? Since you'resitting on such quality content.
Mike Walsh (09:28):
Well, I think we leverage many technologies when
we put together our products, Ithink ChatGPT is an early leader
in the generative AI space. Ithink there are many companies
that are extremely wellpositioned to capture leadership
in the large language modelspace, and then I think we're
(09:49):
going to see evolution ofdifferent forms of AI
technology. And it's hard topredict at any time, which one
is going to be the best andwho's going to lead. So we have
an approach where we leveragemultiple technologies. We also
develop our own proprietarytechnology. Sometimes they're
combinations of technologiesthat we're using. And sometimes
(10:12):
they're homegrown proprietarytechnologies. And what we do is
we, we tend to do that whenthey're sort of built for a
specific purpose. And it'salways with our customer in
mind, and we work back from ourcustomer. And we develop
technologies that are going tobe most helpful, in helping our
customers achieve what they wantto do in their, in their work
(10:33):
environment. So the short answeris, it's a variety of
technologies. I think, overtime, we'll see more and more
open source technologies in thisspace as well.
YS Chi (10:43):
Yeah, I agree with you on that. But the good thing that
you just pointed out is that youare really addressing customers
very specific vertical needs,right. And because you have both
the content, and the access totechnology, as well as domain
expertise, this really becomes avery powerful player.
Mike Walsh (11:07):
The lawyer customer base has an extremely complex
and detailed set of use cases.
And you really have to have deepdomain expertise to be able to
serve those use caseseffectively. Whether you're a
litigator working on complexlitigation, or you're a
transactional lawyer handlingvery detailed, complex
(11:28):
transactions. The use cases arevery specific. They require deep
domain expertise. And it's acombination of deep domain
expertise, authoritativecontent, and constantly using
best in class technologies, thatallows us to be able to deliver
to our customers and help themdo things that they just simply
(11:48):
could never do before.
YS Chi (11:51):
So which of these examples you cited just now, do
you think are some of the mostuseful ones? And do the
customers know how to quantifysuch usefulness in that context?
Mike Walsh (12:05):
So the early use cases that we're building out
that we believe are most usefulto our customers in the near
term are around summarization,drafting, and conversational
search. Summarization allows youto get quick summaries of
important impactful documents,you can determine do you want a
(12:26):
detailed summary or a pithysummary - can quickly digest
information that comes at you.
Drafting is an area where manylawyers spend at least half of
their time, drafting. Anddrafting with the capability of
building in citable sources withreliable information is a major
game changer for lawyers. Andthen a conversational guided
(12:51):
search, a search beyondsearching for keywords, where
you're really interacting with abot that's helping you deliver
the most precise, specificresults that are relevant for
you. These are kind of the macromacro use cases. And then over
time, we'll just continue to addvalue to the use cases, make
(13:12):
them more specific, and addcapabilities that help lawyers
do things that help tounderstand the economics of a
case, for example, and I justbelieve we're gonna see lawyers
get better and better and moreand more effective at the way
that they practice and how theyhandle their business that's
enabled by these tools.
YS Chi (13:33):
And as their customers demand that from the lawyers,
right?
Mike Walsh (13:37):
Absolutely. You know, it's interesting, we've
done research, and most lawyersbelieve that Gen AI will be
transformative to the practice.
And the interesting thing iswhen we talk to in house
counsel, there's an expectationthat the lawyers that are
serving them will be using thesetools and helping them to become
more efficient and betterpractitioners.
YS Chi (13:59):
So you actually, once again pointed out something
really important for thelisteners. And that is the
difference between keywordsearch and generative AI, which
is these kinds of so calledliterally generating an output
in summarization, drafting,conversational search, that
actually goes beyond words, itgoes into a collection of words
(14:23):
or collection of thoughts. Ithink that's what Gen AI will do
for all of our customers. Thisis really exciting. So what are
the customers telling you? Arethey excited about it too?
Mike Walsh (14:37):
The customers are super excited about this. They
see the transformative impact.
They understand how this can behelpful in what they do. And
when we launched Lexis+ AI, theysaid to us, we're so glad that a
reputable reliable companythat's been in business for a
(14:58):
long time is bringing thisoffering to market. Because we
know we can trust you, we knowwe can rely on you, and we need
help. And getting guidance asthis technology takes hold, and
begins the transformation of theof the practice of law. We
opened up on what we call an AIInsider Programme, where
(15:19):
customers can sign up and getearly access to our products and
services and information as wedevelop things, and we literally
have just been flooded withcustomers, I mean that the
demand has been overwhelming.
YS Chi (15:36):
I'm not surprised, and particularly for a player that's
been in the space for so longworking with them over these
decades. And even you said twocenturies, right?
Mike Walsh (15:46):
Yeah.
YS Chi (15:47):
In this mode, what kind of concerns are you also hearing
other than just fear of beingleft behind? And they must be
glad to have LexisNexis Legal &Professional as a partner for
this?
Mike Walsh (15:59):
There certainly is a fear of being left behind. I
think everybody has a fear ofwhat am I missing? What am I
leaving behind? There's there'sa lot of fear out there around
different providers in themarketplace that don't have a
long history, don't haveaccurate content, and that are
bringing things to market. Andthere's concern about how
(16:20):
effectively you can trust aplayer like that. So there's
there's concerns around that.
There's concerns around what areothers going to be doing in this
market? So you know, there'sconcerns around among lawyers
among what their competitors aredoing and who's getting out in
front and who's getting ahead.
So there's a lot of anxiousnessand nervousness, as well as a
(16:42):
lot of feelings of tremendousopportunity here. I think it's,
it's we're at a period in timewhere we're gonna see more
change around this than we'veseen in quite some time. You
know, I think you statedearlier, but it's such a
profound development, it'ssimilar in my mind to when the
(17:03):
internet first came along,right. And all of a sudden, a
whole range of activities wereenabled by the internet that
weren't possible before. And Ibelieve now we've got a whole
range of activities that aregoing to be enabled with
generative AI, and differentpeople are going to be running
out and experimenting with themadopting and learning how to use
(17:24):
them at different paces. Andeverybody's going to feel like
there's opportunity there. Andprobably many will feel like
they're missing out onopportunity as they go.
YS Chi (17:33):
So can I ask you to just go one more step and look
several years out? Are there anythings that you can see coming
in terms of what lawyers liveswould look like as they serve
their clients, and how thisaspect of Gen AI will influence
(17:54):
that?
Mike Walsh (17:55):
Well, I mean, certainly, lawyers are going to
be faster, more efficient, moreeffective. I think that will
free up considerable time forlawyers to add more higher level
strategic value to the legaladvice that they provide, which
I think is going to be highlyvalued by their clients. One
area, for example, that we'vebeen helping our customers get
(18:18):
better and better on over theyears, but I think we'll we'll
make a step change now with thistechnology, is being able to
better quantify and predicteconomic outcomes in cases,
which of course, all clientswant to know, right? Whenever
you're taking on a case or havea legal exposure, or doing a
(18:38):
transaction, you want to know,you know, what is my potential
exposure? How long is this goingto take me? How much is it going
to cost? And what are theeconomic decisions that I can
make, either as a businessleader or as a legal consumer,
that's going to help achieve thebest outcome in the case? Well,
those economic decisions are,are helped by this technology,
(18:58):
because there's better fasteraccess to information, it can be
analysed more effectively, allof which translates into a
better economic view of yourcase.
YS Chi (19:08):
And LexisNexis Legal & Professional has already been in
that space, where you have toolsalready, that helps a lawyer or
the client estimate, what mightbe the path for, you know,
settling it or going to courtand fighting it and so on,
right, you've already got thosetools.
Mike Walsh (19:29):
We already have tools that do a good job of
helping lawyers do that today.
We have the best tools in themarket that do that we have a
fantastic tool called LexMachina that will tell you how
long cases typically take howlong it takes to settle. We have
tools that will predictsettlement outcomes in cases, we
have tools that will predict thelikelihood of legislation that's
(19:53):
going to pass, but all thesetools will become more effective
and more efficient over time, asthis technology pervades, and
threads through our offerings.
YS Chi (20:05):
It's so exciting to hear that.
Mike Walsh (20:07):
Yeah, it's really it's really quite an exciting
moment in time, I'd say there'snever been a better time to be
in the legal industry than rightnow, with the changes coming
down the pike here,
YS Chi (20:17):
Just how difficult is all this technology? I mean, I
am not a computer science grad.
I mean, at one time, I was anengineer, but I, I escaped that
and went to social science. ButI mean, how hard is it to get
involved?
Mike Walsh (20:30):
Well, it depends on on how and where you're getting
involved. I mean, our job atLexisNexis Legal & Professional
is to make it as easy for ourcustomers to leverage this
technology as we can. And wewe've got huge, huge user design
groups that are focused onmaking the experience as
intuitive as possible, and makethe design as attractive as
(20:53):
possible. So you can basicallyget the answers that you want in
a little amount of time. Now, ofcourse, underneath that it's
very complicated. Underneaththat, the work that our
engineers do, the work that ourtechnologists with advanced
skills and training do isincredibly complex. And we work
hard to attract and retain thebest data scientists, the best
(21:16):
engineers, the bestcomputational linguists that
work on this, but with a goal ofmaking it as simple and
transparent and easy for thecustomer to use as we can.
That's our complete focus. We'reobsessed with the customer. And
we work from the customer back.
YS Chi (21:31):
That's great, so Mike, we cannot talk about LexisNexis
Legal & Professional withouttalking about the mission. This
is what really drives your11,000 people. And the rule of
law that you have advocated forall these years is so important
to you and to your customers.
How will Gen AI impact the ruleof law? I'd like to hear from
(21:55):
you.
Mike Walsh (21:57):
Well, first of all, the rule of law is what we think
of as the underlying purpose inour business. And if you talk to
just about anybody inLexisNexis, they will tell you
that and they will say that itthreads through the DNA of our
organisation, and most peopleare committed to working on
projects in cases that advancethe rule of law around the
(22:17):
world. We think about the ruleof law, by the way, as having
four components (22:21):
improving transparency of law, improving
equality for all under the law,helping and develop strong and
independent judiciaries andcreating accessible legal
remedy. And in general, thestronger each of those
components in any particularjurisdiction or state or
(22:42):
country, the stronger the levelsof the rule of law. And our work
has shown clearly that societalindicators improve when you have
higher levels of rule of law.
You see better economicdevelopment, you see lower
levels of corruption, you seelower child mortality. And you
even see better life expectancy.
(23:06):
The UN has estimated that about4 billion people live outside of
the umbrella protection of therule of law. And our mission is
to bring that number down tozero. And generative AI will
help us do that. Generative AIwill help us improve each one of
those components, transparency,being able to bring complete and
(23:26):
easy transparency to all theworld's citizens, to the laws
under which they operate issomething that generative AI
will help us to do. It helps usdo that by being able to
summarise laws more effectively,communicate them more easily.
And we're not going to stopuntil all the world's citizens
(23:46):
have clear and transparentaccess to the laws and the
ability to understand them. Sowe see this as a transformative
moment for extending theumbrella protection of the rule
of law, lowering the cost oflegal services, and making them
more accessible to places in theworld that do not have good high
(24:07):
quality, access to legalservices or where there are
barriers to get cost effectiveaccess to legal services. So
this is quite a materialdevelopment in our underlying
mission.
YS Chi (24:21):
Wow. First 20 minutes, I thought you had energy in your
voice. But the last couple ofminutes when you talk about the
rule of law impact of Gen AI. Imean, I see the bounce. Thank
you so much. I mean, it isreally important to remind us
why we do what we do. And youhave such a unique contribution
through the years of of havingserved this community with
(24:45):
technology content and whatnot.
Do you have any final words forour audience before I wrap up?
Mike Walsh (24:51):
Well, thank you so much YS for the kind words and
what I would just say is this isa super exciting time right now,
and with any exciting time,there can be opportunities and
there can be perceived threats.
There's more opportunity here, Ibelieve, than threat. We are
working extremely hard atbringing those opportunities to
(25:12):
the market as fast as we can. Wethink it's going to have a
transformative impact on thelegal profession. And we think
it's gonna have a transformativeimpact on our ability to advance
the rule of law around theworld, which has a very positive
impact on society. So we'venever felt it's better than
right now. And so pleased to bewith you YS, thank you for doing
(25:33):
this.
YS Chi (25:36):
No, thank you so much for joining us, Mike, and
enlightening us. You know, whatI learned over these past 20
years here at RELX is that everytime there is an advancement in
technology, there is the aspectof the light that it shines on
our humanity. And then there isthe shadow side. This is what
(25:58):
Mike said about opportunity andthreat. There is a lot more
light than there is shadow inthis generative AI world that we
are entering. What looked verycomplicated, is being
transformed by LexisNexis intosimplicity, to trust and
(26:18):
effectiveness. It's been reallyexciting to have Mike as our
guest, and I really look forwardto learning much more about what
LexisNexis will be doing goingforward. Thank you for
listening.
The unique contributions podcast is brought to you by
RELX. Find out more about us byvisiting relx.com.
Mike Walsh (00:09):
We're on the cusp of something that's really quite
profound in its impact. I thinkone thing is that lawyers who
embrace this change and adopt itand use it to their advantage
will have a significantadvantage overall in the
marketplace.
YS Chi (00:42):
Hello, and welcome to a special episode on AI and
generative AI, a topic that hasbeen at the top of people's
minds since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT. A few months ago,
RELX was named by Bank ofAmerica as one of the 10 global
companies most likely to benefitfrom generative AI. The company
(01:02):
is a big user of AItechnologies, where we invest
more than $1.6 billion a year intechnology and employ about
10,000 technologists. Justrecently, RELX's legal business
LexisNexis Legal & Professionallaunched Lexis+ AI, which is a
generative AI platform designedto transform legal work.
(01:24):
Unlike ChatGPT, which cangenerate hallucinations. Lexis+
AI is built and trained on thelargest repository of accurate
and exclusive legal content, andis the world's most
comprehensive global, legal,generative AI platform.
This will have majorconsequences for the legal
(01:45):
profession. Mike Walsh, CEO ofLexisNexis, Legal & Professional
and his team are on the frontierof the transformations that
generative AI are bringing tothe legal field. Mike, welcome.
Mike Walsh (01:57):
Thank you. YS, it is great to be here.
YS Chi (02:00):
And it is great to have you. Thank you. Before we start
talking about generative AI, canyou please set the stage for us?
Most lawyers will know whoLexisNexis is of course. But for
those who aren't familiar, canyou just give us a little
snapshot of the company and howyou've emerged as the leader at
the centre of this generative AImoment?
Mike Walsh (02:21):
Well, LexisNexis Legal & Professional is actually
made up of three distinct butinterrelated businesses. Legal
Information is our largestbusiness, which provides
information, analytics anddecision tools, primarily to
lawyers. But we also serveprofessionals beyond the legal
(02:41):
industry. Our IP analyticsbusiness is the largest
technology provider to the USPatent and Trademark Office for
more than 50 years. Nexisprovides the largest collection
of aggregated news and businessinformation in the world.
Altogether, LexisNexis has oneof the largest content
(03:02):
repositories in the world. Andif you add it all up, we're
about 150 times the size ofWikipedia. Our 11,000 plus
employees serve customers inmore than 150 countries. And we
serve them via our ultra moderntechnology infrastructure. About
2000 of the technologists thatyou mentioned, are part of our
(03:24):
team. And many have advancedtech skills. So it's that
combination of accurate,comprehensive, citable content,
technology, leadership and 50plus years of experience,
safeguarding and protecting ourcustomer privacy and IP that has
led us here today.
YS Chi (03:45):
Sounds very sophisticated, Mike, and very
expensive to run?
Mike Walsh (03:51):
It's quite sophisticated. And it's been
built over years. And we'vespent years building a leading
technology platform that enablesus to deliver with all the
content, and we're able todeliver it quite rapidly and
efficiently to our customers.
YS Chi (04:11):
And then I think we want to talk about that in the
context of generative AI. Thishas taken the world by storm,
and its consequences are likelyto be felt in all aspects of our
personal and professional lives.
So I feel that this is a seminalmoment in our history and some
possibly calling it as being asimportant as the invention of
the internet itself. But howwould you define generative AI?
(04:34):
And how does the legalprofessional perceive this
moment in relation to generativeAI?
Mike Walsh (04:42):
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you
know, we're on the cusp ofsomething that's really quite
profound in its impact. And Ithink its impact is going to be
felt significantly in the legalprofession in terms of
transformative impact over manyyears increasing efficiency.
(05:02):
Enabling lawyers to be able todo things that they never were
able to do before much moreeffectively, and significantly
changing the speed of how thepractice is conducted. And I
think one thing is that lawyerswho embrace this change and
adopt it and use it to theiradvantage will have a
(05:23):
significant advantage overall inthe marketplace.
YS Chi (05:26):
And would you say that large or small or specialised
law firms or lawyers may getspecial advantage? Or do you
think this is a prettydemocratic platform?
Mike Walsh (05:38):
I think all size firms and in-house legal
institutions will, will benefitfrom it. And they'll all get
advantage, I don't think sizenecessarily will be the big
determinant of who captures themost advantage, I think it will
be more around willingness toadopt, get ahead of the
(05:59):
technology curve, embrace thesetechnologies, bring them into
their work in a way that'seffective and responsible. And I
think the ones who do thateffectively the ones who use the
right tools to do that, I thinkthey'll get the advantage.
YS Chi (06:13):
Speaking of this adoption, as LexisNexis Legal &
Professional has revealed ourplatform, has this created new
opportunities for the lawyers orsome may look at it as more
risk?
Mike Walsh (06:29):
Well, it certainly creates new opportunity for
lawyers. And it also createsrisk. You know, I think, first
of all, it's important to putthis in context around us and
what we've done. We've beenworking on AI for a decade, and
we've been importing extractiveAI tools into our products for
(06:49):
many years now. And you know,it's it's now this shift to
generative AI, that has fueledthe, the launch of Lexis+ AI.
And that's really what bringstransformative technology to our
customers. There are risks, therisks are basically, you know,
it's been well documented thatChatGPT creates hallucinations.
(07:15):
If you're not usingauthoritative content, if you
don't know where the sources arecoming from out there, you run
risks of having wrong and badinformation. That's where our
offering really can providedifferentiation. We have the
largest repository of accurateand reliable content, our tools
(07:37):
interact with that content, wehave human review in the
process. And all these elementsand steps are designed to create
a reliable and trustworthyexperience. There have been news
articles now about lawyers whohave used ChatGPT. And they've
found that it's createdfictitious cases.
YS Chi (07:58):
That's right.
Mike Walsh (07:59):
And now they're even being cited in courts for it,
facing potential disciplinaryactions. So that's why it's
really important to rely ontools that are authoritative,
have high quality content, andhave human assisted review in
the process.
YS Chi (08:15):
I think that's a really important point, that there's
got to be a quality base for anyquality tools to work.
Mike Walsh (08:24):
Absolutely. That's the that's the foundation of it.
You have to have accurate, highquality content that's reliable.
Otherwise, you don't know whatyou don't know what you're
getting.
YS Chi (08:33):
Right, which is the base of LexisNexis Legal &
Professional over a century,right?
Mike Walsh (08:39):
Absolutely. You know, our business stretches all
the way back to actually 1818,which is the oldest part of our
business - Butterworths in theUK - that's when Butterworths
was built. And that's when westarted publishing legal
content. And we've just builtupon that expertise over decades
and decades and decades indifferent countries, all with
(09:01):
the point of view of beingreliable and accurate, and
something the legal professionknows that they can they can
depend upon.
YS Chi (09:10):
Wow. So this is obviously something we have a
lot of experience in. Could RELXcome up with its own version of
generative AI like a ChatGPT? Ordo we just rely on other
companies for this? Since you'resitting on such quality content.
Mike Walsh (09:28):
Well, I think we leverage many technologies when
we put together our products, Ithink ChatGPT is an early leader
in the generative AI space. Ithink there are many companies
that are extremely wellpositioned to capture leadership
in the large language modelspace, and then I think we're
(09:49):
going to see evolution ofdifferent forms of AI
technology. And it's hard topredict at any time, which one
is going to be the best andwho's going to lead. So we have
an approach where we leveragemultiple technologies. We also
develop our own proprietarytechnology. Sometimes they're
combinations of technologiesthat we're using. And sometimes
(10:12):
they're homegrown proprietarytechnologies. And what we do is
we, we tend to do that whenthey're sort of built for a
specific purpose. And it'salways with our customer in
mind, and we work back from ourcustomer. And we develop
technologies that are going tobe most helpful, in helping our
customers achieve what they wantto do in their, in their work
(10:33):
environment. So the short answeris, it's a variety of
technologies. I think, overtime, we'll see more and more
open source technologies in thisspace as well.
YS Chi (10:43):
Yeah, I agree with you on that. But the good thing that
you just pointed out is that youare really addressing customers
very specific vertical needs,right. And because you have both
the content, and the access totechnology, as well as domain
expertise, this really becomes avery powerful player.
Mike Walsh (11:07):
The lawyer customer base has an extremely complex
and detailed set of use cases.
And you really have to have deepdomain expertise to be able to
serve those use caseseffectively. Whether you're a
litigator working on complexlitigation, or you're a
transactional lawyer handlingvery detailed, complex
(11:28):
transactions. The use cases arevery specific. They require deep
domain expertise. And it's acombination of deep domain
expertise, authoritativecontent, and constantly using
best in class technologies, thatallows us to be able to deliver
to our customers and help themdo things that they just simply
(11:48):
could never do before.
YS Chi (11:51):
So which of these examples you cited just now, do
you think are some of the mostuseful ones? And do the
customers know how to quantifysuch usefulness in that context?
Mike Walsh (12:05):
So the early use cases that we're building out
that we believe are most usefulto our customers in the near
term are around summarization,drafting, and conversational
search. Summarization allows youto get quick summaries of
important impactful documents,you can determine do you want a
(12:26):
detailed summary or a pithysummary - can quickly digest
information that comes at you.
Drafting is an area where manylawyers spend at least half of
their time, drafting. Anddrafting with the capability of
building in citable sources withreliable information is a major
game changer for lawyers. Andthen a conversational guided
(12:51):
search, a search beyondsearching for keywords, where
you're really interacting with abot that's helping you deliver
the most precise, specificresults that are relevant for
you. These are kind of the macromacro use cases. And then over
time, we'll just continue to addvalue to the use cases, make
(13:12):
them more specific, and addcapabilities that help lawyers
do things that help tounderstand the economics of a
case, for example, and I justbelieve we're gonna see lawyers
get better and better and moreand more effective at the way
that they practice and how theyhandle their business that's
enabled by these tools.
YS Chi (13:33):
And as their customers demand that from the lawyers,
right?
Mike Walsh (13:37):
Absolutely. You know, it's interesting, we've
done research, and most lawyersbelieve that Gen AI will be
transformative to the practice.
And the interesting thing iswhen we talk to in house
counsel, there's an expectationthat the lawyers that are
serving them will be using thesetools and helping them to become
more efficient and betterpractitioners.
YS Chi (13:59):
So you actually, once again pointed out something
really important for thelisteners. And that is the
difference between keywordsearch and generative AI, which
is these kinds of so calledliterally generating an output
in summarization, drafting,conversational search, that
actually goes beyond words, itgoes into a collection of words
(14:23):
or collection of thoughts. Ithink that's what Gen AI will do
for all of our customers. Thisis really exciting. So what are
the customers telling you? Arethey excited about it too?
Mike Walsh (14:37):
The customers are super excited about this. They
see the transformative impact.
They understand how this can behelpful in what they do. And
when we launched Lexis+ AI, theysaid to us, we're so glad that a
reputable reliable companythat's been in business for a
(14:58):
long time is bringing thisoffering to market. Because we
know we can trust you, we knowwe can rely on you, and we need
help. And getting guidance asthis technology takes hold, and
begins the transformation of theof the practice of law. We
opened up on what we call an AIInsider Programme, where
(15:19):
customers can sign up and getearly access to our products and
services and information as wedevelop things, and we literally
have just been flooded withcustomers, I mean that the
demand has been overwhelming.
YS Chi (15:36):
I'm not surprised, and particularly for a player that's
been in the space for so longworking with them over these
decades. And even you said twocenturies, right?
Mike Walsh (15:46):
Yeah.
YS Chi (15:47):
In this mode, what kind of concerns are you also hearing
other than just fear of beingleft behind? And they must be
glad to have LexisNexis Legal &Professional as a partner for
this?
Mike Walsh (15:59):
There certainly is a fear of being left behind. I
think everybody has a fear ofwhat am I missing? What am I
leaving behind? There's there'sa lot of fear out there around
different providers in themarketplace that don't have a
long history, don't haveaccurate content, and that are
bringing things to market. Andthere's concern about how
(16:20):
effectively you can trust aplayer like that. So there's
there's concerns around that.
There's concerns around what areothers going to be doing in this
market? So you know, there'sconcerns around among lawyers
among what their competitors aredoing and who's getting out in
front and who's getting ahead.
So there's a lot of anxiousnessand nervousness, as well as a
(16:42):
lot of feelings of tremendousopportunity here. I think it's,
it's we're at a period in timewhere we're gonna see more
change around this than we'veseen in quite some time. You
know, I think you statedearlier, but it's such a
profound development, it'ssimilar in my mind to when the
(17:03):
internet first came along,right. And all of a sudden, a
whole range of activities wereenabled by the internet that
weren't possible before. And Ibelieve now we've got a whole
range of activities that aregoing to be enabled with
generative AI, and differentpeople are going to be running
out and experimenting with themadopting and learning how to use
(17:24):
them at different paces. Andeverybody's going to feel like
there's opportunity there. Andprobably many will feel like
they're missing out onopportunity as they go.
YS Chi (17:33):
So can I ask you to just go one more step and look
several years out? Are there anythings that you can see coming
in terms of what lawyers liveswould look like as they serve
their clients, and how thisaspect of Gen AI will influence
(17:54):
that?
Mike Walsh (17:55):
Well, I mean, certainly, lawyers are going to
be faster, more efficient, moreeffective. I think that will
free up considerable time forlawyers to add more higher level
strategic value to the legaladvice that they provide, which
I think is going to be highlyvalued by their clients. One
area, for example, that we'vebeen helping our customers get
(18:18):
better and better on over theyears, but I think we'll we'll
make a step change now with thistechnology, is being able to
better quantify and predicteconomic outcomes in cases,
which of course, all clientswant to know, right? Whenever
you're taking on a case or havea legal exposure, or doing a
(18:38):
transaction, you want to know,you know, what is my potential
exposure? How long is this goingto take me? How much is it going
to cost? And what are theeconomic decisions that I can
make, either as a businessleader or as a legal consumer,
that's going to help achieve thebest outcome in the case? Well,
those economic decisions are,are helped by this technology,
(18:58):
because there's better fasteraccess to information, it can be
analysed more effectively, allof which translates into a
better economic view of yourcase.
YS Chi (19:08):
And LexisNexis Legal & Professional has already been in
that space, where you have toolsalready, that helps a lawyer or
the client estimate, what mightbe the path for, you know,
settling it or going to courtand fighting it and so on,
right, you've already got thosetools.
Mike Walsh (19:29):
We already have tools that do a good job of
helping lawyers do that today.
We have the best tools in themarket that do that we have a
fantastic tool called LexMachina that will tell you how
long cases typically take howlong it takes to settle. We have
tools that will predictsettlement outcomes in cases, we
have tools that will predict thelikelihood of legislation that's
(19:53):
going to pass, but all thesetools will become more effective
and more efficient over time, asthis technology pervades, and
threads through our offerings.
YS Chi (20:05):
It's so exciting to hear that.
Mike Walsh (20:07):
Yeah, it's really it's really quite an exciting
moment in time, I'd say there'snever been a better time to be
in the legal industry than rightnow, with the changes coming
down the pike here,
YS Chi (20:17):
Just how difficult is all this technology? I mean, I
am not a computer science grad.
I mean, at one time, I was anengineer, but I, I escaped that
and went to social science. ButI mean, how hard is it to get
involved?
Mike Walsh (20:30):
Well, it depends on on how and where you're getting
involved. I mean, our job atLexisNexis Legal & Professional
is to make it as easy for ourcustomers to leverage this
technology as we can. And wewe've got huge, huge user design
groups that are focused onmaking the experience as
intuitive as possible, and makethe design as attractive as
(20:53):
possible. So you can basicallyget the answers that you want in
a little amount of time. Now, ofcourse, underneath that it's
very complicated. Underneaththat, the work that our
engineers do, the work that ourtechnologists with advanced
skills and training do isincredibly complex. And we work
hard to attract and retain thebest data scientists, the best
(21:16):
engineers, the bestcomputational linguists that
work on this, but with a goal ofmaking it as simple and
transparent and easy for thecustomer to use as we can.
That's our complete focus. We'reobsessed with the customer. And
we work from the customer back.
YS Chi (21:31):
That's great, so Mike, we cannot talk about LexisNexis
Legal & Professional withouttalking about the mission. This
is what really drives your11,000 people. And the rule of
law that you have advocated forall these years is so important
to you and to your customers.
How will Gen AI impact the ruleof law? I'd like to hear from
(21:55):
you.
Mike Walsh (21:57):
Well, first of all, the rule of law is what we think
of as the underlying purpose inour business. And if you talk to
just about anybody inLexisNexis, they will tell you
that and they will say that itthreads through the DNA of our
organisation, and most peopleare committed to working on
projects in cases that advancethe rule of law around the
(22:17):
world. We think about the ruleof law, by the way, as having
four components (22:21):
improving transparency of law, improving
equality for all under the law,helping and develop strong and
independent judiciaries andcreating accessible legal
remedy. And in general, thestronger each of those
components in any particularjurisdiction or state or
(22:42):
country, the stronger the levelsof the rule of law. And our work
has shown clearly that societalindicators improve when you have
higher levels of rule of law.
You see better economicdevelopment, you see lower
levels of corruption, you seelower child mortality. And you
even see better life expectancy.
(23:06):
The UN has estimated that about4 billion people live outside of
the umbrella protection of therule of law. And our mission is
to bring that number down tozero. And generative AI will
help us do that. Generative AIwill help us improve each one of
those components, transparency,being able to bring complete and
(23:26):
easy transparency to all theworld's citizens, to the laws
under which they operate issomething that generative AI
will help us to do. It helps usdo that by being able to
summarise laws more effectively,communicate them more easily.
And we're not going to stopuntil all the world's citizens
(23:46):
have clear and transparentaccess to the laws and the
ability to understand them. Sowe see this as a transformative
moment for extending theumbrella protection of the rule
of law, lowering the cost oflegal services, and making them
more accessible to places in theworld that do not have good high
(24:07):
quality, access to legalservices or where there are
barriers to get cost effectiveaccess to legal services. So
this is quite a materialdevelopment in our underlying
mission.
YS Chi (24:21):
Wow. First 20 minutes, I thought you had energy in your
voice. But the last couple ofminutes when you talk about the
rule of law impact of Gen AI. Imean, I see the bounce. Thank
you so much. I mean, it isreally important to remind us
why we do what we do. And youhave such a unique contribution
through the years of of havingserved this community with
(24:45):
technology content and whatnot.
Do you have any final words forour audience before I wrap up?
Mike Walsh (24:51):
Well, thank you so much YS for the kind words and
what I would just say is this isa super exciting time right now,
and with any exciting time,there can be opportunities and
there can be perceived threats.
There's more opportunity here, Ibelieve, than threat. We are
working extremely hard atbringing those opportunities to
(25:12):
the market as fast as we can. Wethink it's going to have a
transformative impact on thelegal profession. And we think
it's gonna have a transformativeimpact on our ability to advance
the rule of law around theworld, which has a very positive
impact on society. So we'venever felt it's better than
right now. And so pleased to bewith you YS, thank you for doing
(25:33):
this.
YS Chi (25:36):
No, thank you so much for joining us, Mike, and
enlightening us. You know, whatI learned over these past 20
years here at RELX is that everytime there is an advancement in
technology, there is the aspectof the light that it shines on
our humanity. And then there isthe shadow side. This is what
(25:58):
Mike said about opportunity andthreat. There is a lot more
light than there is shadow inthis generative AI world that we
are entering. What looked verycomplicated, is being
transformed by LexisNexis intosimplicity, to trust and
(26:18):
effectiveness. It's been reallyexciting to have Mike as our
guest, and I really look forwardto learning much more about what
LexisNexis will be doing goingforward. Thank you for
listening.
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