New Zealand law firms are entering a new phase with legal AI. LexisNexis Protégé is moving the conversation beyond research shortcuts and faster drafting toward end-to-end workflow transformation. In-house teams are taking on proactive advisory roles, while private practice firms rethink how matters progress from start to finish. Trust, jurisdictional accuracy and data governance determine which tools legal professionals can actually rely on.
LexisNexis Protégé is a personalised AI assistant built for legal professionals. It supports research, document drafting, contract review and analysis, with outputs grounded in authoritative LexisNexis content and verified through CaseBase. A dedicated New Zealand version is built and reviewed by New Zealand-trained lawyers. Lindsay O'Connor, general manager of content for the Pacific region and content strategy for APAC at LexisNexis, is clear about the localisation commitment: 'Everything that we do for New Zealand customers is specifically done in a New Zealand jurisdictional-specific version of the product. It's not built for Australia or the US. We localise it specifically for New Zealand, and it's reviewed specifically by New Zealand lawyers.' That jurisdictional grounding separates Protégé from tools built for other markets and later adapted.
Finding a case faster or summarising a document is now close to standard practice for many firms. O'Connor says expectations have moved well past that. 'We've moved on a lot from AI can help you with research or AI can help you summarise things,' she says. 'Lawyers' expectations are really evolving quite quickly to things that are not basic anymore.' The bigger opportunity, she argues, is workflow-wide: 'The biggest opportunity is not doing the same work faster. It's enabling lawyers to do more valuable work with the same resources.' The global legal AI market supports that trajectory, projected to grow from US$1.45 billion in 2024 to US$3.90 billion by 2030. New Zealand firms that treat AI as a research shortcut alone are likely to fall behind that curve.
In-house lawyers face distinct pressure. Their time is scarce, external counsel spend is under scrutiny and the expectation that legal functions act as strategic business partners is growing. In New Zealand, in-house teams are increasingly using AI to monitor regulatory changes, assess which contracts may be affected and brief stakeholders early. O'Connor says the shift goes beyond efficiency: 'For in-house legal teams, AI can help shift the role of legal from reactive problem-solver to proactive business partner.' She sees private practice following the same path: 'I think the next wave of that is … private practice lawyers … becoming much more proactive business and risk advisers to their clients.' The distinction between the two sectors is narrowing as AI broadens what both can offer clients.
General-purpose AI tools were not built with legal practice in mind. They may lack current legal content, jurisdictional awareness or the auditability that professional environments require. O'Connor is direct about the distinction: 'In legal practice, a convincing answer is not enough. Lawyers need an answer they can verify and trust in court.' LexisNexis maintains a continuously updated data repository covering Primary Law, proprietary research content and practical guidance. New court decisions are typically available in Protégé within 24 hours of receipt from the court. O'Connor draws a sharp contrast: 'Without authoritative content, AI can generate answers. With authoritative content, it can support professional legal work.' That gap between a convincing answer and a verifiable one is precisely what general tools cannot reliably bridge for lawyers with professional obligations.
LexisNexis employs a team of New Zealand-trained lawyers organised under a Data Discovery and Enrichment team, established approximately 12 months ago. The team runs example prompts through Protégé, assesses every response against accuracy, jurisdictional specificity and practical utility, then feeds improvement recommendations to the data science team. The same prompts are re-run to confirm improvements before new capabilities reach customers. O'Connor acknowledges one persistent technical challenge: 'Algorithms can't always prioritise what is the most important.' More recent cases do not always mean more significant, and teaching AI to handle court hierarchy correctly is an ongoing process. Each update to Protégé is therefore tested against real New Zealand legal scenarios before deployment, rather than relying on general model improvements to deliver local accuracy.
Data governance sits alongside accuracy as a key concern for legal teams evaluating AI tools. LexisNexis offers Vaults, which allow users to store their own documents on secure servers in Sydney, meeting Australian and New Zealand data sovereignty requirements. O'Connor urges lawyers to ask providers specific questions before committing: where is data stored, is it used to retrain the model and how often is content updated? 'Governance is not a barrier to AI adoption,' she says. 'It is what makes AI adoption possible.' LexisNexis applies AI through its Artificial Intelligence Management System, covering model transparency, testing, monitoring and adherence to the RELX Responsible AI Principles. Those questions are not optional due diligence, they are the foundation of responsible AI use in any legal practice.
The New Zealand Law Society and New Zealand courts have both issued guidance making clear that professional responsibility does not diminish because AI assisted in producing the work. O'Connor frames the lawyer's role as supervisory rather than passive. 'The lawyer of the future is not replaced by AI,' she says. 'The lawyer of the future supervises, directs and validates AI-assisted work.' On sceptics within the profession, O'Connor is measured: 'I think the sceptics are sceptics because they're nervous. And I don't necessarily see being nervous about AI as a bad thing, because it means that they are taking their obligations as a lawyer very seriously.' She argues that transparency from providers is the most effective tool for building genuine confidence among practitioners who take those obligations seriously.
Lindsay O'Connor: general manager of content for the Pacific region and content strategy for APAC, LexisNexis; central to development of LexisNexis Protégé for legal professionals; oversees New Zealand jurisdictional localisation and the Data Discovery and Enrichment team.
