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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

Cripps—Radius Law

Cripps—Radius Law

Commercial and technology practice boosted by team hire

Switalskis—Grimsby

Switalskis—Grimsby

Firm expands with new Grimsby office to serve North East Lincolnshire

Slater Heelis—Will Newman & Lucy Spilsbury

Slater Heelis—Will Newman & Lucy Spilsbury

Property team boosted by two solicitor appointments

NEWS
A High Court ruling involving the Longleat estate has exposed the fault line between modern family building and historic trust drafting. Writing in NLJ this week, Charlotte Coyle, director and family law expert at Freeths, examines Cator v Thynn [2026] EWHC 209 (Ch), where trustees sought approval to modernise trusts that retain pre-1970 definitions of ‘child’, ‘grandchild’ and ‘issue’
Fresh proposals to criminalise ‘nudification’ apps, prioritise cyberflashing and non-consensual intimate images, and even ban under-16s from social media have reignited debate over whether the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA 2023) is fit for purpose. Writing in NLJ this week, Alexander Brown, head of technology, media and telecommunications, and Alexandra Webster, managing associate, Simmons & Simmons, caution against reactive law-making that could undermine the Act’s ‘risk-based and outcomes-focused’ design
Recent allegations surrounding Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have reignited scrutiny of the ancient common law offence of misconduct in public office. Writing in NLJ this week, Simon Parsons, teaching fellow at Bath Spa University, asks whether their conduct could clear a notoriously high legal hurdle
A landmark ruling has reshaped child clinical negligence claims. Writing in NLJ this week, Jodi Newton, head of birth and paediatric negligence at Osbornes Law, explains how the Supreme Court in CCC v Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2026] UKSC 5 has overturned Croke v Wiseman, ending the long-standing bar on children recovering ‘lost years’ earnings
A Court of Appeal ruling has drawn a firm line under party autonomy in arbitration. Writing in NLJ this week, Masood Ahmed, associate professor at the University of Leicester, analyses Gluck v Endzweig [2026] EWCA Civ 145, where a clause allowing arbitrators to amend an award ‘at any time’ was held incompatible with the Arbitration Act 1996
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