Who can use this feature?
👤 This feature is currently available only to In-house legal and Administrator roles. It is not available to business users.
LawVu Assistant helps legal teams work more efficiently in LawVu using natural language. Instead of navigating through multiple screens, you can ask questions, find information, create records, and complete common tasks directly from the Assistant.
In this article:
What can LawVu Assistant help with?
The capabilities below highlight the Assistant's core functionality and will continue to expand over time.
Area | What You Can Do |
Search Matters | Find matters by name, type, status, date range, or any combination of criteria |
View Matter Details | Get a summary including status, team members, key dates, and recent activity |
Create Matters | The assistant guides you through matter creation conversationally, collecting required fields before asking for your approval |
Update Matters | Modify matter fields, status, or team membership |
Manage Matter Team Members | Add or remove team members from a matter |
Search Contracts | Find contracts by party, type, status, expiration date, or custom fields |
View Contract Details | Get key information including dates and approval status |
Extract Contract Data | Pull specific information from contract metadata and fields |
View Approvals | View and understand contract approval workflows |
Update Contract Fields | Rename a contract, change owner, or update expiry date (requires approval) |
Create or Upload Contracts | Draft and upload new contracts through the assistant using forms and the LawVu contract wizard. See also the analyse files tool |
Search Invoices | Find invoices by vendor, matter, date, amount, or status |
View Spend Breakdowns | Get breakdowns of legal spend by vendor, matter type, or time period |
View Budget vs Actual Spend | View budget utilisation and actual spend |
LSP Analysis | Get information on legal service providers and recommendations based on historical spend and related data |
Create Tasks | Add new tasks with descriptions, due dates, and assignments (requires approval) |
Update Tasks | Modify task details, status, or assignments (requires approval) |
View Tasks | View tasks for a matter, user, or across the organisation |
Search Policies | Find relevant corporate policies, procedures, and guidelines |
Answer Policy Questions | Receive answers grounded in your organisation's documented policies, with source citations |
Analyse Files | Extract and summarise information from files you attach to the chat or other files in LawVu including clauses and other party information for contracts |
Find Users | Search for LSPs and team members by name, email, or role |
What LawVu Assistant can't do
In this release, LawVu Assistant:
Cannot approve or reject contracts or invoices
Cannot delete records
Cannot fully automate complex workflows
Cannot interpret tracked changes in Word or PDF documents
Cannot search contracts by specific clauses across your entire contract database
Does not support MCP integrations
Is available only to in-house legal users
Example Use Cases
You can ask LawVu Assistant to help you with everyday legal operations tasks using natural language.
For example, you can:
Find and review matters by asking questions like "Find all open matters for Acme Corp from the last 6 months" or "Show me the team members on the Johnson acquisition matter."
Create new matters by describing what you need, such as "Create a new NDA review matter for the Johnson acquisition." The Assistant will gather any required information and ask for approval before creating the matter.
Review and update contracts by asking the Assistant to summarise a contract or update contract information, such as an expiry date.
Analyse legal spend by asking questions like "What have we spent on external counsel for employment matters this quarter?"
Manage tasks by creating, updating, or viewing tasks across matters and users.
Find policies and guidance by asking questions such as "What's our policy on signing NDAs with startups?"
Where an action creates or updates records, the Assistant will always ask for your approval before making any changes.
Custom Skills
Custom skills are predefined instructions that help tailor how the Assistant responds in specific situations. For example, a skill can guide the Assistant through a specific matter type, process, or team way of working.
Custom skills can help improve and standardise outputs, but they should be reviewed and tested before wider use. If not configured carefully, they may contain errors, bias, or inappropriate guidance. They can only be created by Organisation Administrators.
Skills must be set up before they are used and cannot be applied to past conversations.
To create a custom skill, go to Settings / AI workflows / Skills:
Then select +Add new skill
Use the guide on the right-hand side of the screen for tips on writing an effective skill.
We recommend working with LawVu when setting up custom skills, as this is an advanced configuration option.
Important Notes
Approvals
The Assistant will always ask for your approval before creating or updating records. Before any action is taken, you'll be shown a summary of the proposed changes and can choose to approve or cancel them.
For related actions, the Assistant may group approvals together to reduce repetitive prompts. You can still review and cancel individual actions if needed.
We recommend reviewing all AI-assisted actions before and after approval.
Permissions
The Assistant can only access information and perform actions that your LawVu account already has permission to access. It cannot view, edit, or retrieve records that you do not have permission to access.
In some cases, restricted matters or invoice permissions may affect the information returned by the Assistant.
Note: Conversation history is not updated if permissions change. For example, if you discuss a matter and later lose access to it, the original conversation will still remain in your chat history.
Audit and Traceability
All conversations, actions, and approvals are logged for audit purposes. The Assistant may include citations to LawVu data sources, helping you understand where information came from. Activity logs are available in LawVu for 30 days and remain available from LawVu on request.
Batch Action Limits
The Assistant supports batch operations, such as updating matters or approving invoices, but each batch is limited to 10 actions.
If a request includes more than 10 actions, it will be split into multiple batches rather than processed as a single operation. For example, if you ask the Assistant to assign you to 30 matters, it will create three batches of 10 and ask you to approve each batch before proceeding.
Accuracy and AI Limitations
The Assistant uses AI and may occasionally return incomplete or incorrect information. It also does not provide legal advice. While LawVu has controls in place to help reduce AI-related risks, you should always review responses and proposed actions before relying on them or approving changes.
Pricing
The Assistant is currently available while LawVu evaluates future pricing models for AI-powered features. We expect future pricing to include usage-based tiers and the tracking of Consumption Units
Consumption Units are counted when the Assistant starts processing a request, even if the request is cancelled, interrupted, results in an error, or the response is not used. Further details are available in the applicable terms and conditions.
FAQ
What technology does LawVu Assistant use?
LawVu Assistant is powered by Microsoft's Agentic Framework and Azure OpenAI technology and is built directly into the LawVu platform. It operates within your existing LawVu permissions and security controls, and LawVu continuously evaluates new AI models to deliver secure, reliable, and high-quality experiences.
Does the Assistant replace the Workspace Intelligence chat?
Yes. LawVu Assistant replaces the Workspace Intelligence (WI) chat and adds new capabilities, including spend management and the ability to take actions within LawVu with user approval.
Can it run end-to-end workflows automatically?
No. The Assistant can help with multi-step processes, but it cannot fully automate complex workflows. Actions must be completed step by step, and workflow automation builders are not available in this release.
Can we see the actions that users have taken via the assistant?
Yes. All conversations, actions, approvals, and declined approvals are logged for audit purposes. Where available, responses may include citations to the LawVu data used to generate them, helping you understand where information came from.
Can it analyse documents?
Yes, within defined limits. You can attach files to the chat and ask the assistant to extract information or summarise content from them.
However, the assistant cannot review or interpret tracked changes in PDF or Word documents, and it does not integrate with the AI Contract Extraction tool in this release.