Today Bloomberg Law announced the expansion of Litigation Practice Guidance which includes overviews, checklists, sample forms and filings that are organized around the litigation process. They are structured to guide attorneys through each phase of initiating and defending litigation– addressing both legal and logistical issues. A new Litigation Resources page organizes the key research tools and reference materials needed for daily practice, including statutes of limitations, jury instructions, court rules, laws, and regulations. The guidance resources enhance and link to the litigation resources which where already on Bloomberg Law  including  Points of Law, Smart Codes and their outstanding docket resources.

Joe Breda, The President of Bloomberg Law and Mindy Rattan who oversees the development of litigation content. provided me with an overview of the product. Breda described Litigation Practice Guidance as providing “reliable answers in the shortest amount of time.”  As law firms have embraced the “gospel of efficiency”  Bloomberg Law and their legal publishing competitors have responded by moving away from the esoteric treatise toward the practical roadmap and one-stop resource center. in 2011 Bloomberg acquired the Bureau of National Affairs which had pioneered practical guidance with their Tax and Corporate Practice Portfolios. According to Breda, the Litigation portfolios remain available in the Litigation Practice Center, but the Litigation Practical Guidance materials are the result of a new initiative headed up by Mindy Rattan. These resources are authored by expert practitioners rather than by legal editors. They will continue to build out content and have already announced that new resources will cover Special Defenses and Discovery.

The Litigation Practice Guidance includes:

 

  • Topical overviews, checklist and forms
  • Links to related content (e.g. dockets, patents)
  • Points of law providing key legal principles in court opinions
  • Smart Code provides up-to-date judicial interpretations of statues rules and regulations
  • Practice tips guidance written by expert practitioners

 

LITIGATION GUIDANCE OVERVIEW

 

TEMPLATE FOR MOTION DRAFTING

Template for Drafting a Motion 

INTERACTIVE STATUTES OF LIMITIATIONS MAP

Interactive state statutes of limitations map

Market Position: The two main competitors to Litigation Guidance are LexisNexis Practice Advisor and Thomson Reuters Practical Law. Practical Law  started in the UK and since its acquisition by TR has become the dominant practical guidance product in the U. S.. Like other TR products, Practical Law is a “high ticket” product.  TR has also morphed and divided their Practical Law product into multiple “flavors” of Practical Law — achieving two unintended outcomes– diluting the  Practical Law brand and annoying their customers. Price sensitive customers are looking for alternatives. Since Litigation Guidance is available to anyone with a Bloomberg Law Subscription – this could begin to erode Practical Law use in firms with access to Bloomberg Law.  But in order to move the market – Bloomberg needs to develop more guidance materials for more practice areas.  For now, they are off to a promising start.

Availability: As with all enhancements to the Bloomberg Law platform, this new Litigation Practical Guidance and the accompanying Litigation Resources expansion are available to Bloomberg Law subscribers at no additional cost.

Demo: Request a demo at this link.

Is Casetext’s SmartCite poised to disrupt the legal research market? But it is just a citator right? Why would that be?  One of the reasons that LexisNexis® and Thomson Reuters have been able to maintain their dominance of the legal research market is the strength and reputation of their citation systems. Shepards dates back to 1873 but was acquired by the parent of  LexisNexis® 1996.  Thomson Reuters launched KeyCite and 1997. The development of Key Cite uses technology to leverage Thomson Reuters  editorial expertise and the deep archive of editorial materials. In 2018 it was enhanced with a an advanced “Overruling risk” feature in Westlaw Edge. In the past decade Bloomberg Law is rumored to have spent $600 million building their BCite citator.
None of the lower cost competitors that have emerged over the past two decades have deep editorial legacies to draw upon or a “deep pocket” owner like Mike Bloomberg. Lower-cost legal research competitors have needed to develop algorithms to even compete in this space. Several years ago Fastcase developed the Bad Law Bot to address  the negative history of cases. Casemaker and Ross have also offered a negative history citator. Google Scholar appears to have taken a pass on developing a citator to enhance their caselaw offering. The development of a citator is not for the feint of heart. And until now it was only for companies with deep pockets.
Drumroll Please – Enter the Low Cost Caselaw Citator
Like other citators Casetext SmartCite alerts lawyers to the negative treatment of cases and to other cases they should read. Citation tools mitigate risk and drive efficiency by helping lawyers identify and focus on the most relevant cases for their issue. SmartCite goes beyond the standard  positive treatment(green), negative treatment (green) and neutral treatment (yellow). They have also come up with a orange flag similar to the “overruling risk” flag which was released last summer by Thomson Reuters in Westlaw Edge.
Below are the 6 mail features of SmartCite
1) red/green/yellow flags;
2) orange flags the case relies heavily on an negatively treated case but the case you are reading has not been overrules ( and looks like a reliable precedent)
3) a ” CARA-fied” citation list  (meaning CARA will provide context-specific list of citing cases)
4) Emphasis added (shows you when a specific word/phrase was not just quoted but emphasized in later decision)
5) Judicial summaries of how case A treats case B
 6) “Similar Issues”  turns any paragraph into a type of headnote
SmartCite Emphasis Added
Casetext has posted an interview with Pablo Arredondo, Casetext Co-founder and Chief Product Officer on their website   which provides some fascinating legal history trivia – the first citiator was developed in  1807 by an attorney named Greenleaf who had been humiliated in court by citing to an overruled case.( Who knew?) Arredondo also explains how they have used legal informative which were brought together in SmartCite. I love the fact that they have used AI/machine learning and editorial expertise  to surface things like judicial summaries or judge authored “explanatory parentheticals.” They use similar technology to identify the emphasis added in an otherwise identical quotation. Smart lawyers with advanced technology have a shot at leveling the playing field.
Market Impact. There is no such thing as a perfect citator. Lawyers still need to read cases.
For those who are plugging for some lower cost product or combination or products  which can challenge the dominance of the high ticket legacy products,  Casetext’s SmartCite could be a reason to celebrate.
It will take a lot of testing for the large law market to embrace yet another citiation product, but the market may be ready. There has been a growing risk from a generation of lawyers who grew up on texts and tweets who may not have the patience or perhaps even stamina to read and interpret 50 page judicial opinions. Lawyers have always been  tempted to outsource the interpretation of cases to citators . The current generation of citation systems are getting better and better at delivering a variety of insights for a lawyer’s consideration. No citator, no matter how esteemed relieves a lawyer of the responsibility of reading the cases which a citator leads them to. No citator, no matter how iconic is without error.  In this context, an upstart like Casetext’s SmartCite could, if it survives the  harsh “road testing” in the coming months…could erode the Lexis/Westaw/Bloomberg Law tri-opoly.

As most legal publishers are scaling back if not  winding down their print operations, Fastcase is scaling up their print offerings. The Fastcase publishing arm Full Court Press announced the release their first hard bound treatises. The titles Business Insurance and Insurance for Real Estate-Related Entities, are now available in print, as well as on the Fastcase legal research platform. Both treatises can be purchased through the Full Court Press bookstore.

The Full Press Release is below:

Fastcase’s Publishing Imprint, Full Court Press, Debuts First Hardbound Treatises
New Insurance Law Publications Available in the Full Court Press Bookstore and Fastcase Legal Research Platform

Washington, DC (May 16, 2019) – Legal publisher Fastcase today debuted the first hardbound books published under its Full Court Press publishing arm. The two treatises, Business Insurance and Insurance for Real Estate-Related Entities, are now available in print, as well as on the Fastcase legal research platform.

Each treatise is sold for $225 and can be purchased through the Full Court Press bookstore at https://www.fastcase.com/store/fcp/business-insurance and https://www.fastcase.com/store/fcp/insurance-for-real-estate-related-entities, respectively. Fastcase users wishing to add the treatises to their existing online legal research suite can similarly do so for $225 each, which includes any updates made to the titles as they become available throughout the year of the subscription period.

Robert E. Frankel, General Counsel at the Investments and Wealth Institute, authored both of the titles. Frankel’s expertise arises from his practice as a partner at Anderson Kill for more than 12 years, where he worked on matters related to insurance recovery and bad faith, commercial litigation, and real estate. The treatises update and expand upon Frankel and co-author John Ellison’s prior work Insuring Real Property Businesses, which was the first treatise to exclusively cover insurance issues facing the real estate industry.

“Since we started Full Court Press a little over a year ago, our offerings have blossomed into a diverse set of guidebooks, journals, eBooks, and now industry-leading hardbound treatises,” said Full Court Press Publisher Morgan Morrissette Wright. “While other publishers are eliminating the print model, we’re embracing the needs of many attorneys, who prefer to work with print books, so long as they are available at a reasonable price.”

“We’re fortunate to have Rob Frankel among our first expert authors to join our upstart imprint,” said Fastcase COO Steve Errick. “As our treatise library grows, we hope additional acclaimed attorney-authors will find a home at Full Court Press. Whether helping our bar partners accelerate their publishing programs, or finding authors ourselves, author expertise remains invaluable and Fastcase will do its part to offer these publications to the wider legal community, including the small and solo attorneys, who have had difficulty accessing these types of titles at their traditional price points.”

About Fastcase
As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 900,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, follow Fastcase on Twitter at @Fastcase, or visit www.fastcase.com.

Today Intelligize    (a Lexis Nexis company) is launching a new workflow enhancement resources the Intelligize RedBook (IRB). The SEC forms which lawyers are required to draft and update are the core of this product. When a lawyer selects a form – they are guided through a step-by-step guide linking all of the relevant regulations and commentary. The product leverages the powerful Intelligize algorithms and deep indexing.  Phil Brown, Managing Director and Mark Butler, Director. Thought Leadership & Product Marketing provided me with a preview of IRB.

The platform provides an intuitive workflow and displays all the key drafting resources in one screen. All of the functionality is tied to the SEC forms and a full library of primary source materials: statutes, regulations, SEC commentaries and a full archive of SEC filings which can be  explored and used for drafting language.


Workflow enhancements include:

• Leveraging checklists to increase efficiencies, reduce risks and collaborate with peers
• Quickly finding peer company precedents when drafting new disclosures
Eliminating the burden of looking up rules referenced in SEC Forms
• Redlining enables lawyers to easily spot changes in Form Items and the underlying regulation changes from previous iterations of the Regulation or form
• Improving their review accuracy by highlighting and annotating key regulatory content

Yes this is a research product, but it also joins the ranks of  digital products morphing from being a resource to provide faster answers  to  a product which drives efficient workflow. The Intelligize Redbook appears to be designed to compete  directly the Wolters Kluwer RB Source/RB Source Filing/Regulatory Review products.  This is part of a larger workflow trend in legal publishing where LexisNexis, Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters are extending workflow solutions throughout their research products.

 Free trial through May 31st of the Intelligize RedBook. Existing Intelligize customers will have automatic access to IRB. They won’t have to request anything until after the free access period ends.  Everyone else can request a free trial at this link: www.intelligize.com/redbook

 

It was only a week ago today that  I reported that international publishing giant Wolters Kluwer took all their products offline after malware was detected in one of their systems.  Today the U.S.  Legal & Regulatory division sent the message below to their customers which provides more context to the situation they were facing. I congratulate everyone at Wolters Kluwer for the speedy recovery. of their business and publishing systems.

The key security  takeaway is “the service interruptions you have experienced are primarily the result of our aggressive, precautionary efforts to ensure the safety of your data. This is why at this time we are confident that we see no indication of data loss or other effects, nor any potential risk to our clients’ data.”

Helpline: They have also set up  customer support line to address the incident: dedicated customer support line regarding this incident: 800-930-1753 or contact them by email at  customer.service@wolterskluwer.com.

Product Status Almost all of their legal products are back online and fully functional including NILS Insurance and International Arbitration which were the last two products to be restored. It is my understanding that the daily newsletters should be back up as soon as tomorrow. They have updated the product guide at this link which indicates the status of products and features.

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your continued patience as we work to fully restore all of our applications and platforms. We are writing to update you on the progress we are making in this regard, as well as provide more context about this situation and how we were able to effectively isolate and contain it ensuring safety of our products and customer data. We are pleased to let you know that the vast majority of our products are back online, please visit our LRUS Products page for the most up-to-date information.

Regarding the May 6 service interruption, it’s important to clarify that although there was malware on our network, our processes and protocols provide a high degree of confidence in the security of our applications and platforms before they are brought back online. We reiterate that as of today we have not seen any evidence that customer data or systems were compromised or that there was a breach of confidentiality of customer data.

As previously shared, when we started seeing technical anomalies in a number of our applications and platforms, we proactively isolated our systems out of an abundance of caution before any detrimental effects could occur. We have since been working with best-in-class anti-virus and security firms to develop and deploy newly released anti-virus solutions. In short, the service interruptions you have experienced are primarily the result of our aggressive, precautionary efforts to ensure the safety of your data. This is why at this time we are confident that we see no indication of data loss or other effects, nor any potential risk to our clients’ data.

As we’ve noted before, we are working diligently around the clock to completely restore service and those efforts are continuing.

If you have any questions, we have established a dedicated customer support line regarding this incident at 800-930-1753 or contact us at customer.service@wolterskluwer.com.

We appreciate your continued patience and will work to keep you updated as new information becomes available.

 

 

 

Sincerely,
Your Legal & Regulatory, U.S. Team

Having lived through a cyber-attack in a large organization myself – I am pleasantly surprised to see that Wolters Kluwer  Legal and Regulatory has made such speedy progress getting their products back online in less than a week. Cheetah their main legal and regulatory platform was back online this morning after 3 days offline. Tomorrow RBSource, RBSource Filings and M&A Clause Analytics which are specialty products for corporate and securities lawyers will be back up tomorrow. Not every feature is working in these products. But they have created a useful chart where customers can check the status of each feature.

Can we all just be patient? I understand that some customers are chomping at the bit to find out how the Wolters Kluwer executives plan to “make them whole”  in response to the service interruption. My advice to subscribers is to hold off on the certified mail demand letter. Again, having been through a cyber attack myself  I understand that the immediate focus is on getting the business back up and running.  My own experience makes me suspect that the IT and Security teams have been working around the clock – there are likely some very tired executives hunkered down in a conference room with a temporary communication system ( personal cell phones and personal email accounts) reassembling the pieces of a complex organization.

We need to give them a few weeks to regroup and develop a response. Their focus is rightly on getting the business up and running – there will be time for the “make me whole” discussion — we just need to be patient.

They have added a separate chart for RBSource features at the bottom of the Cheetah page.

 

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory has advised subscribers that their flagship platform Cheetah will be back online tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. est. However certain advanced features such at “smart charts” and redlining will not be restored immediately.

Wolters Kluwer has issued the following message to customers:

Dear Customer 
We are pleased to let you know that Cheetah will be coming back online tomorrow, May 9 at 10:00AM EDT. As Cheetah comes back online, some content updates may be delayed and certain features such as Smart Charts, Tax Reporters Plus Suite as well as some news content will not be immediately available. We will continue to update you on our progress, and information about product updates are being provided here. 

Thank you for your continued patience and loyalty; we truly appreciate it. 

As we continue to bring our support centers back online, please use this temporary number 800-930-1753 or contact us at customer.service@wolterskluwer.com

Best Regards, 
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory Team

The Cheetah  Status Chart  Wolters Kluwer has created a guide outlining the restoration of Cheetah features and content at this LINK. This guide will be continuously updated as content and features are restored. Green= Fully Functional; Yellow= Partially Functional; Gray =Not Available

On Monday I posted about a malware incident which caused Wolters Kluwer to take all their products offline. Last night I commented about a post on the Krebs on Security website which indicated that the author had noted suspicious write-able files  on the Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting  software Website last Friday.

Linda Gharib, Director, Marketing Communications & Media Legal and Regulatory U.S. of Public Relations at Wolters Kluwer provided the following statement regarding the Krebs posting:

Please be assured that at this time we see no evidence of correlation between the matter raised in the article you cited, and the incident we experienced and informed customers of this week. We will of course to continue to investigate this matter.

Note that we also have concerns about the article, which contains inaccuracies – here are some specific points:

  1. The site Krebs highlighted is a read only ftp site that serves as a download center for certain legacy tax forms. The bulk of its content is tax forms for the previous years.
  2. None of the data contains PII or is sensitive data.
  3. When Krebs contacted the Tax unit, the site was taken offline to carefully review the content. The intent is to continue to make the forms available, but ensure security protocols are met.
  4. As disclosed on May 7 to customers, we took offline many of our applications and are in the process of bringing them back up.

Since temporal correlation does not equal causation we need to give Wolters Kluwer the benefit of the doubt. I have every confidence that Wolters Kluwer executives will communicate all material information to their customers and their cyber-security teams as soon as they have completed they security analysis of the incident. To Wolters Kluwer’s credit — in recent years they have developed a track record of “doing the right thing” in regard to customer relations issues.

Good News: Their website now indicates that there is a temporary helpline and customer service email are back up:

Helpline : 800-930-1753 or contact us at customer.service@wolterskluwer.com.

Most of Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory products including the  Cheetah platform  and RBSource  have been offline for more than twenty four hours. To make matters worse – customer can’t reach them.  All of their phone and communication systems have been offline.  Their customer service number rings and rings —no answer – there have been no legal  news updates on their website since May 3rd. On Tuesday I posted a message which Wolters Kluwer wanted to reach their customers.

A prominent cyber-security blog Krebs on Security   has posted a disturbing report that Wolters Kluwer was aware of a security problem last Friday. It indicates that the problem may have originated in a  tax software product from the Tax & Accounting division. According to the blog post  “file directories containing new versions of CCH’s software were open and writable by any anonymous user, and that there were suspicious files in those directories indicating some user(s) abused that access.”  Krebs reported seeing “a few odd PHP and text files in the CCH Directories , including one that seemed to be promoting two different and unrelated Russian language discussion forums.” Shortly after Krebs reported the problem to Wolters Kluwer, the CCH file directory for tax software downloads was taken offline.

If there is any good news in this for law firms – they generally do not subscribe to the kind of accounting software implicated in the report above. It is accounting firms that are at the greatest risk.

Krebs also links to a Reddit thread which is full of theories about the cyber problems. One post suggests that this may be linked to a recent surge in MegaCortex ransomeware attacks.

Law firms are prime targets for hackers – they are rich in secrets: private equity and M&A deal data, intellectual property and trade secrets, financial and litigation risks involving clients. Given that reality,  it is a terrifying prospect that a research vendor could unwittingly provide a back door to a law firm network. Let us hope that the Wolters Kluwer suite of legal research products are not impacted by the malware attack at Wolters Kluwer. Let’s hope that it is true – that they have been taken offline out of an abundance of caution and access will soon be restored to subscribers. However – I remain puzzled that Wolters Kluwer did not warn all of their customers about the potential risks as soon as they became aware of the breach last Friday.

I reached out to representatives from Wolters Kluwer tonight asking for a comment of the Krebs report. I have not yet gotten a response.

Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory – a   leading publishers of  regulatory materials in the United States has experienced a serious service interruption since yesterday afternoon arising from malware. They have taken their platforms  including Cheetah and RBSource offline. To make matters worse –  the malware  impacted their ability to communicate with customers.  According to the statement below no user data was impacted.

Below is a message to their customers:

Wolters Kluwer Platforms and Applications Service Interruptions – Update May 6

On Monday May 6, we started seeing technical anomalies in a number of our platforms and applications. We immediately started investigating and discovered the installation of malware. As a precaution, in parallel, we decided to take a broader range of platforms and applications offline. With this action, we aimed to quickly limit the impact this malware could have had, giving us the opportunity to investigate the issue with assistance from third-party forensics consultants and work on a solution. Unfortunately, this impacted our communication channels and limited our ability to share updates. On May 7, we were able to restore service to a number of applications and platforms.

We regret any inconvenience and that we were unable to share more information initially, as our focus was on investigation and restoring services as quickly as possible for our customers.

We have seen no evidence that customer data was taken or that there was a breach of confidentiality of that data. Also, there is no reason to believe that our customers have been infected through our platforms and applications. Our investigation is ongoing. We want to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.