When TerraLex launched MyLexi, their AI-powered knowledge assistant built with Betty, their goal was to make it easier for members to access trusted legal knowledge, instantly. With a network of over 140 vetted law firms across 200+ jurisdictions and more than 23,000 lawyers, TerraLex’s content library was vast. But finding what you needed? That was another story.
“We have a lot of information, member generated and generated by the organization, on our website… we just felt with the advent of AI, there had to be a better way.” — Terri Pepper, CEO of Terralex
MyLexi has since become a vital part of how members access resources and how TerraLex delivers on its promise of global collaboration.
Among the most used resources in the network are TerraLex’s cross-border guides, where members can compare legal standards across jurisdictions for topics like labor and employment law, tax, or food and beverage regulations.
But the delivery system wasn’t keeping up.
“The problem is it’s a lot of clicking and a lot of steps to get information… With MyLexi, you can just go onto our site, go to the icon and say, ‘Tell me about the labor and employment laws in Italy,’ and you’ll get the answer.”
Now, instead of navigating through multiple layers of guides and charts, members can simply ask their question and be taken directly to the right reference.
Since launching in May, MyLexi has supported over 422 users and close to 900 conversations. The most popular requests? Exactly what TerraLex hoped to support:
Cross-border comparisons of legal topics
Finding vetted professionals through the member directory
Meeting and event details
Referral tracking (a newly launched capability)
Member standards and policy access
“Our directory is extremely valuable because our firms are vetted… [Members] can just go to MyLexi, find out who those lawyers are, who the key contacts are, and form a group to support their client wherever their needs happen to arise.”
They also recently embedded referral tracking directly into MyLexi, an effort to support a key member standard:
“It’s never easy. It’s always been a tricky process. Any network will tell you that… But now it just takes a lot of steps out of the process and makes things a lot easier.”
TerraLex’s international footprint also meant language was a challenge. Translating static content into dozens of languages was neither scalable nor sustainable.
“For years we’ve struggled with the notion that members would have loved our information translated, but because we are in over 200 locations, what language do you pick?”
One moment stood out.
“We were doing a regional meeting in Zimbabwe… we challenged a member to come up and pose a question in his country’s native language... And MyLexi answered it in his language. That was really impressive.”
With MyLexi, members can now get answers in their native language without waiting for a formal translation or custom version of content.
Internally, MyLexi has helped reduce inbound questions to staff and support members at scale.
“We have trained our MyLexi on a lot of things that normally we might get asked by members, like ‘Where’s the member handbook?’ or ‘What’s the policy on this?’… We view it as almost like having another member of our team.”
And the use cases keep expanding.
“Operationally, for me, [referral tracking] is going to be one of the bigger enhancements that we’ve done in a long time.”
MyLexi has already started changing behavior.
“One member, she was telling me that oftentimes if she needs to do legal research, rather than go to her normal traditional legal research tools, she’ll now go to MyLexi and look that information up from other Commonwealth countries… because chances are the laws are going to be very similar, if not exactly the same. So it saves her a lot of time on research.”
TerraLex is already planning what’s next—both for MyLexi and for member firms that may want to replicate the experience.
“We’re trying to encourage our members to consider having an instance of MyLexi either on their website or their intranet… they could even do their own instance and combine it with MyLexi.”
They also plan to:
Add a members-only MyLexi experience
Organize resources not only by jurisdiction but by area of expertise
Expand operational tools like forms and standards
“We’re having a lot of fun thinking about use cases and what we want to do next with it.”
As TerraLex leads the way with MyLexi, they’re also supporting AI readiness across their network:
“We do a lot of programming in this space… how do you price your legal work when you’re using AI? The human part of AI. Legal research solutions. Prompt engineering. It really runs the gamut.”
And they’re building shared resources for safe, ethical implementation.
“Many of our members already have written good policies. We collect them and we share them… so other members don’t have to start from scratch.”
When asked what advice she’d give to other associations thinking about launching their own AI assistant, Terri didn’t hesitate:
“You need to find a vendor like Betty AI that makes it so easy… I’ve been through every kind of technology implementation from the beginning of time… I would have to say this was probably right up there with among one of the most easy implementations we ever had.”
But ease isn’t everything.
“You also need to have a very clear vision of what is it that you’re hoping to accomplish… and you can’t underestimate how much promotion you have to do to start getting adoption.”
For TerraLex, MyLexi is more than a digital tool. It’s:
A research shortcut
A trusted assistant
A referral enabler
A multilingual resource hub
And soon, it might be the blueprint for every law firm in their network.