Bloomberg Law

Last month, we shared a blog post that explained Westlaw’s new generative AI features. This month, we’re examining generative AI updates to Bloomberg Law and Lexis+.

Bloomberg Law has recently introduced two AI features. First, users can create summaries of cases and other documents within their search results and engage in interactive follow-up questions using the Bloomberg Law AI Assistant. The system provides suggested questions, but users can also submit inquiries.

Second, Bloomberg Law Answers  now appears at the top of natural language search results. If you select Bloomberg Law Answers, the computer will generate a textual answer to your search query, complete with hypertext links to legal authority.

Consider these best practices when using Bloomberg Law Answers:

• Write a natural language search query because Bloomberg Law Answers is not available when searching with terms and connectors.

• Include jurisdictional information in the text of search queries when seeking jurisdiction-specific law.

• Use precise language when formulating questions.

Lexis+

Lexis+’s AI capabilities have been enhanced by upgrading to Protege, a next-generation generative AI application that replaces Lexis+ AI. You can find the option to use Protege at the top of your screen.

Protege offers enhanced drafting capabilities, including options to draft motions and complaints. Law school access includes many of the same features as the commercial version, including:

• Ask a Legal Question

• Generate a Draft

• Summarize a Case

• Upload Documents

Conclusion

Remember that although generative AI tools can provide valuable assistance, they should complement instead of replace traditional legal research methods. Always thoroughly verify any AI-generated content.

If you logged in to Westlaw this semester, you should have noticed it looks different. Co-Counsel and other generative AI tools are now integrated throughout the platform. Westlaw’s generative AI features are similar to Lexis+ AI, which law students have had access to for the past year.

Lexis+ AI and Westlaw’s AI tools offer distinct advantages over general-purpose AI resources like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude. Because they are designed for practicing attorneys, Lexis+ AI and Westlaw’s AI tools prioritize privacy and security. In the training materials, Westlaw states that it has written its contracts so that neither it nor its third-party partners will use user-provided information to train their models.

Both Lexis+ AI and Westlaw’s general AI research tools use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology. Here is how that works at a very basic level:

1. When you enter a prompt, the system searches the database for relevant legal resources.
2. It then feeds both your prompt and these identified resources to a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT.
3. The LLM generates a conversational response based on this combined input.

This RAG approach significantly reduces the risk of hallucinations (fabricated cases or statutes) since responses are grounded in legal content. While hallucinations are still possible, they are considerably less of a concern than with a typical general-purpose LLM.

That said, you cannot rely solely on the AI-generated results! Although citations to fabricated authority are rare, these tools can still misrepresent case holdings or statutory language. Additionally, they can fail to select the best authority to support a position or miss materials. As Westlaw emphasizes in its marketing materials:

“The AI-generated summary of results above the list of primary law authority can be extraordinarily useful for getting an overview of the issues and pointers to primary authority, but it should never be used to advise a client, write a brief or motion for a court, or otherwise be relied on without doing further research.

Use it to accelerate thorough research. Don’t use it as a replacement for thorough research.”

General Tips

Here are some tips for getting the best results out of Westlaw’s generative AI products.

Provide relevant facts.

Find the sweet spot between including too few and too many facts in your query. In other words, use facts that pertain directly to your legal question without overloading your question with irrelevant facts that could confuse the system. Omit proper names of people or organizations, as these can mislead the AI into focusing on unrelated cases. For example, in an intellectual property case, including a company name like “E-Corp” might cause the system to retrieve irrelevant employment cases involving E-Corp instead of relevant intellectual property cases.

Keep your queries simple.

Avoid structuring your query as a prompt or instruction. You may have seen advice that when using LLMs, you should provide context, such as instructing the computer to role-play an attorney or to locate and summarize relevant cases. Westlaw’s AI is already optimized for legal research, so these additional instructions could have the unintended consequence of reducing the accuracy of the results. Instead, frame your questions naturally, as you would in a conversation with a knowledgeable colleague.

Break down complex fact patterns.

Focus on one issue at a time. Use successive prompts on discrete issues rather than submitting a complex fact pattern with multiple issues and expecting the computer to evaluate all of them simultaneously.

Current Limitations

These are examples of tasks Westlaw’s main AI functionality (i.e., Westlaw AI-Assisted Research) cannot do now. Of course, some of these tasks will likely be available in the future.

• Finding documents by citation, using terms and connectors queries, or providing analytics
• Identifying “all the cases” on a particular topic
• Locating applicable local rules
• Filtering results, such as only cases from a particular court, time frame, or judge
• Performing tasks like summarizing a case, emailing results to someone else, etc.
• Drafting a particular legal document, such as a motion or brief

Please note that Co-Counsel, which is described below, can perform some related tasks like drafting documents and creating summaries of given documents.

Specific AI-Related Tools

Westlaw AI-Assisted Research

This is the AI prompt you see when you first log in to Westlaw Precision. It provides an alternative to using terms and connectors or natural language queries to identify documents. When you provide your research question, the system responds with a textual summary that is annotated with references to primary law materials.

• How to use AI-Assisted Research with confidence (Video)
• AI-Assisted Research Privacy and Security (Video)
• Tips for searching with AI-Assisted Research (PDF)

AI Jurisdictional Survey

This skill can be found in Key Features on the Westlaw Precision homepage. It generates a multi-jurisdiction survey of statutes or regulations based on a natural language query.

• How to create an AI Jurisdictional Survey (Video)

Practical Law

This skill is part of Practical Law. It finds and summarizes information from Practical Law.

• How to use Search & Summarize Practical Law (Video)
• Understanding Search & Summarize Practical Law (PDF)

Claims Explorer

This skill can be found in Key Features on the Westlaw Precision homepage. It can help you identify state and federal law claims, counterclaims, and defenses based on a given fact pattern.

• How to find claims (Video)
• How to find counterclaims (Video)
• How to assess potential liability (Video)
• Tips for writing an effective Claims Explorer query (PDF)
• How to find defenses to claims (Video)

Co-Counsel

The link to Co-Counsel is found at the top right side of the screen. Co-Counsel includes skills beyond traditional legal research. For example, you can add your own documents to Co-Counsel and it will summarize information, compare documents, or create a timeline. Co-Counsel will also draft legal documents or suggest deposition questions based on a prompt.

• Navigate Co-Counsel (Video)
• How to create a database (Video)
• Search a database (Video)
• Summarize (Video)
• Timeline (Video)
• Review Documents Skill (Video)
• Compare documents (Video)
• Draft (Video)
• Prepare for a Deposition (Video)