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Press Release
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LawVu Assistant · Outlook & Gmail

Meet your AI legal co-worker, right in your inbox

The agentic Assistant reads the email in front of you, files it to the right matter, drafts a complete new matter from a single message, answers policy questions with citations, and explains what changed in a new contract version, all inside the inbox and all under human approval.

Tauranga, New Zealand · 14 October 2026. LawVu today brought its AI Assistant directly into Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail, letting in-house legal teams capture, understand, and act on email without leaving the inbox. The Assistant reads the message a user is looking at, suggests the matter or contract it belongs to, drafts a complete new matter from a single email, surfaces instant context on a sender or a thread, and answers internal policy questions with citations. Every action it proposes is approved by a person and recorded in an audit log.

The problem

For most in-house legal teams, the real front door to legal work is the inbox. Requests from the business, redlines from counterparties, advice from outside counsel, invoices, and signed documents all arrive as email, then have to be sorted, filed, and turned into structured work by hand. Filing an email to the right matter is a manual lookup. Opening a new matter means a blank form. Catching up on a long thread means reading all of it. A routine policy question pulls a lawyer away from higher-value work. The information legal needs is split between the inbox and the system of record, and keeping the two in step is a daily tax.

What the Assistant does

LawVu Assistant now works where legal already spends the day. Inside the Outlook and Gmail add-ins, the Assistant understands the email on screen and connects it to everything LawVu already holds: matters, contracts, spend, policies, and history. It proposes the next step, the user approves it, and the work lands in LawVu as a clean, structured record. Because the Assistant is grounded in the customer's own data and runs inside LawVu's existing security boundary, its answers are specific and private rather than generic.

Legal teams told us the same thing for years: the work starts in the inbox, but the system of record lives somewhere else, and they pay for that gap every day. The add-ins already connected the inbox to LawVu. The Assistant makes that connection intelligent. Brendan Knowles, Ecosystem Product Lead, LawVu

How it works

01 Capture and organise, without leaving your inbox

  • Suggested filing. The Assistant reads an email and proposes the matter or contract it belongs to, ranked by confidence, so filing becomes a single approving click.
  • New matters and contracts, pre-filled. From one email and its attachments, the Assistant drafts a complete intake form, choosing the right type and populating fields, dates, and parties for review.
  • Email turned into tasks. It pulls action items out of a message and proposes LawVu tasks with owners and due dates.
  • Details filled in for you. Parties, jurisdiction, counsel, and amounts are extracted from the email and mapped to the right matter and contract fields.
Assistant File this email to Acme Corp: Master Services Agreement (renewal). Matched on party, subject, and the earlier thread on this matter. Approve or choose another.

02 Understand in seconds

  • Matter catch-up. Open an email and see a short summary of the related matter's recent activity and where this thread fits, without switching tools.
  • Who is emailing you. An instant dossier on the sender's organisation: open matters, contracts, spend, and history.
  • Contract Version Intelligence. When a new version of a contract arrives, the Assistant compares it against the version already held in LawVu and explains the substance of what changed, ranked by what matters.
Assistant This draft changes 3 substantive terms. Liability cap lowered to 6 months' fees, below your playbook floor of 12. A 30-day cure period was added. Auto-renewal removed.

03 Find and answer

  • Ask LawVu from your inbox. Search matters, contracts, and filed email in plain language, for example "find the email where the vendor agreed the indemnity cap".
  • Policy answers with citations. Ask an internal policy question and get an answer grounded in your organisation's own policies, with links to the source. If the policy does not cover it, the Assistant says so rather than guessing.

What customers say

Filing used to be the thing everyone meant to do later, so half of it never happened. Now the Assistant hands me the right matter before I have finished reading the email and I just say yes. Our records have never been this complete.

Dana WhitcombeGeneral Counsel, Northwind Software

Spinning up a matter from an email used to be a five-minute form. The Assistant drafts the whole thing from the message and I check it. Across a team our size that is hours back every week, and far cleaner data when it is time to report to the board.

Marcus LeeHead of Legal Operations, Meridian Retail Group

When a redline lands at 6pm the first question is always what actually changed. Version Intelligence tells me in a sentence and flags the clause that breaks our playbook. It has changed how fast I can turn a contract around.

Sophie TranSenior Contracts Counsel, Atlas Health

Availability

LawVu Assistant in Outlook and Gmail is included with LawVu Assistant and works with Microsoft Outlook on Windows, Mac, and the web, and with Gmail on Google Workspace. Every action is approval-gated and recorded in an audit log. Customer data stays in the customer's chosen region and is not used to train AI models. Existing customers can switch it on through their administrator. New customers can request a demo at lawvu.com.

About LawVu

LawVu is the legal workspace built for in-house legal teams. It brings matters, contracts, spend, intake, documents, and reporting into one platform, with AI embedded across every workflow and enterprise-grade security underneath. LawVu is headquartered in Tauranga, New Zealand, and serves legal teams worldwide. The platform is certified to ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 for AI management, and complies with SOC 1, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA.

Media contact · press@lawvu.com · lawvu.com/newsroom

Frequently asked questions

The customer questions we expect at launch.

For customers

What is this, in one line?

The LawVu Assistant, working inside your email. It reads the message you are looking at and helps you file it, understand it, structure it into LawVu, and answer questions about it, without leaving Outlook or Gmail.

Which email clients are supported?

Microsoft Outlook on Windows, Mac, and the web, and Gmail on Google Workspace. The capabilities are the same across both; where the platforms differ, the Assistant adapts to each.

Does the Assistant act on its own, or do I stay in control?

You stay in control. The Assistant proposes; you approve. Creating or updating a record, raising a task, or sending anything always requires your confirmation and every action is written to an audit log. Nothing is filed or sent silently.

How does it know which matter or contract an email belongs to?

It reads the people, subject, content, and earlier thread, then matches that against your matters and contracts and offers the most likely options ranked by confidence. You confirm the right one. Over time, your confirmations make the suggestions sharper.

How does it draft a whole new matter from one email?

It reads the relevant intake form for the matter or contract type, then fills the fields it can from the email and attachments, including your organisation's custom fields and option lists. It marks each field as confident, inferred, or needing input, and you review before anything is created.

Is my email and contract data used to train AI models?

No. Your data and prompts are not used to train public models or LawVu's own models. Content stays inside your LawVu environment, in your chosen data region, under the same controls as the rest of the platform. LawVu is certified to ISO 42001 for AI management.

How does policy Q&A avoid making things up?

Answers are grounded in your organisation's own documented policies and returned with links to the source passages, so you can check them. If your policies do not cover a question, the Assistant tells you that rather than inventing an answer.

What does Contract Version Intelligence compare against?

The version already stored on the contract in LawVu. Because LawVu holds the prior version, the comparison has a reliable anchor, and the Assistant can explain the substance and likely effect of the changes rather than only showing a mechanical redline.

Does it work with shared team mailboxes?

This release focuses on individual Outlook and Gmail accounts. Triage from shared legal mailboxes is a known need and is on the roadmap as a later step.

How do we get it?

It is included with LawVu Assistant. Existing customers enable it through their administrator. New customers can request a demo at lawvu.com.