How It Works

When a lawyer asks "how does it work," they are rarely asking about neural networks or vector embeddings.

They are asking something simpler: Will this fit into the way I already work? Or will I have to become a different kind of lawyer to use it?

The answer is the former. Emphatically.

Lex is not a new way of practising law. It is your existing practice with one brutal bottleneck removed: the hours spent searching for what you already knew must exist somewhere.

I. A Monday Morning

Let us be concrete.

You arrive at chambers. A client matter requires you to understand the current state of the law on the liability of a landlord for injuries sustained by a visitor to leased premises.

The Old Monday:

You recall there was something in Voet on the duties of the lessor. You believe there was a Court of Appeal case in the late nineties — Perera v. Something — that addressed this, but you cannot quite place it. You know the English position from Wheat v. Lacon, but you are uncertain how far Sri Lankan courts have followed it given our Roman-Dutch foundations.

You spend ninety minutes in the library. You find the Voet passage, eventually. You do not find the Perera case; perhaps you misremembered the name. You find Wheat v. Lacon but remain uncertain of its local authority. You begin drafting your opinion with the uneasy feeling that you may have missed something important.

The Monday with Lex:

You type, in plain language: "What is the liability of a landlord for injuries to visitors on leased premises under Sri Lankan law?"

Within moments, Lex returns:

The relevant Roman-Dutch principles from Voet's Commentarius, Book 19, Title 2. Sirisena v. Gunawardena [1997] — the Court of Appeal case you half-remembered (the plaintiff's name was not Perera). The English authorities, including Wheat v. Lacon, with notation of how Sri Lankan courts have treated them. Relevant provisions of the Rent Act where applicable. A 2019 Supreme Court judgment you had not known existed, which substantially clarifies the position.

You spend eight minutes reviewing. You spend the rest of your morning thinking about what to advise your client.

The research did not change. The time did.

II. What Happens When You Ask

You need not understand the mechanics any more than you understand the internal combustion engine when you drive to court. But if you are curious:

Lex interprets your question — not merely the words, but the legal structure beneath them. If you ask about "landlord liability," Lex understands this may engage the law of delict, the law of contract, statutory duties under tenancy legislation, and the Roman-Dutch institutional writers. It searches across these domains, not merely for your keywords.

Lex retrieves with awareness of hierarchy. A Supreme Court ratio is not treated the same as a District Court observation. A current statute is distinguished from one repealed in 1972.

Lex presents findings with sources. Every proposition is tied to an authority you can verify. This is not a system that asks you to trust its conclusions; it shows you how it reached them.

Lex acknowledges what it does not know. If your question ventures into territory where the archive is silent, Lex will say so. A research tool that pretends to omniscience is a research tool that will eventually embarrass you before a judge. We have chosen candour over false confidence.

III. Three Ways to Ask

Lawyers do not all think alike, and Lex does not demand that they do.

Natural language: Ask as you would ask a colleague. "What are the requirements for a valid gift under Thesawalamai?" Lex will understand.

Citation search: If you know what you seek — a specific case, a particular statutory provision — search directly. "Penal Code section 294" or "Cooray v. Wijesinghe 2003" will take you there immediately.

Conceptual exploration: If you are uncertain what you are looking for — you know only that it involves the intersection of environmental law and administrative procedure — Lex can help you map the terrain before you commit to a direction.

You will likely use all three, moving between them as the research demands. The system accommodates this. It was built by people who understand that legal research is not linear.

IV. What You Receive

When Lex responds, you receive not a wall of text but a structured analysis:

The direct answer — Lex's synthesis of the relevant law, in plain language, with key principles stated clearly.

The authorities — every case, statute, and secondary source that supports the analysis, with citations you can verify and, where available, links to the full text.

The hierarchy — clear indication of which authorities bind, which persuade, and which merely illuminate. You will know whether you are reading Supreme Court ratio or Magistrate's Court obiter.

The context — where relevant, Lex notes if the law has recently changed, if the question is unsettled, or if the answer depends on which personal law system applies.

The gaps — if Lex cannot find authority on point, it says so. If the question requires factual determinations Lex cannot make, it identifies them.

V. Verification: The Habit You Should Not Abandon

We must be direct about something.

Lex is a tool of considerable capability, but it is not infallible. No research tool is — not Westlaw, not LexisNexis, not the most diligent junior associate. The cases Lex retrieves are real; the statutes it cites exist; the sources are genuine. But the synthesis — the way Lex connects authority to principle to your question — reflects a system's judgment, not a jurist's.

You should verify. Not because Lex is unreliable, but because verification is what lawyers do. It is the professional habit that separates practice from negligence.

What Lex offers is not a reason to abandon verification. It is the time to perform it. When research that consumed a morning now consumes ten minutes, you have eighty minutes you did not previously have. Spend some of them checking. Spend the rest thinking.

The lawyers who use Lex most effectively are not those who trust it blindly. They are those who use its speed to be more thorough than they could previously afford to be.

VI. What Lex Does Not Do

A tool is defined as much by its limits as by its capabilities.

Lex does not give legal advice. It retrieves and synthesises authority. The application of that authority to your client's specific circumstances — the judgment call, the strategic assessment, the weighing of risks — remains yours. As it must.

Lex does not replace the primary sources. When Lex cites Perera v. Silva [2015] 2 SLR 147, you can and should read the judgment itself. Lex will help you find it. It will not ask you to take its word for what it says.

Lex does not know your client. It does not know the judge assigned to your matter, the opposing counsel's tendencies, the commercial pressures your client faces, or the dozen other factors that shape how law becomes advice. These remain your domain.

Lex does not predict outcomes. It can tell you what the law is. It cannot tell you what a court will do. Anyone who claims otherwise is selling something other than legal research.

VII. Learning Curve

There is none.

If you can compose an email, you can query Lex. If you can read a judgment, you can interpret the results. There is no training course, no certification programme, no three-day workshop with bad coffee and laminated handouts.

You type your question. You read the answer. You verify what matters. You proceed.

VIII. A Note on Privacy

Your queries are yours. Your research is yours. Your matters remain confidential.

Lex does not share your search history with other users, does not train its systems on your specific queries, and does not retain data beyond what is necessary to provide the service. When you research a matter, you are not inadvertently signalling to competitors what you are working on.

We are built in Sri Lanka, subject to Sri Lankan law, operated by people who understand the professional obligations of the lawyers we serve. Your confidentiality is not a feature we added. It is a constraint we designed around.

IX. The Honest Summary

Lex is a research tool. It finds law faster than you can find it yourself, synthesises it more comprehensively than time usually permits, and presents it with the structure and hierarchy that legal analysis requires.

It does not think for you. It does not strategise for you. It does not stand before the court for you or sit with the client for you or exercise the judgment that a career in law has cultivated in you.

What it does — and this is not a small thing — is return to you the hours you once spent searching, so that you may spend them thinking.

The finding was never the magic. The thinking was ෴