By Victoria Tokolo
LawPavilion Business Solutions has unveiled an artificial intelligence-powered citation checker and integrated the 70-volume Sasegbon’s Laws of Nigeria into its legal research platforms as part of efforts to help Nigerian lawyers combat inaccurate and fabricated legal authorities.
The innovations were unveiled at the 66th Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Annual General Conference in Rivers State, where the Managing Director of LawPavilion Business Solutions, Ope Olugasa, said the new tools were designed to enable lawyers, general counsel and Attorneys-General to spend less time on routine legal research and more time on analysis, strategy and professional judgment.
The company also announced upgrades to its Legal Analytics & Insights and CaseManager platforms, alongside the launch of LawPavilion Elite, an enterprise platform designed to help law firms, corporate legal departments and government institutions preserve and deploy institutional legal knowledge through customised artificial intelligence.
Speaking at a press conference following the product showcase, Olugasa identified the growing use of general-purpose AI in legal practice and the risk of fabricated authorities as emerging challenges for the profession.
He said the increasing availability of AI tools meant legal advice was now being subjected to scrutiny not only by lawyers but also by clients and other professionals who could independently use AI to assess legal opinions.
“Legal knowledge is now being audited, silently, daily, against AI,” he said.
According to him, the challenge goes beyond lawyers potentially relying on inaccurate AI-generated authorities, as clients themselves increasingly have access to general-purpose AI tools.
Olugasa noted that the development could make it more difficult to distinguish professional legal advice from freely generated AI content, putting greater pressure on lawyers to demonstrate value through strategy, sound judgment and specialised expertise.
Sasegbon’s Laws Integrated
A major highlight of the new offerings is the integration of Sasegbon’s Laws of Nigeria, a 70-volume legal reference work covering Nigerian case law from 1957 to 2026, into LawPavilion Prime and Primsol.
The integration enables practitioners to search the reference material alongside LawPavilion’s existing case law and legislation databases, with access to its Legal Analytics tools.
Olugasa said the development would give lawyers and judges access to decades of Nigerian legal authorities within a single digital research environment.
He described the integration as a combination of established legal knowledge and modern technology that would make it easier for practitioners to determine the state of the law without consulting multiple sources separately.
AI-Powered Citation Checker
LawPavilion also unveiled an AI-powered document review and citation verification capability designed to help lawyers verify authorities cited in legal documents.
According to the company, practitioners can submit legal documents for analysis, with the system checking cited authorities to determine whether they exist and whether they actually support the legal propositions for which they are cited.
Olugasa said the tool could prove particularly useful when lawyers receive opinions or legal documents containing numerous citations from clients, opposing counsel or other sources.
He cited an example involving a legal opinion containing six citations, explaining that the system determined that only four of the cited authorities existed and that none adequately addressed the issue in dispute.
He said the ability to identify such problems quickly would enable lawyers to respond with verified authorities and avoid relying on questionable references.
The company said its AI is designed to be grounded in LawPavilion’s Nigerian legal database rather than relying broadly on information from the open internet.
Olugasa said the approach was intended to minimise the risk of hallucinated or unsupported legal responses, which could have serious consequences when relied upon in legal proceedings.
Platforms Receive Major Upgrades
LawPavilion also announced an upgraded Legal Analytics & Insights platform, which it said would help practitioners assess the strength of legal doctrines by identifying supporting and conflicting authorities as well as judicial trends.
Its CaseManager practice-management platform has also been enhanced with an AI assistant covering diary management, workflow, matter overviews and revenue visibility.
Another major offering, LawPavilion Elite, is targeted at law firms, corporate legal departments and Ministries of Justice.
The platform allows organisations to build customised AI systems using their own documents, precedents and standard operating procedures.
Olugasa said the solution was designed partly to address the challenge of institutional knowledge being lost when experienced lawyers or senior officials leave an organisation.
He explained that organisations could use their accumulated knowledge and established drafting practices to produce work that remains consistent with institutional standards.
“Leadership in law isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about being able to reach everything, instantly,” he said.
Support for In-House Legal Departments
LawPavilion said its technology solutions were not limited to private law firms, noting that it also provides specialised tools for corporate legal departments.
Olugasa said the company’s Contract and Compliance Management System enables legal departments to manage contracts, cases, correspondence with external solicitors, board activities and other legal responsibilities from a single interface.
He added that the system could provide legal managers with greater visibility over matters being handled across different locations or by multiple external counsel.
Data Security
Addressing concerns over the security and confidentiality of legal information, Olugasa said data protection had been incorporated into the design of the company’s technology.
He listed measures including authorised-device access restrictions, administrative controls for deactivating accounts when personnel leave organisations, data anonymisation and encryption.
He added that the systems were designed to support compliance with applicable data protection requirements, including the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation.
AI and the Future of Legal Practice
Olugasa dismissed concerns that artificial intelligence would necessarily reduce creativity among lawyers, comparing the development to the introduction of calculators in mathematics.
He argued that, rather than replacing professional judgment, properly deployed AI could reduce the amount of repetitive work lawyers perform and give them more time to focus on complex legal reasoning, strategy and client advisory services.
According to him, the objective is to help lawyers move from what he described as “linear thinking” — routine research, document review and citation checking — to “lateral thinking”, involving broader strategies, risks and opportunities.
“Our objective is not to make Nigerian lawyers dependent on technology,” he said. “It is to give them the tools to do what only lawyers can do — better, faster and with greater confidence.”
Subscription Offer
LawPavilion said the complete Sasegbon’s Laws integration would be available to existing subscribers for an additional N90,000 during the NBA conference, after which the price would increase to N150,000.
The company also announced a collaboration with AG Mortgage Bank to provide a mortgage package for law firms, branches and groups subscribing collectively.
The latest offerings bring LawPavilion AI, Legal Analytics & Insights, CaseManager, LawPavilion Elite and Sasegbon’s Laws of Nigeria into the company’s expanding legal technology ecosystem.
LawPavilion Business Solutions has operated in Nigeria’s legal technology sector for more than two decades, providing digital tools for legal research, drafting, legal intelligence and law practice management.
