Changes coming to Westlaw and Lexis

West and Lexis have been revamping their services. West debuts WestlawNext on February 1st and New Lexis will be released later this year.

Attorney and legal blogger Robert Ambrogi had the opportunity to use WestlawNext and says:

This is no mere cosmetic redesign. WestlawNext completely changes the search interface and the search engine behind it. In fact, the change is so dramatic that West has given its new search engine its own name: WestSearch. This new search engine does not just look at the terms you enter, a West executive said. Rather, it tries to identify the issue of law based on the terms you searched.

Less is known at this point about New Lexis. The February ABA Journal has an article on both Westlaw and Lexis and includes the following regarding New Lexis:

“Our new search engine is radically different,” says Marty Kilmer, vice president for new product strategy at LexisNexis. “Under the old system you had to know what you wanted to search. You had to drill down to find the right databases.”
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An early preview of the New Lexis opens with a simple query box. Boolean search terms—like “Roe and Wade” or “Scalia or Roberts”—are a thing of the past. Users can type a simple query with natural language, a la Google or Yahoo. Queries can be filtered by jurisdiction, type of content or other restrictions. The search engine, like Google, has artificial intelligence that will help pull more relevant results.