Working with Lex

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Who Lex is

Lex is your firm’s AI paralegal. It works from your firm’s own records — clients, leads, matters, forms, documents, messages, tasks, deadlines, consultations, invoices and retainers — and reads them with the same access you have in the console, so a question you could answer by opening a page, you can ask instead. It writes to an attorney, not to a layperson: no explanations of what an I-485 is, no disclaimers, no hedging a clear answer into mush. You talk to Lex at the Desk. Open it from the sidebar, or use the Desk panel that sits beside the page you’re already on.

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Conversations

Each conversation is a thread. The rail on the left groups them by age — Today, Yesterday, last week — and you can rename or delete any of them. Chat history is the full searchable list of every conversation you’ve had.

• Link a matter. Use Link a case to point a conversation at one matter. Lex then reads that matter’s record without being told which one you mean, and the case-specific skills unlock.
• Share a thread. Share gives teammates — or a whole member group — read access and the ability to ask their own follow-ups in the same thread. Only the person who started the thread manages its sharing.
• Answers keep running. If your connection drops mid-answer, the run continues on the server and reconnects.

Workflows. Under the composer on the Desk home, workflow cards hold ready-made prompts: Plan my week, Research a policy change, Is the priority date current?, Is this case taking too long?, Country conditions for an asylum claim and more. Picking one fills the composer, so you can edit the prompt before you send it. Each one works with or without a linked case; without one, Lex asks which client you mean.

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What Lex can do

Reads your records. Firm-wide search across clients, leads, matters, tasks, documents, invoices and activity finds the person or matter you named; from there Lex reads what the matching console page shows:

• A client. Their profile — legal name, A-number, citizenship, date and place of birth, sex, marital status, the date they became a permanent resident, phones, email, the receipt number of a pending application, and the current address with the date it applies from — along with the document each value was read from. Their latest 10 invitations, sign-in links and emails from the firm, each with who sent it (or that it was automatic) and whether it was delivered, bounced or failed. Their open invoices, and every retainer with its status, payment plan, and when it was sent, first viewed, signed (and by whom), paid or voided.
• A matter. Its progress steps and the one it’s on; the Overview tab’s summary, what’s missing (who owes each item, and since when) and the proposed next steps — or that no Overview has been generated yet; the 10 newest case notes; forms, the document checklist and uploads; everyone on it, from its parties — each person’s role, the forms they’re linked to, and any role still empty; its USCIS receipts and FOIA requests; and the client’s open balance.
• The Cases list, narrowed to your own cases, a status, a priority, a case type or a due date — “my time-sensitive cases due this month”.
• Messages. Every client thread with its unread count and whether the client is waiting on a reply, or one client’s latest 30 messages. Reading a thread doesn’t mark it read.
• Leads. The pipeline by status, assignee, or follow-ups due today or overdue; one lead’s form answers, status and lost reason, assignee, next follow-up, source, activity, consultations and retainer.
• Consultations. What’s booked in any window — upcoming, past or canceled, yours only or unpaid only — with times in your firm’s time zone, the invitee, the consultation type, the location or join link, the host and co-hosts, and whether it’s paid. And your booking setup: the booking link and whether the page is live, your hours, time zone and date overrides, each consultation type’s length, price, host, locations and notice rules, and whether Google Calendar and Zoom are connected.
• Invoices. By status, overdue or client, each with its balance and due date, plus what’s still owed installment by installment; or one invoice by number — line items and discount, payments with amount, method and date, installments, when it was sent, reminded or voided, and its notes.
• Your team, as Settings → Team shows it: each member’s name, email and role, who owns the firm, and the member groups with who is in each.
• What needs you. “What needs me today?” gathers documents awaiting review, clients waiting on a reply, your own tasks overdue or due today, and the lead follow-ups that are due — and marks nothing read.
• And the rest. A form’s answers section by section with its open review threads, the firm’s task board, everything dated in a window (consultations included, with their start, end and where they happen), the cases on Court Watch, and the firm’s own metrics, lead pipeline included. A document whose AI analysis is still running is reported as being read, not as unreadable.

Reading changes nothing and sends nothing. Lex can tell you an invoice’s balance but can’t send, remind or void it, record a payment, or share its pay link; it can tell you your consultation price but can’t change your hours, prices or booking page, or cancel or reschedule a booking. It reports a retainer’s status and dates but doesn’t open the agreement itself — the signed PDF is in the client’s Documents. USCIS statuses are the last ones Lexfill checked, given with the time of that check; Lex never runs a fresh one. Researches the web. Ask about anything that may have changed since Lex was trained: a policy alert, this month’s Visa Bulletin, TPS or parole for a country, country conditions, a recent BIA or AAO decision. Lex searches the web and relies on official sources first, such as uscis.gov, travel.state.gov, the Federal Register, EOIR and the other agencies. It links every material claim to the page it came from and gives the source’s date and the date it takes effect. It also says whether a change is proposed or final, and announced or in effect, and tells you plainly when only news or practitioner coverage backs a claim. While it works you see what it’s searching for and which site it’s reading. Lex searches for the legal question only, never a client’s name, A-number or receipt number. Shows its sources. Directly under a researched answer, a sources card reads N sources · M official, where M counts the official pages Lex actually read. Open it to see Pages read first, then Other results. Each row shows the page’s title and site, an Official badge on .gov and .mil sites, and when the page was updated or read (not when a rule takes effect), and opens in a new tab. Checks which cases are affected. A research answer ends by holding the finding against your records:

• On a linked conversation, Lex closes with a For [Client — case type] section. Each finding is flagged Affected, Not affected or Can’t tell, and a Can’t tell names the fact that would settle it. The flags rest on what the case record shows (the foreign national’s countries, the forms, the USCIS receipts, the priority date), never on assumptions, and Lex offers to ask you when one fact would decide it.
• On an unlinked conversation, Lex lists the firm’s matching matters as links, says what each one matched on, and says what the list can’t see: derivative family members, a person whose role on the case isn’t confirmed, or a country spelling it didn’t search for.

Nationality is the case’s foreign national’s, not whoever holds the portal login: on a marriage case that’s the beneficiary, not the petitioning spouse. General research is fine on a linked conversation, but questions across the firm’s cases belong in an unlinked one. If web research is unavailable, Lex says it can’t search the web right now and answers from your records and what it already knows, noting that it may be out of date. Answers with charts. Ask how the firm is doing and Lex pulls the numbers, then renders a real bar, line, area or pie chart beside the answer — built from the data it read, never invented. Drafts documents. Petition letters, client letters, memos, request lists — grounded in the record, opened as a Word document in a panel beside the conversation. Edit it in place (changes save automatically and are versioned), export it, or Add to case to file it in the client’s documents. Ask for a change and Lex reads the current state first — including your own edits — then revises only what you asked for. Drafts pleadings. For a linked litigation matter, Lex generates the federal mandamus complaint or the § 2241 habeas petition from the intake record — each with the caveats that matter. See Litigation. Prepares filings and requests. Assemble a filing packet, prepare a FOIA request, or translate a document into the client’s library as a draft awaiting certification. Puts work on the board. Lex creates and edits tasks when you ask — “remind me to…”, “mark T-42 done”, “push T-7 to Monday” — assigning by the name you used and linking the matter. Tasks appear when you ask for one, so the board reflects your intent rather than filling up on its own. Drafts client messages. Ask Lex to chase a document and it writes the message in the client’s preferred language, grounded in what’s actually missing from the checklist. It arrives as a card with a Send button. Sends portal invitations. Ask Lex to invite a client and it shows a card with their name and the address the email goes to; confirming sends the same invitation as Send invite, and any earlier link stops working. For several clients, Lex shows one card per client, in turn, never a bulk send. Adds forms to a case. “Add the I-130A” shows a card naming the form, with a switch between Send to client and Fill internally. Confirming adds it as Add form on the Forms tab does; when the client is the one to fill it, they get the portal email and Lex drafts a message naming the form for you to Send. Adds people to a case. “Add Felix Lorenzo to Yaxnesy Cruz’s case” shows a card with the person and their role, matched against your firm’s contacts: the one person it matches, a choice when several could be them, or a new person. You can change the name, email, date of birth or role before you confirm. Fills a form from what the case already has. “Fill the I-130A from the I-130” shows a card listing the form’s empty fields, each with its value and where it came from — a person’s details or another form on the case. Untick any row, and pick one value where two sources disagree; answered fields are never changed, and parents and address or employment histories are left for the client. Reads files you attach. Add files to a message with the + button at the left of the composer, by pasting them into the message box, or by dragging them anywhere onto the conversation. Each file shows as a tile above the box until you send, with a × to remove it, and a message can be just the files with no text. Lex reads them in that message and in later ones in the same conversation. It numbers them in the order the tiles sit, so “the second file” means the second tile. Click a sent file to open it.

• Up to 5 files per message, 20 MB each: PDF, PNG, JPEG, WebP, Word or plain text. HEIC photos aren’t accepted; export them as JPEG or PNG first.
• Some PDFs attach but can’t be read in the conversation: a password-protected or encrypted one, or one over 100 pages. Its tile says why.
• In a very long conversation, Lex may ask you to attach an older file again.
• No web research in a conversation with attachments. Lex doesn’t search or read the web there, so nothing in a document can send your data out. For research, start a new conversation without files.
• On a conversation linked to a case, a teammate without access to that case never gets the files’ contents through Lex.
• Files attached but never sent are deleted after 24 hours. Deleting a conversation deletes its files; copies added to a case’s Documents library stay.

Fills a form from an attached document. Attach the client’s filled form, worksheet or scan, or point to a document already in the case’s Documents library, and say “fill the I-130 from this”. Lex reads it the same way Import from file on the Forms tab does and shows a card listing every value it found, each marked as filling an empty field, conflicting with an existing answer, or already matching. Conflicts start unticked. If the file names people, the card first asks who each one is (someone on the case, a new person, or skip) before Confirm turns on. Untick any row and press Confirm; Lex then tells you what was filled and what was left as it was.

• The file goes into the case’s Documents library when Lex starts reading it, like any upload, and stays there if you dismiss the card. If the same file is already in the library, Lex uses that copy.
• Reading can take a few minutes. If it isn’t done, Lex says it’s still reading; ask again shortly and the card appears.
• One form per card. If the case doesn’t have the form yet, Lex offers to add it. If an import from another file is already open on that form, Lex asks you to finish it on the Forms tab first.
• A password-protected PDF needs an unlocked copy, but a form downloaded from uscis.gov works even though Lex can’t read it in the conversation.

Adds files to a case. Attach files and say “add these to the case” or “put this passport in Maria’s documents”. Lex shows one card listing every file, with a box to untick any you’d rather leave out. Each file has a checklist slot picker: it starts on Let Lex classify, or on the slot you named (“this is her passport”), and you can pick any of the case’s checklist slots instead. A file that’s already in the case’s Documents library is marked Already in Documents and isn’t added twice. Nothing is filed until you press Confirm. Each file is then analyzed like any upload: classified, renamed and matched to its checklist slot. The card tells you what was added, what was already there and anything that couldn’t be added, with Open Documents to go straight to the case’s Documents tab. Reviews the case in the margin. Findings from AI review land as Lex comment threads pinned to the fields they question, and @Lex in any thread gets you a contextual answer without leaving the form. Asks when it’s genuinely ambiguous. If a request could mean two things — which client, when a search finds several, or which of two plausible scopes — Lex asks one clarifying question mid-answer, as a card with clickable options. You can click one, type your own answer, or dismiss it, in which case Lex proceeds on its best judgment and tells you what it assumed.

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Where you take over

Lex works up to the point of decision and hands it to you. That handoff is deliberate — it’s what makes delegating to Lex safe:

• Filings are yours. Lex prepares the packet, the complaint, the FOIA kit and tells you what to verify by hand. You file it.
• Client messages go out on your click. A drafted message sits as a card until you press Send — ask Lex to send it and it’ll tell you the button is yours.
• Changes wait for your click. Inviting a client, adding a form or a person, filling a form and importing one from a document each arrive as a card, and nothing changes until you press Confirm — which does exactly what the matching button in the console does, as you. Dismiss changes nothing. The one exception is the file itself: a document you ask Lex to import from is added to the case’s Documents library when it starts reading. Lex shows a card only when you ask for the change; if it spots something, such as clients who were never invited, it offers in words first. It never removes anything or sends invitations in bulk, and it changes an existing answer only when you tick that row on an import card. Anyone the thread is shared with sees the card, and can confirm it if they have access to the case.
• Lex tells you what it doesn’t know. Rather than filling a gap with a plausible date, receipt number or deadline, it says what’s missing and what would settle it.

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Skills

Skills are /commands — named recipes over what Lex can already do. Type / in the composer to see them; selecting one drops an editable prompt into the box, so you can change it before sending. A skill that needs a matter is still listed when none is linked — it tells you to link one rather than hiding, so you learn the skill exists. Research isn’t a skill. Ask in your own words, or start from one of the research workflows on the Desk home.

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Citations

When Lex mentions a matter or a client it links to their page in the app rather than printing a raw id — so every claim in an answer is one click from the record it came from.

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On iPhone

The Lexfill iPhone app has the Desk too, on its Lex tab. It’s the same Lex and the same threads: a conversation started on the phone shows up in your Chat history on the web, and a thread open on both streams the answer to both at once. On the phone you can:

• Start a thread by typing, or from an example workflow (it fills the box for you to edit; nothing sends until you tap Send), and link a case to it.
• Watch the answer stream in with Lex’s steps, Stop it, and Retry a stopped or failed answer. If you leave the app or lose signal mid-answer, the full answer is there when you come back.
• Answer Lex’s questions: pick an option, type your own answer, or skip.
• Send, edit and send, or dismiss a drafted client message.
• Confirm or cancel a case change Lex proposes, then tap View case to open that case.
• Open a drafted document to read it, and Add to case to file it in the client’s documents.
• Read charts (bar, line, area and pie).
• Search your Chat history, filter it to shared threads or threads with a case, and rename, relink or delete your own threads.
• Share a thread with teammates or a member group, and remove their access.

These stay on the web:

• A card the app doesn’t know yet. It shows read-only, with a note to open Lexfill on the web.
• Attaching files. The phone has no attach button. An import card that still asks who’s in the file is finished on the web; once that’s settled, an untouched Confirm on the phone fills empty fields only.
• Editing a drafted document. The phone opens it read-only.
• Skills. There’s no / menu on the phone; type what you want instead.
• Links to a matter or client in an answer. The phone shows the name in bold instead.

Chart amounts on the phone are always shown in US dollars, as on the web. A chart type the app doesn’t know shows only its title. The app’s Cases tab lists your cases, with the ones that need you first. Search by client name or USCIS receipt number, or filter to cases waiting on the client or already filed. Open a case to see its overview and progress, approve or reject uploaded documents, message the client and read the case history. Editing a case stays on the web.