Henchman Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Lexis Create+ is the current commercial home of technology from Henchman, a Belgian startup founded in 2021 by Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin and Wouter Van Respaille. Henchman began as a Microsoft Word add-in for searching precedent and reusing clauses, raised $7 million in Series A funding in March 2023, and had more than 100 customers across 15 countries at that point. LexisNexis completed its acquisition on July 22, 2024, when Henchman had more than 170 customers. The standalone Henchman identity is therefore historical. Create+ is aimed at professional legal users and firms that want drafting assistance within Microsoft 365 rather than a separate contract workspace. The acquisition makes its history relevant to buyers assessing LexisNexis drafting products today, rather than choosing an independent startup subscription.

Create+ runs as a Microsoft 365 add-in, with Word at the center and Outlook support for drafting that begins in email. Lawyers can search firm or document management system precedent, find clauses and definitions, reuse approved language, proofread, redline, summarize documents and ask questions about them. Supported knowledge sources include iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, Google and Google Drive, among others. Permission mirroring controls access to internal material. LexisNexis also combines its authoritative legal content with Protégé generative AI. Deployment can occur through the Microsoft Admin Center, AppSource or a SharePoint catalog, while Word desktop or Office 365 is required. The practical prerequisite is a usable collection of precedents and permissions that reflect which documents each lawyer is allowed to access.

The product combines LexisNexis content, firm precedent, legacy Create proofreading and redlining, and Protégé generative AI inside Microsoft 365. LexisNexis reported a formal rollout in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States in January 2025, followed by Outlook integration in August 2025 and an Australia and New Zealand release in November 2025. April 2026 product material describes a redesign, proofreading changes and Protégé enhancements. LexisNexis says customer data is not used to train its AI. Its security overview documents SAML 2.0 single sign-on, AES 256 encryption at rest, least privilege support access, security testing and customer directed deletion controls. These product releases concern the drafting interface and integrations, rather than a public promise about a particular foundation model or context window.

Create+ does not publish a standalone dollar price on its product pages. LexisNexis directs prospective customers to request a demonstration and tailored quote, so the practical entry point is a custom contract rather than a self serve plan. A third party October 2026 review reports $289 per attorney monthly on an annual Lexis+ Deluxe Transactional bundle for firms with one to three attorneys, or $217 per attorney monthly on a three year term. That figure is a bundle report, not a published Create+ standalone price. The product is sold through enterprise licensing and demo led onboarding, with no public free tier or self serve developer plan identified. A quote should identify the drafting product, connected repositories, user coverage, implementation charges, and contract term before a firm compares total costs.

The main limitation is commercial and architectural: Create+ is a Microsoft 365 and document management add in, not a standalone contract lifecycle management workspace or a public self serve API product. Juro offers a broader browser based contract workspace, public REST API documentation and custom enterprise pricing. Ironclad targets enterprise contract lifecycle management with extensive configuration and custom quotes. Litera Compare and Check are closer Word based drafting and proofing alternatives, while Create+ adds LexisNexis content, Protégé and permission aware firm precedent. Its value therefore depends on the quality of a firm's precedent collection and its willingness to work inside the Microsoft environment. Firms that already use Microsoft 365 and need governed precedent search inside Word should pick Create+.