LawPavilion Business Solutions has unveiled a suite of legal technology solutions, including the integration of Sasegbon’s Laws of Nigeria into its LawPavilion Prime and Primsol platforms, and an artificial intelligence-powered citation checker designed to help lawyers detect fabricated or misleading legal authorities.
 
The unveiling was made by the company’s Managing Director, Ope Olugasa, at a press conference following LawPavilion’s product showcase at the 66th Nigerian Bar Association Annual General Conference.
 
Other innovations unveiled include AI-powered document review, upgraded Legal Analytics & Insights, an enhanced CaseManager and LawPavilion Elite, an enterprise platform designed to enable organisations to preserve and deploy institutional legal knowledge through customised artificial intelligence.
 
Olugasa said the developments were designed to help law firms, corporate legal departments and government legal offices move beyond routine, linear legal research and devote more time to strategic judgment and complex legal reasoning.
 
He identified the increasing use of artificial intelligence in legal practice, particularly the emergence of fabricated authorities generated by general-purpose AI systems, as one of the major challenges confronting the profession.
 
According to him, a growing global database is documenting instances of fictitious legal authorities finding their way into court filings, while discussions among African legal leaders have highlighted the need for the profession to develop stronger safeguards against unreliable AI-generated legal research.
 
He said the issue had implications for Nigerian legal practice, even beyond the possibility of lawyers themselves relying on fabricated authorities.
 
“Legal knowledge is now being audited, silently, daily, against AI,” Olugasa said, explaining that lawyers could increasingly find their advice being cross-checked by clients, corporate executives, government officials and technology-savvy members of the public using AI tools.
 
He also identified the increasing availability of general-purpose AI to clients as a commercial challenge for lawyers.
 
Where clients can obtain legal information or opinions from AI systems at little or no cost, he argued, lawyers must increasingly demonstrate the professional value that goes beyond the production of routine legal analysis.
 
Olugasa said the answer was not for lawyers to compete with AI in carrying out repetitive tasks, but to use trusted legal technology to automate such work and create more time for professional judgment.
 
He distinguished between linear thinking, involving the structured identification of facts, legal issues, rules and precedents, and lateral thinking, which enables lawyers to approach problems strategically and identify arguments, risks and opportunities that may not be immediately apparent.
 
“Let trusted AI carry the linear so you are freed for the lateral,” he said.
 
A major component of the new offering is LawPavilion AI, which the company said is designed to operate on authoritative Nigerian legal sources rather than relying on the open internet.
 
Its document review and citation verification capability enables practitioners to upload legal documents, including documents prepared or received from opposing counsel, and check cited authorities for authenticity and relevance.
 
According to Olugasa, the system can determine whether cited authorities exist and whether they actually support the legal propositions for which they have been cited.
 
He illustrated the application with a hypothetical corporate legal dispute in which an opposing opinion contained six citations. 
 
The AI review, he said, could establish that while four of the authorities existed, none actually dealt with the issue in dispute, enabling counsel to respond with relevant authorities.
 
He described the capability as a means of ensuring that lawyers are able to independently verify AI-generated or human-prepared legal arguments rather than accepting cited authorities at face value.
 
Addressing concerns about fragmentation in the legal technology market, Olugasa said LawPavilion Elite was developed as an integrated enterprise environment combining an electronic law library, customised AI and case management capabilities under a unified subscription.
 
He said the company was also extending its technology beyond traditional law firms to in-house legal departments through solutions such as its Contract and Compliance Management System.
 
The system, he explained, enables corporate legal teams to manage contracts, cases and their status, correspondence with external solicitors, board activities and other legal responsibilities from a single interface.
 
For companies with legal matters spread across different locations or handled by multiple external law firms, the system is intended to give legal leadership greater visibility into ongoing matters and issues requiring attention.
 
Olugasa also rejected concerns that increasing reliance on AI could diminish creativity and ingenuity among lawyers.
 
Drawing an analogy with the introduction of calculators, he said technological advances did not necessarily weaken professional skills but changed the level at which professionals could apply them.
 
“When calculators emerged, there were concerns that they might make students less capable at mathematics. Instead, technology changed what was possible and allowed mathematics education to move beyond calculations that could be automated,” he said.
 
He argued that legal AI could similarly remove repetitive research and administrative tasks, allowing lawyers to devote more time to sophisticated legal reasoning, strategy and advocacy.
 
“Our objective is not to make Nigerian lawyers dependent on technology. It is to give them the tools to do what only lawyers can do – better, faster and with greater confidence,” Olugasa said.