Lexis+ Canada a one-of-a-kind product

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An ecosystem of solutions built around how lawyers work and tailor-made for Canadian lawyers from coast to coast, Lexis+ Canada is a streamlined, modern experience for users

IF YOU ask Eric Wright, the mission of LexisNexis is simple: help lawyers be more efficient and effective so they can deliver better value and service to their customers. And with the August launch of Lexis+ Canada, the CEO of LexisNexis Canada says they’ve hit the nail on the head. “Based on feedback from lawyers across the country, we believe we’ve built the leading legal research platform, tailored specifically to the Canadian lawyer,” Wright says. “It’s a real milestone for us as an organization and for the Canadian legal market overall.”

LexisNexis Legal & Professional® provides legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 10,500 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

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“Based on feedback from lawyers across the country, we believe we’ve built the leading legal research platform, tailored specifically to the Canadian lawyer”

Eric Wright, LexisNexis Canada

The foundation Lexis+ Canada was developed to align with three mandates: give lawyers more confidence in their research, make them more efficient, and deliver simplicity. Lawyers, especially litigators, want to win – that’s their main motive – and the data-driven insights Lexis+ Canada provides offer extra security that their research is covering all the bases. The solution is also built around the way that lawyers work, and the feedback so far is that the deeply integrated workflow is significantly boosting users’ efficiency. Finally, while everyone wants tools that are innovative and capable, they also want tools that are simple to use and that integrate seamlessly with existing workflow and processes. Simplicity was a foundational piece of the solution’s ethos, pulling together the best of LexisNexis into one experience and focusing on streamlining as much as possible, such as paring down the number of clicks users had to go through to accomplish things. Lexis+ Canada combines access to leading technology and benefits with access to the full set of LexisNexis’ legal content in one optimized platform, improving lawyers’ productivity, their workflow, and, ultimately, their ability to deliver timely, strategic counsel to their clients. And really, that's the power of Lexis+, says Collin Smith, director of marketing at LexisNexis Canada. “It’s a whole ecosystem of solutions built around how lawyers work and providing a modern user experience,” Smith says. “On the ground level, there is no product like Lexis+ – it’s one of a kind.”

Top tech tools Coming from a technology background, Wright says it’s the level of technology-enabled features that the Lexis+ Canada platform brings that excites him the most. A long time coming to the Canadian market, the tech pieces are true gamechangers: LexisNexis has always had great content and will continue to have great content, he notes, but it’s features like Lexis Answers and Brief Analysis that truly differentiate the platform. Alan Votary, head of product Canada, agrees that from a product perspective those two features make Lexis+ Canada stand out. Lexis Answers is found at the top of the results set

“So, the answer to how many questions we have is not a specific number; it depends on how many questions we get,” Votary says. “It's a turning point in terms of how we do that research.” The use case for the Brief Analysis tool is a user who is either filing a motion in court, or whose opposing counsel has filed a motion that the user is reviewing. The document can be uploaded into the Brief Analysis feature, and in a matter of seconds the tool brings out all the citations along with their treatments. If it's from opposing counsel, it’s easy to see whether they've missed anything – a cited case that has been overturned, for example – and if it’s a draft the user is working on, it confirms the citations are good law. The tool also assesses the document for legal concepts and identifies key passages based on those concepts, the jurisdictions, and the cases cited, and recommends any additional cases that would strengthen the argument, which is “a huge time-saver and builds confidence in the work they’re doing,” Votary says.

“We wanted to ensure users have all the content and tools they need to provide successful outcomes for their clients. We also created things we thought were going to cause excitement, and that people were going to respond well to. When we walk into firms and show them what we’ve built and answer the questions they have, and they say, OK, yeah, we need to look into this, there’s validation for us that the interest is there, and the value is recognized.” Canadian through and through “Lexis+ Canada has all the benefits of LexisNexis’ whole host of solutions, but it's bespoke to Canadian law. An important distinction is that it was built for Canadian lawyers based on their

“Lexis+ Canada has all the benefits of LexisNexis’ whole host of solutions, but it's bespoke to Canadian law. An important distinction is that it was built for Canadian lawyers based on their unique needs”

Collin Smith, LexisNexis Canada

inherently unlimited potential. The solution fits into LexisNexis Canada’s overall strategy when it comes to forging the company’s path into the future.

“Our long-term vision is for it to continue to evolve to help lawyers be more efficient and effective in meeting the needs of their clients, and technology enablement is a critical component of that,” says Wright. “As we think about the future, we want to build on that – continue to extend data-driven insights, legal intelligence, and practical tools for customers and have them all work together. We’re going to continue to invest in new areas where it makes sense, with innovation as the backbone of how we develop products going forward.”

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“We wanted to ensure users have all the content and tools they need to provide successful outcomes for their clients”

Alan Votary, LexisNexis Canada

And it's not just a label, Wright notes: when they say it’s custom-made to fit the needs of Canadian lawyers, “we mean across the country, including the Quebec market, government firms, and firms that operate bilingually.” Votary agrees that one of the platform’s strengths “is the strong Canadian focus across the whole product, while still leveraging the design and simplicity of our global experience,” he adds. An eye to the future Ultimately, Lexis+ Canada was rolled out to meet the needs Canadian lawyers have now. And while it has by all accounts exceeded initial expectations, another key feature is its

in the research section, and when asked a question it evaluates the content of the search and provides an answer based on case law. Yes, it’s a great tool that contributes to efficiency by scanning results for the user, but “it really becomes obvious how different what we're providing here is when people ask us how many questions there are answers for,” Votary says. Lexis Answers goes beyond a standard search-and-retrieve feature: it’s an algorithm running behind the scenes that identifies a question asked, understands what that question is, and mines case law in real time to come back with answers that definitively address that question.

unique needs. It has features exclusive to the Canadian repertoire, such as a built-in French interface and the Legislative Pulse experience, for example, and the content-driven Practical Guidance feature is populated by Canadian lawyers,” Smith said.

Lexis+ Canada’s research homepage

Lexis+ Canada’s Brief Analysis results dashboard

Lexis+ Canada’s Practical Guidance, tools and resources

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