Lexis+ Protégé

Benefits

• Ask a legal question using natural language, rather than potentially unfamiliar and complex legal terminology.
• Responses are drawn from authoritative content published by LexisNexis, eliminating the risk of hallucinated references that do not exist. 
• Acts as a great stating point, suggesting potentially relevant legal principles, cases, and legislation.
• Links you to specific chapter and paragraphs of relevant secondary sources to learn more about a topic from legal experts. 
• Provides suggestions for related research questions to pursue.

Limitations

• It is not a comprehensive legal research tool, as it only draws from sources published by LexisNexis. 
• While references will not be hallucinated, Protégé may still misrepresent or misinterpret a source leading to incorrect content being presented. 
• Responses are based on a small selection of sources that Protégé has assessed as relevant. It is unclear how relevance is determined and which primary sources are prioritised. It may miss relevant sources or draw from a source that is not relevant.
• It may oversimplify complex issues or miss nuance in legal analysis. 
• It may not fully account for jurisdictional differences, recent developments, or specific factual scenarios.

Ask

Ask a legal question and receive an AI-generated response, based on LexisNexis legal sources. 

How it works: Protégé first analyses the prompt and then uses retrieval augmented retrieval to find relevant sources. It starts by searching for primary sources and then looks for secondary sources. The response is based only on the content from these sources. 

When to use: This is the primary way of engaging with Protégé and can be used for legal-related questions. 

AI-guided research

Provides a plan for working through your request, that you can confirm or alter as needed. 

How it works: This mode starts by 'reasoning' through your request to identify what is required and how the answer should be sought. It gives you a plan for how it will approach searching for relevant content, which you can edit or accept. It then searches for relevant sources, which again you can edit or accept. A response is then generated from this content. 

When to use: Use this mode if you want more control. The reasoning and suggested steps can also be useful when brainstorming a legal question.

General AI

Uses general AI models to generate a response. You can choose the model and the content it will draw from - LexisNexis or the web.

How it works: This option starts by reviewing your request - this is a general analysis only, as the models are not legally trained. The response is drawn from the content you have selected.

When to use: Useful for non-legal requests or for a plain-English response. For legal questions, follow up by using Ask or AI-guided research, using the background provided by General AI to help you frame better questions and analyse the responses. 

Working with Protégé is a little different from working with other GenAI tools. Follow these tips for better responses. 

While Protégé is specifically designed for legal work and draws from authoritative content, it may still miss or mispresent sources and legal principles (see limitations above). As such, responses should always be verified. 

To verify responses, it is recommended that you:

• Open the source preview to see an extract of the original source.
• Click on the link to go to the original source. Look for the full context and ensure the text was not misrepresented. 
• Click on 'View related material' to see a wider list of relevant sources. 

• It is from my jurisdiction?
  
• If not, can I still use it? Does it have persuasive value?
• Is there more authoritative law? e.g. from a higher court, or from legislation.
• Is it still law? e.g. has the legislation been updated, how has the case been treated.
  For legislation, go to the legislation website for the jurisdiction to access the original source to check.
  For cases, click on the link to view the CaseBase record, which contains a list of cases referring to the case. 
• Is there more law? Are there any legal principles that may have been missed? e.g. exception, defences, remedies?
  Check the 'View related material' for links to Halsbury's Laws of Australia or a commentary service. Browse the surrounding sections within these sources to see related legal principles. 
   

Protégé is great at some legal research tasks, and not so great at others. 

The following two guides provide practical advice for actioning legal research tasks, such as:

• Searching for cases and legislation related to a legal issue
• Locating current or authorised versions of primary sources
• Finding references to legislation and judgments (updating)
• Finding sources to help interpret primary sources

Each task indicates if Protégé is useful, with tips on prompting and verifying content. 
 

Protégé draws from all Australian content published by LexisNexis. This includes:

• Report series published by LexisNexis (e.g. Australian Law Reports)
• Unreported Judgements (full text of unedited decisions of higher courts and tribunals)
• LawNow Legislation (full text of Acts, subordinate legislation, and bills)
• Reference sources (Halsbury’s Laws of Australia, Encyclopaedic Australian Legal Dictionary)
• Secondary sources (commentary services, journals)

It does not cover sources from other publishers, such as Thomson Reuters (Westlaw), CCH (CCH iKnowConnect) and HeinOnline. These should be searched separately, as appropriate. Refer to the Law Resources Guide to identify relevant tools for your information need. 

As mentioned above, Protégé draws from all content published by LexisNexis. This includes sources that we do not subscribe to, as they are not relevant to the learning, teaching and research needs of the university.

Extracts of and references to will be included in responses, but you won’t be able to access the full-text to verify the information.

You can ask Protégé follow-up questions about the content of these sources, but again you won’t be able to check if the responses misrepresent the original source in any way. 

No.

Protégé does not hallucinate citations. This is one of the advantages of Protégé over GenAI tools such as Copilot Chat and ChatGPT.

When not linked to a web search, these tools simply generate references based on patterns from its training data. This means they have the potential to 'hallucinate' references - filling in gaps with what they identify as the most likely next word or part of a citation. When you (or the person marking your assignment) go to locate the reference, you discover that it does not actually exist.

Protégé does not have this problem. This is because it draws from sources hosted on the Lexis+ database, rather than relying on patterns from training data. 

This is a very good question.

Even though Protégé draws from authoritative content and has been trained specifically for legal work, it can still get things wrong. 

See 'Limitations' above for more information.
 

This depends on your assessment instructions. 

Even though access to Protégé is provided by the University, you still need to check whether it is OK to use this tool and what you can use it for. 

For example, it might be OK to use Protégé to help identify relevant sources to use in your reference list. However, it might not be OK to use the responses it generates.

If you are unsure, ask your topic coordinator.

First, check if this is required - and check what level of use you need to acknowledge. For example, do you need to indicate if you:

• Used Protégé to find relevant sources to use in your reference list.
• Used the response and suggested follow-up questions to help your understanding.
• Used the response as a source of information (see 'How do I cite a response from Protégé below).

If you do need to acknowledge your use of Protégé  follow any instructions you have been provided on how to acknowledge use of artificial intelligence tools.

If no instructions are given, you can follow the guidelines on acknowledging use of AI, recommended by the Student Learning Support Service.

If you are unsure, ask your topic coordinator.

First, consider the appropriateness of referencing the response. If you need to provide evidence or support for your work, it is recommended that you follow the links to the relevant source and reference the original work.

The Australian Guide to Legal Citation does not provide guidelines for referencing generative artificial intelligence. A variation of Rule 7.2 Written correspondence should be used. For more information, please refer to the AGLC guide on GenAI from the University of Melbourne.

Footnote

Output from Protégé, LexisNexis to [recipient], [day month year].

Footnote with prompt information

Discursive text may be used in the footnote to provide information about the prompts used to generate the response, in accordance with Rule 1.1.5. Full details can be provided in an appendix.

Output from Protégé, LexisNexis to [recipient], [day month year]. The output was generated in response to the prompt, ‘[text of prompt or first prompt if part of a conversation]’: see below Appendix [corresponding letter].

Bibliography

LexisNexis, Protégé to [your name], Output, [day month year].