Improved Profit From Increased Attorney Capacity

Evidence and data. Interviewees said more senior attorneys use Lexis+ AI to support their own research and drafting tasks and that they ask specific legal questions to get to the expected quality of answer or draft of a document sooner. The tasks supported by Lexis+ AI were characterized as routine or administrative responsibilities that were not billed to clients. Therefore, the organizations redistributed the time saved on these tasks to more client work.  

• The CIO at a large law firm with $231 million in annual revenue ran a survey across current users of Lexis+ AI and identified that, for research-related tasks, attorneys saved 1 to 2 hours per task but conceded that the volume of tasks performed with the tool per week varied greatly. The same interviewee provided an example of a legal question that an attorney might ask the tool to produce a final deliverable sooner: They said, “An attorney might need a specific clause to enact a force majeure that would cover the client if the services had to do with a particular industry.” In this scenario, the attorney would build the question in Lexis+ AI to determine what the clause would need to contain contextually and then used the tool to start drafting the appropriate language.

• The same interviewee said senior attorneys saw efficiencies from fewer handoffs with junior associates, which means more senior attorneys gained the ability to take on more research work themselves and accelerate turnaround times: “[Lexis+ AI] can do a pretty good job of doing what a first-year associate might do from a research perspective in giving [an attorney] a good starting point. We’ve heard that multiple times. [Lexis+ AI] can get you started much more rapidly than maybe the traditional way would have to get you that first draft of a research memo.”

• The information and research senior manager at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue also noted that genAI tools and Lexis+ AI specifically are driving interest from senior attorneys to take on more research themselves: “Generative AI features have reenergized the interest in these products. For example, partners are getting more interested, and they’re coming to more training sessions than they did before we had generative AI. Renewed vigor around these exciting innovations in the products has meant that we’re finding very senior partners wanting to do research and learn the genAI tools to see how the time savings can be realized."

• The CIO at a large law firm with $231 million in annual revenue estimated that for drafting use cases, attorneys save 5 to 15 minutes each time they use the tool to start a draft.

• The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue saw similar time savings for current drafting use cases. However, they also indicated they expect these time savings to expand over time as more attorneys use the tool to draft longer documents. They said: “Lawyers have been using the drafting functionality to draft short things, whether it might be a very specific type of clause that they didn’t have a precedent for, short emails, or memos to clients with updates on new legislation or new cases. However, we are seeing [with new iterations of Lexis+ AI] that you can draft longer documents; not something that’s 100 pages long, but something that might be 50 pages long. I’d really like to see how we embed that in the practices going forward.”

• The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue tied the time savings on particular research and drafting tasks to an opportunity to focus more time on billable work for the firm: “I hear from attorneys that [Lexis+ AI] is saving some of their time spent on nonbillable matters — whether it’s keeping clients up to date on new case law regulations or the kind of thing that might not be billable [and that] they still need to do in their day to day. [Lexis+ AI] is freeing up that time to focus on billable work.”

• The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue discussed the impact to quality for the work delivered with Lexis+ AI: “When you’re drafting documents and AI suggests counter arguments, or if you ask [Lexis+ AI] how to make a brief more persuasive or how to make the clause in a contract more buyer-friendly or seller-friendly to be prepared for negotiation, I think that contributes to higher quality client service.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Forty percent of the firm’s attorneys (including partners) have more than five years experience at the organization and are considered senior associates.

• Senior attorneys adopt Lexis+ AI more conservatively than junior associates do, with 25% of senior attorneys using the tool in Year 1, 35% using it in Year 2, and 45% using it in Year 3.

• Because senior attorneys are more specialized than junior associates, 50% of the users are litigation attorneys and 50% are transactional attorneys.

• Given the type of work the attorneys complete most often, the research function appeals more to the composite’s litigation attorneys and the drafting function appeals more to the composite’s transactional attorneys.

• The composite’s litigation attorneys save 1.5 hours per week on research activities with Lexis+ AI for the duration of the investment period.

• With Lexis+ AI, the composite’s transactional attorneys save 15 minutes per week in Year 1. As the quality of the drafting tool improves over time and attorneys use it to draft longer form documents, the time savings scale to 30 minutes per week in Year 2 and to 1 hour per week by Year 3.

• The firm redistributes 50% of the time savings to additional client work. The remaining 50% is either already billable for the firm or is redistributed to new tasks that are not billable (e.g., business development responsibilities).

• The average billable rate for a senior associate or partner is $910 in Year 1, and this grows by 10% each year in line with market adjustments.

• The firm’s profit margin is 25%.

Risks. Improved profit from increased attorney capacity may vary depending on the following:

• The percentage of attorneys with five years of experience or more at the firm as well as the adoption of Lexis+ AI by these attorneys.

• The breakdown of attorneys by major practice areas and the application of the tool across their associated workflows.

• The typical amount of time spent on research and drafting activities that are impacted by Lexis+ AI.

• The billable rates for senior attorneys and partners and the percentage increase experienced annually.

• The firm’s annual revenue and associated profit margin.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.8 million.

Improved Client Fee Recovery

Evidence and data. Interviewees said that because their firms were early adopters of Lexis+ AI, the tool lent itself most organically to research workflows. This was especially true for the types of research activities that attorneys typically take on themselves versus the more complex or niche projects they often pass to supporting research staff. With that context, the most common users were the junior associates who performed these tasks more often than senior associates or partners who were already specialized in a practice area.

Moreover, interviewees indicated that most clients will not pay for research, especially research conducted by junior associates. The perspective was that more junior associates spent additional time educating themselves on topics and coming up the learning curve, which extended research timelines. Interviewees said that before using Lexis+ AI, research hours for junior associates were not billed to the client and were therefore written off for the firm. With Lexis+ AI, junior associates reduced the time spent on research projects to ultimately reduce write-offs for the firm and get to billable work sooner. Interviewees indicated that by reallocating the time that was previously written off to conducting billable work, associates generated additional profit for their firms.

• The director of research at a large law firm with more than $100 million in annual revenue said junior associates use Lexis+ AI to educate themselves in areas of the law with which they were not familiar. The same interviewee said Lexis+ AI helped their firm reduce associate write-offs for excessive time spent on research tasks because clients typically do not pay for research. 

• The CIO at a large law firm with $231 million in annual revenue had a different perspective on the research efficiencies for junior associates: “[More senior attorneys use the tool to] get the lay of the land before assigning work to an associate. For example, they used [Lexis+ AI] to identify the most promising cases for associates to explore.” The interviewee said this practice helped set up associates for success in their research ventures and accelerated turnaround times. This, in turn, accelerated the time to billable hours. The CIO indicated that their firm’s clients also typically do not pay for research, so expediting time spent on related tasks can be redirected to more billable work.  

• The information and research senior manager at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue reiterated the impact for their firm if junior attorneys use the tool effectively: “What I have been thinking more about is decreasing the number of write-offs in billings to clients. Research can often be written off. A lot of junior attorney work is also subject to write-offs, whether it’s document reviews or general research, etc.” The same interviewee cited large write-offs in these areas and anticipated billing back up to 50% of that time to recover additional client fees for the firm. They also said they saw the time savings as an opportunity for junior associates to more often dive into higher-value and more complex work.

• The CKO at a large law firm with $3.8 billion in annual revenue indicated that junior associates saw the value of using Lexis+ AI in their own career trajectories and said 58% of total users are junior associates. They also stated that most of the research conducted was not paid for by clients as it would not be considered “complex” or “novel”. Together, the large volume of junior associates who use Lexis+ AI and the type of research conducted reflected a large opportunity to improve client bill-back at the firm.  

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Sixty percent of the firm’s attorneys have less than five years of experience and therefore fall into the bucket of junior associates.

• Associates at the composite firm adopt Lexis+ AI with more gusto than more experienced attorneys, with 50% of associates using the tool in Year 1. Adoption rates continue to rise during each year of the investment to reach 75% in Year 2 and 90% in Year 3.

• Each year, the composite writes off 200 hours per associate because they are research hours that cannot be billed to the client either due to the level of complexity of the work or the amount of time that was spent.

• The composite’s bill rate for junior associates starts at $550 in Year 1 and rises by 10% each year to reflect rising market values.

• With Lexis+ AI, associates at the composite firm become more efficient at research tasks, and they redistribute 15% of that time previously spent to billable work in Year 1. That increases to 25% in Year 2 and to 35% in Year 3 as associates get more facile with the tool and more confident in their ability to redistribute time to client work.

• The firm’s profit margin is 25%.

Risks. Improved client fee recovery may vary depending on the following:

• The percentage of associates with less than five years at the firm as well as the adoption of Lexis+ AI by these associates.

• The annual amount of time written off on research-related tasks for junior associates.

• The billable rates for junior associates and the percentage increase experienced annually.

• The firm’s annual revenue and associated profit margin.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 25%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $6.2 million.

Time Savings For Research Resources

Evidence and data. The interviewees said their organizations deployed Lexis+ AI to research staff to further support the research function and that these resources used the research capabilities to request and refine legal questions and build better-quality research projects. The time savings for research resources were redistributed to more value-added work by further supporting the increased capacity to take on more client work.

• The director of research at a large law firm with more than $100 million in annual revenue estimated that research projects that previously took research resources between 3 and 5 hours take about an hour with Lexis+ AI.

• The information and research senior manager at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue estimated time savings for librarians of between 4 and 5 hours per week. They stated: “Time savings for researchers [in research workflows] mirror those for lawyers to save time when researchers must sift through a lot of case law or when they get a research request on something new that they haven’t encountered before. [Lexis+ AI] offers a good starting point and is a large time saver.”

• The CKO at a large law firm with $3.8 billion in annual revenue discussed the impact of Lexis+ AI on the quality of research conducted. They said that while researchers are experts on research and do it regularly, they also get a lot of requests with short turnaround times: “We are too busy to take a ‘scorched earth’ approach to every request we receive. The benefit [of having Lexis+ AI] is in finding the ‘needle in the haystack’ or getting to the niche findings much faster.”  

• Interviewees said they expect their firms to better meet client expectations with the higher-quality research findings and accelerated timelines experienced with Lexis+ AI. The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue discussed the impact to client service: “I know [what Lexis+ AI provides is] a starting point but, with a better starting point, sometimes you find something that’s surfaced that you’ve missed. In that way, [Lexis+ AI] must enhance client service quite significantly by making sure there’s no point unturned. It helps you feel confident that you’ve got the results you need.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Fifteen librarians and researchers at the firm support the research function in North America.

• With Lexis+ AI, these resources save an average of 4.5 hours per week on research activities. Based on 50 working weeks in the year, each research resource saves 225 hours annually.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a researcher or librarian is $104,000. Based on 2,080 working hours per year, that totals a fully burdened hourly rate of $50.

Risks. Time savings for research resources may vary depending on the following:

• The number of research resources impacted at the firm as well as the type of resource that performs a particular research function. Resource types can include researchers, librarians, and knowledge management attorneys.

• The size and level of complexity of the research projects handed off to supporting staff compared to those conducted by practicing attorneys at the firm. 

• The adoption of Lexis+ AI by supporting research staff in terms of both volumes of users as well as the functionality utilized.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $399,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Having a competitive edge in the market for talent. Interviewees discussed Lexis+ AI as a timesaving tool for their firms. They said that while most of the time savings were redistributed to value-added work, some went to individual career development or even to enabling shorter workdays or workweeks for attorneys. The director of research at a large law firm with more than $100 million in annual revenue said, “If attorneys can get to 40 hours sooner in the week, they can have more work/life balance.”
  
  Additionally, many interviewees’ firms embarked on the investment journey with Lexis+ AI to meet goals around genAI deployments. These firms felt that genAI technology was going to eventually become a baseline expectation from attorneys in terms of the tools available to them to do their jobs effectively. Many firms already felt the pressure to include genAI training as part of the onboarding process for new associates given their early exposure in law school to many genAI solutions, including Lexis+ AI. The director of research at a large law firm with more than $100 million in annual revenue stated: “[New associates] are going to come to the firm already knowing how to use Lexis+ AI from school. We also must consider lateral associates who come to us from competitive firms that may not have been using genAI solutions or the same genAI solutions that we do. It makes us hyper-aware of what we consider to be mandatory training during [the onboarding process].”
  
  Most interviewees said their firm desired to get ahead of that expectation by becoming an early adopter of genAI technology. The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue tied that objective to an inherent competitive edge, stating: “If our firm is using leading edge technology, we’re seen at the forefront of firms in our space. And there is a competitive advantage to that.” Interviewees also said their firms benefitted from the additional runway to configure their genAI deployment strategies and associated trainings to account for the variable levels of awareness and exposure to such solutions for incoming talent and current employees.  

• Improving client delivery and increasing client satisfaction. Interviewees tied better quality outputs derived from Lexis+ AI and the accelerated delivery timelines to higher client satisfaction. Some interviewees went as far as to link that higher client satisfaction to better firm performance, such as through more cases won, more share of wallet at existing clients, and more customer acquisition.

• Increasing confidence in genAI deployments from enhanced security and training support. Interviewees said they desired to deploy genAI widely across their firms, but they needed to do so safely. To meet these objectives, the interviewees expected genAI tools and solutions to meet strict security standards, and they also expected vendors to assist in training support for the intended user bases. The director of research and information at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue said: “It was important for our infosec team to know that if we uploaded data to this system, it wasn’t going to stay there, it’s gone as soon as the session is done. It was also important that the genAI tools [we implement at the firm] aren’t going to learn from our data, because we can’t have that [data] shared.” Lexis+ AI met those security and governance standards set forward by infosec teams to lend more confidence in an enterprisewide deployment of the tool. Additionally, interviewees cited robust training support provided by the LexisNexis team to assist in early deployments as well as ongoing support as new features or product iterations are rolled out.  

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Lexis+ AI and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Changes to billing or leverage models. Interviewees said they recognized that genAI tools are going to impact the way attorneys work in the future, and they expect to see operational changes to support the new way of working. The CKO at a large law firm with $3.8 billion in annual revenue saw a future shift in their organization’s approach to capacity management. They stated, “In the future, our leverage model will have to change.” Interviewees said that with Lexis+ AI, they anticipate that junior attorneys’ time would become more valuable to the firm. The modeled impact for the composite organization is up to $8,741 profit per junior attorney from client fee recovery by the third year of the investment, and interviewees said the added value per attorney opens new opportunities to manage capacity internally. The director of research at a large law firm with more than $100 million in annual revenue said they expect their organization to move away from billable hours in the future and start charging flat rates.

• Expanded applications and use cases. Many of the interviewees’ organizations were in the early days of adoption of Lexis+ AI, but they were already thinking about future applications and use cases. The CIO at a large law firm with $231 million in annual revenue said their organization is focused internally on the legal department and hopes to bring more attorneys from different practice areas into the mix. The director of research and information at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue said their organization wanted to expand use outside of the legal function to more business support functions, such as for marketing departments: “I have been thinking of marketing use cases [for Lexis+ AI] such as drafting pitch decks or identifying potential clients or areas of the business to pursue from a business development perspective.” That sentiment was shared by the director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue. They said: “We are focusing on expanding the use of [LexisNexis] beyond core legal content to broader legal tech solutions. We want attorneys to look at [LexisNexis] not just for legal research, but also to have genAI embedded across all attorney workflows.” The director of knowledge for research at a large law firm with $3 billion in annual revenue projected that when their organization adds genAI to the [Lexis]Nexis side of the business to focus on global news and business events, it will be a huge boost for business development efforts. They stated, “If there was AI summarization, [the ability to] ask a question, [and] all those great features for the business, then that would really ramp up the client-development side and translate into client growth for the firm.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).