This morning Greg McCaffery CEO of Bloomberg Law sent a letter to clients announcing some changes at Bloomberg Law and BloombergBNA. The most immediate impact will be the unification of all legal products under a single subsidiary named BloombergBNA starting in January 2014.

New Leadership Structure Effective January 1, McCaffery will become the CEO of Bloomberg BNA.The leadership team will include Sue Martin, formerly CFO of the Bloomberg Industry Verticals; Darren McKewen, President of BNA; and Dmitri Mehlhorn.

Listening at AALL. McCaffery’s letter acknowledged the impact of client discussions at the recent AALL conference. “We discussed these topics repeatedly two weeks ago at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, when a team of us from Bloomberg Law/Bloomberg BNA spent four days with leaders in the field of legal information.”

The “Why” of this Move “Clients want even better solutions—solutions that integrate Bloomberg business insights, BNA content, and next-generation legal research technology to help our clients thrive in the changing landscape. “

Yes You Can Still Subscribe Directly to BNA Products The top question on the minds of information professionals will be whether this move suggests that the company is turning to a more aggressive marketing approach and requiring customers to purchase BLaw before they can get BNA subscriptions. There is no indication in the letter of any change is this regard.

Innovation Focused on Law Firm Profitability. Music to everyone’s ears. “We are committed to making individual users more effective, and our clients’ enterprises more profitable.” The letter describes the integration of BBNA Tax Management Portfolios with the Bloomberg Law DealMaker product to give tax professionals even more powerful tools for serving their clients. I believe this is absolutely the future. We will see new “mash ups” of previously independent products which connects previously independent content sets while adding new functionality and the opportunity for greater productivity.

Content Powered By Context and Connections. This is the main legal publishing industry trend which has already been in motion. Recent moves by Thomson Reuters, Lexis, Nexis and Wolters Kluwer echo the same message. We are no longer buying content, we are buying content wired to unconventional data streams which will surface new connections and be powered to change the way we work.

Good News for BLaw Subscribers This morning Greg McCaffery put a stake in the ground and declared that Bloomberg BNA will beat the competition in speeding innovation to the marketplace. The good news for Bloomberg BNA subscribers is that whatever BBNA develops, they are assured that they will get it all. One of Bloomberg Law’s distinguishing approaches to the legal market is to provide a predictable pricing model which assures that all innovations and new products are immediately available to all subscribers.