Ever since the introduction of Microsoft Copilot, AI is quickly being woven into the workplace and people's daily work habits. Three-quarters of global knowledge workers already use it, and more than 80% say AI helps them save time, focus on important work, and be more creative, according to the Microsoft 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report. This presents a huge opportunity for partners that provide software—also referred to as independent software vendors (ISVs). They can now integrate their products directly into employees’ workflows alongside AI early in the adoption curve and establish their apps as vital to the new AI-powered way of working.
Global information and analytics company LexisNexis® is seizing this opportunity and taking multiple paths to bring the power of AI to their customers. First, they are leveraging the extensibility features of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, which connect apps to Copilot to extend its skills and knowledge. They are also working on a custom engine copilot for Microsoft Teams, as well as exploring additional integrations across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for the future.
Their approach serves as an example to other partners interested in benefiting from this opportunity to plan and accelerate their own AI development.
LexisNexis meets legal professionals where they work—in Microsoft 365
A key segment of business for LexisNexis is creating solutions for legal clients, both corporate employees and legal professionals, whose work revolves around Microsoft 365 apps. LexisNexis offers several add-ins for Microsoft Word, including its flagship legal document drafting solution, Lexis® Create, and Lexis® Create+ with enriched capabilities, including firm document management system (DMS) connectivity and generative AI capabilities built right in. LexisNexis also offers apps for Teams, including Ask Legal and Lexis® Connect.
Due to customers' reliance on the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, LexisNexis made strategic bets in becoming an early adopter of products like Copilot for Microsoft 365, according to Serena Wellen, Vice President of Product Management at LexisNexis.
"As a provider of intelligent solutions that leverage AI, as well as our vast collection of legal content, we want to be where our customers are working," Wellen says. "Our efforts in the Microsoft ecosystem, and in Copilot in particular, are targeted to providing the essential value that our users need in the place where they're most productive."
The early-adopter approach offers LexisNexis the chance to take advantage of Microsoft tools and capabilities before they are generally released, so they can get early feedback and help customers incorporate new technology into their processes after release. Not only does that improve customers' daily work, but it also makes LexisNexis products stickier.
Consequently, LexisNexis is developing a Copilot for Microsoft 365 extension for Ask Legal, which expands Copilot's capabilities by bringing LexisNexis' leading functionality to users' fingertips. In the conversational experience with Copilot in Teams, corporate employees will be able to query the Ask Legal extension to get instant legal answers based on their company policy documents and stay up to date on legal requests and past records.
Custom engine copilots can bolster the value of your AI development
In addition to Copilot extensions, there's another powerful way to bring AI capabilities to customers inside the Microsoft environment: custom engine copilots. These copilots are standalone, conversational Teams bots built using the partner's own custom large language model (LLM) and orchestrators. They help partners connect customers to their specialized AI platforms via the familiar Teams experience, without using Microsoft Copilot.
LexisNexis has developed a proprietary generative AI platform, Lexis+ AI, and building a custom engine copilot provides a way to connect it to the Microsoft ecosystem. With the custom engine copilot in Teams, legal pros will be able to access the Lexis+ AI platform that caters to their specific demands and scenarios. The platform's generative AI capabilities can help summarize and analyze legal papers, draft many types of legal documents, and use conversational search to draw on LexisNexis' massive library of fully referenced legal resources.
The custom engine copilot is built using UX components, such as AI labels, citations, and feedback buttons, within bot messages to foster transparency and trust. To improve user engagement, LexisNexis also added streaming responses and suggested prompts, which provide recommendations for default actions users can take. Delivering these industry-specific capabilities in user-friendly ways within Microsoft productivity apps makes the Lexis+ AI platform even more valuable to users.
Accelerate and simplify your AI development with Microsoft resources
For ISVs looking to follow their lead, LexisNexis emphasizes the importance of understanding the requirements of developing a custom engine copilot versus a Copilot extension. Custom engine copilots have more flexibility for modifications and tailoring, but partners are completely responsible for LLM model selection and orchestration. LexisNexis had already developed their own model and orchestration for the Lexis+ AI platform, so both integration types were achievable and valuable for them. Partners without that LLM experience may want to start by building Copilot extensions, which are not as customizable but can be developed quickly by leveraging the message extensions in existing Teams apps.
In addition, LexisNexis uses a variety of Microsoft resources to speed up and simplify the development process.
- Bot Framework Software Development Kit (SDK): This is a comprehensive framework for building bots and conversational AI experiences. LexisNexis developers leverage this framework to create the custom engine copilot in Teams.
- GitHub Copilot: This AI coding assistant helps developers write code faster with less effort. LexisNexis uses it to help customize the app manifest, which provides the inputs to determine how the bot responds within Teams.
- Teams AI library: Built on top of the Bot Framework SDK, this resource extends the SDK's capabilities to help ISVs quickly create intelligent apps for Teams. LexisNexis uses the library's prebuilt, reusable code snippets to make development of the custom engine copilot easier.
LexisNexis also touts the Teams app store submission process, which has safeguards that help ensure a higher-quality app. In addition, they praise how the side-by-side combination of LexisNexis security and Microsoft Entra ID security helps them protect customer content, which is critical when working with the legal industry.
LexisNexis offers a bold vision for AI and the legal industry
LexisNexis is excited to release their Copilot extension and custom engine copilot this November. They are also exploring other valuable ways to integrate with Microsoft 365 experiences going forward.
LexisNexis envisions a future for legal professionals that mirrors what Microsoft is working toward for the broader workplace—personal AI assistants. In August, LexisNexis unveiled Protégé™, a legal AI assistant built on the Lexis+ AI platform. Like Copilot, it will work seamlessly alongside users in LexisNexis solutions and Microsoft apps like Word, Outlook, and Teams to reduce app switching time and accelerate efficiency.
"This marks the next major milestone in our customer-led AI product development journey," Wellen says. "We are thrilled to announce the third generation of Lexis+ AI, featuring new capabilities powered by customer document management system integration, an incredible expansion of use cases individually tailored to each user, and integration across LexisNexis products and Microsoft 365."
Learn more about LexisNexis, Copilot extensions, and custom copilots
For more information about Copilot and LexisNexis, visit the links below.