A community for in-house legal teams, our first AI features, a brand-new Outlook Add-In, and upgrades across Smart Search, Intake, Contracts, Dashboards, and our integrations. Here's what shipped in the first half of 2026.
This has been our biggest half of releases yet. Our first AI features went live, the legacy Outlook Add-In was retired and replaced, and Smart Search, Intake, Form Builder, Contracts and Dashboards, all got meaningful upgrades.
AI is part of the year, but only part. Most in-house teams I talk to aren't sure they need AI yet, and they're heads-down working: more matters, more contracts, more requests, same headcount. We've built for both.
Onto the work.
The Xakia Community
Several of the bigger pieces this half came directly out of customer conversations, on calls, in tickets, and in the Xakia Community.
If you're a Xakia customer and you haven't joined yet, it's the single best thing I can point you at to get more out of Xakia. Free, Xakia-only, 30 seconds to sign up.
Smart Search That Finds What You Need
You know it's in there. You just can't find it. We rebuilt Smart Search end to end.
Document Smart Search now reads inside your documents across the Xakia DMS. Searches run against each file. Newly uploaded documents become searchable within minutes and matter discussion messages appear in results, so context from team conversations isn't trapped behind a matter view.
On top of that, we added Saved Searches, search across Intake Documents, and seven new filters. The most useful upgrade for power users is advanced search syntax:
- "force majeure event" finds exact phrase matches
- terminat* catches stems (terminate, termination, terminating)
- Contract W/5 Breach finds both words within five words of each other
Search now goes from "I know it's in here somewhere" to "found it" in seconds. Next up: Natural language search.
Xakia AI Is Live: For the Teams Who Asked for It
Contract review is the work in-house teams want to do less of: counterparty paper, rushed deadlines, the same standard sections you've reviewed a hundred times. This is exactly what AI should be doing.
So we shipped two AI features, both built to fit into the work you already do.
AI Document Review and Redlining, inside Word
Open any contract in Word, run the review, and Xakia AI marks it up against your playbook. Suggested edits can be applied as tracked redlines, dropped as comments, or ignored, one issue at a time. You stay in control of every change.
The review is configurable in the ways that matter, so it reflects how your team negotiates. Contract review that's faster, more consistent, and recognizably yours.
AI access subscription required. Reply here or have your admin contact us to add it.
AI Contract Extract and Summary, inside Xakia
This one tackles a different problem: the time it takes to get a contract into your system in the first place. Upload, click Analyze, and Xakia AI extracts the key data and writes a summary. Review it, edit what needs tweaking, and save.
AI access subscription required. Reply here or have your admin contact us to add it.
Intake and Form Builder: Capture the Right Information the First Time
Half the problems with legal work start before anyone opens a matter or contract: wrong template, skipped approval, legal only finds out once someone has already committed. Better intake fixes that.
The biggest piece this half is Conditional Logic. Forms now respond to what users select, showing or hiding fields based on their answers. Intake Routing sends incoming requests automatically to the right person or team, with rules built on most field types. No manual triage.
And coming in the next release: Intake Deflection, which routes the stuff that doesn't really need legal straight to where it belongs, while keeping the analytics.
Contracts: Cleaner Lifecycle
In-house teams don't manage matters in one place and contracts in another. It's the same workflow.
Contracts now flow through the same intake door as matters. Contract fields appear on intake forms, with Xakia auto-creating and linking a contract to the matter on submission. Contracts can also be raised directly through the Intake flow, and Triage captures more information. No separate cleanup step.
The contract record itself got two upgrades worth flagging. Our Paper records whether each contract is on your standard terms or the counterparty's paper, filterable across your entire contract portfolio. And the refreshed contract record puts the document, key metadata, and lifecycle in one view, with everything else expandable below.
Dashboards That Tell the Whole Story
PDF export now covers the External Spend and Capacity dashboards, with polish across Worklog, Intake, and Timeline.
The All Matters and Timeline dashboards got the bigger upgrade: a refined visual layout, a new Quadrant chart, new Timeline charts, and full filter parity between the two. Same data, same way, whichever view you're in.
The New Xakia Outlook Add-In (Microsoft 365)
Microsoft retired the technology behind the legacy Outlook Add-In, and from mid-April the old one stopped working. If you haven't switched yet, the upgrade takes a few minutes.
The new Add-In lets you file emails to a matter as you send them, auto-files every reply once a thread is started, shows a "Filed by Xakia" tag so you know what's already in the system, and lets you insert files from the Xakia DMS straight into an email without downloading first. Setup guide is in the Knowledge Base, no IT project required.
Looking Ahead
The second half has a heavier roadmap than the first.
Entity Management, Intake Deflection, and AI invoice review against billing rules are all on the way.
If you'd rather see things in action than read about them, we're running a live walkthrough of Xakia's contract management on May 21st. Pick your timezone:
If you're not in the Community yet, that's still the first thing I'd put on this week's to-do list. It's where the next round of betas, polls, and roadmap reveals are going to land.
Thank you to everyone who flagged issues, requested features, or pushed back on something this half. Every release is shaped by your feedback. Keep it coming.
