July 28, 2026 • 10 mins
I spoke with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis’s legal business, where he leads strategy, growth, product innovation, and operations. We discussed the value of proprietary content in an AI era, perspectives on the potential shift in how AI is priced, how customers benefit from partnerships with different AI providers, and evolving customer expectations for legal AI.
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(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Sean Fitzpatrick, the
(00:21):
CEO of LexisNexis's legal business,where he leads strategy, growth,
product innovation, and operations.
Hi, Sean.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Great to be here, Ari.
It's my privilege.
So tell us about your backgroundand your role at LexisNexis.
I've been at LexisNexis for 21 yearsand I am currently the CEO of our
(00:46):
legal business, responsible for ourstrategy and product development and
taking the product to market, allaspects of the legal business globally
How is AI affecting the way yourteam now serves its law firm
and legal department customers?
Everything's accelerating.
Starting with top line revenuewe just finished our first
(01:07):
half for the legal business.
Our underlying revenue growth was 10%.
That's an acceleration onthe first half of last year.
That equates to just under $80million in incremental revenue that
we have in the first half of thisyear that we didn't have last year.
If you annualize that, it's roughly150, 160 million in incremental revenue.
(01:28):
We did that in the first half of '26.
We did something similar in '25.
We did something similar to that in 2024.
So it's becoming a much more meaningfulpart of our overall business.
If you look at where that growthcame from in the first half of
the year, 90% of our new businesswas our generative AI products.
So it's having a bigimpact in the marketplace.
(01:50):
Customers are seeing value fromthese products, and they're
voting with their wallets.
What is the value that you're seeingin proprietary content in an AI era?
The models are only as good as thecontent that they're built on, and
we have a big trust issue in legal.
We have somewhere around 1,800documented instances now of attorneys
(02:13):
bringing materials into courtthat cite cases that don't exist.
They're hallucinations from AI, and that'snot slowing down, and it's happened to
some of the largest firms in the UK.
It's happened to some ofthe largest firms in the US.
If it can happen to them,it can happen to anyone.
So, there's this important trust layernow that everyone's very focused on.
(02:35):
And it's not just about efficiency.
Everyone knows you can get efficiencyfrom utilizing these tools, but it's
about having them grounded in trustedcontent, and then having a verification
layer so you can go back and validatethat something's actually correct.
The models produce content that soundsreally confident, but what our attorneys
(02:56):
need is to actually be confident inthose answers, and we can help them
be confident, not just by grounding itwith our authoritative legal material,
but by also giving them access to that.
We'll give them a Shepard's trust signalso they know that it's a real case.
They can click on it, andthey can see the actual case.
They can read the head notes tofind out what the points of law are.
(03:18):
They can read the case lawsummary to learn about the case.
They can review the Shepard'sreport, see if it's still good law.
What are customers saying about thepotential shift in how AI is priced?
One of the things that we're hearingis a lot of concern about moving
to a token-based pricing model, andthat's creating a lot of concerns
for our customers because they wantto have certainty or fairly good
(03:42):
certainty about what they're goingto be paying for their solutions.
We're not moving to a token-based model.
We're sticking with our subscriptionmodel, and we're signing customers
into three-year and five-year deals.
And so over the course of that contractperiod they'll have price certainty.
We had a multi-model approach from thevery beginning, and the combination
(04:06):
of the multi-model approach and ourproprietary content set, allows us to
get answers to questions using moredistilled models that are really focused
'Cause we know exactlywhere the answer is.
If somebody has a question aboutregulatory information, for example,
we can point that model right toour regulatory database and quickly
find the answers, and that's avery efficient way to use tokens.
(04:27):
If you're trying to find out whatthe latest regulation is and you're
searching every corner of theinternet to find that out, that's
a very token-intensive process.
It's a competitive advantage that wehave, and it's the reason that we're
not moving to token-based pricing.
As a matter of fact, tokens, token costs.
represent less than 1% of RELX revenue.
(04:48):
How do your customers benefit from yourpartnerships with different AI providers,
and how do those partnerships alignwith the broader strategy at LexisNexis?
We have a number of partnershipswith OpenAI and Anthropic, and those
partnerships give us advanced accessto the tools before they're released,
so we can understand how they work andhow they might benefit our customers.
(05:12):
We also have access to engineering talentwithin those organizations, that they can
help us understand those models betterand how to apply them to legal use cases.
That's accelerating our productdevelopment process, and our
customers benefit from that.
We just signed an agreementrecently with Luminance.
Their AI product is called Lumi, andwithin Lumi ,if you're a Lexis+ with
(05:33):
Protégé customer and a Luminancecustomer, within Lumi you'll be able
to ask a question that you need ourlegal research information to answer.
It will take that question, it'llencrypt the question, it'll API
it over to Lexis+ with Protégé.
Protégé will generate the answer,that encrypted answer will come
back, and it will be available to theLuminance user within that Lumi format.
(05:57):
So we're also trying to make theAI products that our customers
buy available in more places.
How do you balance investingin new AI capabilities with
strengthening your core business?
The legal information analytics anddecision tools business that we've been
in for a long time it's benefiting from AIbecause now it's an AI-powered ecosystem
(06:21):
of information analytics and decisiontools, and you get to your answers more
quickly, more efficiently, and so on.
Beyond that, there's this massive marketthat's starting to develop, and analysts
are estimating it will be five timesthe size of the total addressable market
we have for legal technology today.
(06:42):
We're expanding into thatsection of the market as well.
It represents a huge growth opportunity.
I talked about theresults that we're seeing.
A lot of it's from goinginto that white space.
Given the importance of technology inthe legal industry today, what skills
are you seeing lawyers developing thatgives them a competitive advantage?
(07:05):
Certainly understanding a little bitabout large language models and how
they work, and how you can efficientlyget to the information that you're
looking for is an important skill.
There's so much of this knowledgethat's being transferred just by
working with others, so there's acollaboration element to it as well.
One thing I'm hearing from lawfirms is how important all the
(07:27):
soft skills are becoming, sothere's an additional emphasis on
growing those skills in firms now.
How do you see law firms and corporatelegal departments investing in
these tools to drive growth in theirorganizations as we move forward?
We serve both law firms and corporations,as well as government entities.
(07:48):
In corporations, in-house counsel tendsto be really stretched in terms of the
amount of work that it can take on.
Using AI tools, they're ableto complete more work than they
were able to complete previously.
They're able to do it faster, soquicker turnaround times, and they're
able to do it with a greater levelof confidence, so we see internal
(08:12):
teams really benefiting from beingable to get to legal issues that they
weren't able to address previously.
With law firms, we're seeinglots of different ways that
they're benefiting from it.
They're certainly benefiting from theefficiency component, but there's also
all kinds of new legal issues that arebeing generated by these new products
which is creating more legal work.
(08:32):
What's next on theLexisNexis product roadmap?
We're really working with our customersto drive that future product roadmap,
but one of the things that they'revery interested in are skills.
So you take a particular task thatyou wanna complete, and you put in
a set of rules for completing thattask, exactly how you want that task
(08:53):
to be completed, the content setsthat you want to draw on, and so on.
That's a great way to get a consistentresult across your entire firm and to use
your AI assets in a very efficient way.
We've just introduced skills, andour customers are really grabbing
onto it, so we see that as abig growth driver going forward.
(09:14):
How do you see customerexpectations for legal AI evolving?
One of the key ways it's evolvingis around the importance of trust.
We've seen too many instances of lawfirms getting caught with hallucinations
in their filings, and, it's a massiveimpact on the reputation of those firms.
We're seeing the fines andthe penalties increase.
(09:36):
We used to talk about $5,000 fines.
I just read about $110,000 fine.
I heard about an attorneygetting suspended for six months.
So the stakes are starting to goup, but, would you use a law firm
that had just been sanctioned?
You have lots of choices when it comes tolaw firms, so reputation really matters,
and that's a big shift that we're seeing.
Folks are moving towards systems thatthey know that they can trust so that
(09:58):
they do not end up in that situation.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with SeanFitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis's legal
business, where he leads strategy growth,product innovation, and operations.
Sean, thanks so very much.
Absolutely.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.
(10:22):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com orarikaplanadvisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Sean Fitzpatrick, the
(00:21):
CEO of LexisNexis's legal business,where he leads strategy, growth,
product innovation, and operations.
Hi, Sean.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Great to be here, Ari.
It's my privilege.
So tell us about your backgroundand your role at LexisNexis.
I've been at LexisNexis for 21 yearsand I am currently the CEO of our
(00:46):
legal business, responsible for ourstrategy and product development and
taking the product to market, allaspects of the legal business globally
How is AI affecting the way yourteam now serves its law firm
and legal department customers?
Everything's accelerating.
Starting with top line revenuewe just finished our first
(01:07):
half for the legal business.
Our underlying revenue growth was 10%.
That's an acceleration onthe first half of last year.
That equates to just under $80million in incremental revenue that
we have in the first half of thisyear that we didn't have last year.
If you annualize that, it's roughly150, 160 million in incremental revenue.
(01:28):
We did that in the first half of '26.
We did something similar in '25.
We did something similar to that in 2024.
So it's becoming a much more meaningfulpart of our overall business.
If you look at where that growthcame from in the first half of
the year, 90% of our new businesswas our generative AI products.
So it's having a bigimpact in the marketplace.
(01:50):
Customers are seeing value fromthese products, and they're
voting with their wallets.
What is the value that you're seeingin proprietary content in an AI era?
The models are only as good as thecontent that they're built on, and
we have a big trust issue in legal.
We have somewhere around 1,800documented instances now of attorneys
(02:13):
bringing materials into courtthat cite cases that don't exist.
They're hallucinations from AI, and that'snot slowing down, and it's happened to
some of the largest firms in the UK.
It's happened to some ofthe largest firms in the US.
If it can happen to them,it can happen to anyone.
So, there's this important trust layernow that everyone's very focused on.
(02:35):
And it's not just about efficiency.
Everyone knows you can get efficiencyfrom utilizing these tools, but it's
about having them grounded in trustedcontent, and then having a verification
layer so you can go back and validatethat something's actually correct.
The models produce content that soundsreally confident, but what our attorneys
(02:56):
need is to actually be confident inthose answers, and we can help them
be confident, not just by grounding itwith our authoritative legal material,
but by also giving them access to that.
We'll give them a Shepard's trust signalso they know that it's a real case.
They can click on it, andthey can see the actual case.
They can read the head notes tofind out what the points of law are.
(03:18):
They can read the case lawsummary to learn about the case.
They can review the Shepard'sreport, see if it's still good law.
What are customers saying about thepotential shift in how AI is priced?
One of the things that we're hearingis a lot of concern about moving
to a token-based pricing model, andthat's creating a lot of concerns
for our customers because they wantto have certainty or fairly good
(03:42):
certainty about what they're goingto be paying for their solutions.
We're not moving to a token-based model.
We're sticking with our subscriptionmodel, and we're signing customers
into three-year and five-year deals.
And so over the course of that contractperiod they'll have price certainty.
We had a multi-model approach from thevery beginning, and the combination
(04:06):
of the multi-model approach and ourproprietary content set, allows us to
get answers to questions using moredistilled models that are really focused
'Cause we know exactlywhere the answer is.
If somebody has a question aboutregulatory information, for example,
we can point that model right toour regulatory database and quickly
find the answers, and that's avery efficient way to use tokens.
(04:27):
If you're trying to find out whatthe latest regulation is and you're
searching every corner of theinternet to find that out, that's
a very token-intensive process.
It's a competitive advantage that wehave, and it's the reason that we're
not moving to token-based pricing.
As a matter of fact, tokens, token costs.
represent less than 1% of RELX revenue.
(04:48):
How do your customers benefit from yourpartnerships with different AI providers,
and how do those partnerships alignwith the broader strategy at LexisNexis?
We have a number of partnershipswith OpenAI and Anthropic, and those
partnerships give us advanced accessto the tools before they're released,
so we can understand how they work andhow they might benefit our customers.
(05:12):
We also have access to engineering talentwithin those organizations, that they can
help us understand those models betterand how to apply them to legal use cases.
That's accelerating our productdevelopment process, and our
customers benefit from that.
We just signed an agreementrecently with Luminance.
Their AI product is called Lumi, andwithin Lumi ,if you're a Lexis+ with
(05:33):
Protégé customer and a Luminancecustomer, within Lumi you'll be able
to ask a question that you need ourlegal research information to answer.
It will take that question, it'llencrypt the question, it'll API
it over to Lexis+ with Protégé.
Protégé will generate the answer,that encrypted answer will come
back, and it will be available to theLuminance user within that Lumi format.
(05:57):
So we're also trying to make theAI products that our customers
buy available in more places.
How do you balance investingin new AI capabilities with
strengthening your core business?
The legal information analytics anddecision tools business that we've been
in for a long time it's benefiting from AIbecause now it's an AI-powered ecosystem
(06:21):
of information analytics and decisiontools, and you get to your answers more
quickly, more efficiently, and so on.
Beyond that, there's this massive marketthat's starting to develop, and analysts
are estimating it will be five timesthe size of the total addressable market
we have for legal technology today.
(06:42):
We're expanding into thatsection of the market as well.
It represents a huge growth opportunity.
I talked about theresults that we're seeing.
A lot of it's from goinginto that white space.
Given the importance of technology inthe legal industry today, what skills
are you seeing lawyers developing thatgives them a competitive advantage?
(07:05):
Certainly understanding a little bitabout large language models and how
they work, and how you can efficientlyget to the information that you're
looking for is an important skill.
There's so much of this knowledgethat's being transferred just by
working with others, so there's acollaboration element to it as well.
One thing I'm hearing from lawfirms is how important all the
(07:27):
soft skills are becoming, sothere's an additional emphasis on
growing those skills in firms now.
How do you see law firms and corporatelegal departments investing in
these tools to drive growth in theirorganizations as we move forward?
We serve both law firms and corporations,as well as government entities.
(07:48):
In corporations, in-house counsel tendsto be really stretched in terms of the
amount of work that it can take on.
Using AI tools, they're ableto complete more work than they
were able to complete previously.
They're able to do it faster, soquicker turnaround times, and they're
able to do it with a greater levelof confidence, so we see internal
(08:12):
teams really benefiting from beingable to get to legal issues that they
weren't able to address previously.
With law firms, we're seeinglots of different ways that
they're benefiting from it.
They're certainly benefiting from theefficiency component, but there's also
all kinds of new legal issues that arebeing generated by these new products
which is creating more legal work.
(08:32):
What's next on theLexisNexis product roadmap?
We're really working with our customersto drive that future product roadmap,
but one of the things that they'revery interested in are skills.
So you take a particular task thatyou wanna complete, and you put in
a set of rules for completing thattask, exactly how you want that task
(08:53):
to be completed, the content setsthat you want to draw on, and so on.
That's a great way to get a consistentresult across your entire firm and to use
your AI assets in a very efficient way.
We've just introduced skills, andour customers are really grabbing
onto it, so we see that as abig growth driver going forward.
(09:14):
How do you see customerexpectations for legal AI evolving?
One of the key ways it's evolvingis around the importance of trust.
We've seen too many instances of lawfirms getting caught with hallucinations
in their filings, and, it's a massiveimpact on the reputation of those firms.
We're seeing the fines andthe penalties increase.
(09:36):
We used to talk about $5,000 fines.
I just read about $110,000 fine.
I heard about an attorneygetting suspended for six months.
So the stakes are starting to goup, but, would you use a law firm
that had just been sanctioned?
You have lots of choices when it comes tolaw firms, so reputation really matters,
and that's a big shift that we're seeing.
Folks are moving towards systems thatthey know that they can trust so that
(09:58):
they do not end up in that situation.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with SeanFitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis's legal
business, where he leads strategy growth,product innovation, and operations.
Sean, thanks so very much.
Absolutely.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.
(10:22):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com orarikaplanadvisors.com to learn more.
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