Today Gavelytics announced the addition of millions of trial court dockets, rulings, and other litigation documents from Northern California  including new coverage of Alameda County. They have already begun to expand outside of California with the addition of analytics for Florida and Nevada. In a phone call today I asked  Gavelytics CEO Rick Merrill  which states they planned to launch next. I am pleased to report that Merrill indicated that New York and Texas should be launched in Q4.

New York will be launched in two parts. First the five counties within the boundaries of New York City (New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens and Richmond) will launch.There will be a second launch of  New York counties  which include the counties in the New York metropolitan area  (e.g. Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk) and  the large “up state” counties Continue Reading State Analytics Platform Gavelytics Enhances Northern California Coverage — New York and Texas Coming in Q4

Today Bloomberg BNA dropped the venerable BNA as in Bureau of National Affairs from the company name. The new name  is Bloomberg Industry Group which  gives us a wonderful new acronym in Legal Publishing: BIG.

According to the press release reprinted below — the new name better reflects the diverse range of businesses, professionals and markets which it serves. Flagship product lines will continue to branded as Bloomberg Law Bloomberg Tax & Accounting, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Environment­.

They also have a launch video at this link.

Over the past  year  I wrote several posts  documenting the changes at Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg BNA including an interview with Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda, Bloomberg undertook a major realignment of the legacy BNA products which included both specialty newsletters and digital practice centers. Many newsletters disappeared or were rebranded. The practice centers were moved onto the Bloomberg Law platform and the company recommitted to the simplified pricing which was a foundational differentiator in its competition with Lexis and Westlaw.

Here is the press release:

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg BNA today announced that its new name is Bloomberg Industry Group. The new name better reflects the diverse range of businesses and professionals the company serves and the wide range of markets where it operates. The company will continue to go to market using its flagship platforms—Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax & Accounting, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Environment­—all of which provide an unparalleled mix of news, data, and analysis.

“Since our company was acquired by Bloomberg in 2011, we’ve developed a broad portfolio of products and solutions while serving a changing marketplace,” said Josh Eastright, CEO of Bloomberg Industry Group. “At the same time, we’ve transformed from a periodical publisher to a product- and technology-focused company. Our new name more accurately reflects who we are today—a company that empowers industry professionals with critical information to take decisive action and make the most of every opportunity.”

The name change is effective immediately. There will be no changes to product access or support. To keep up to date with the latest news from Bloomberg Industry Group, follow the company on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/bloomberg-industry-group, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bbgindustry, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bloombergindustry/.

Lex Machina is announcing the launch of the  Consumer Protection Litigation  analytics module covering nearly 145,000 cases, including more than 26,000 class action lawsuits, pending in federal district court since 2009. This is the 15th topical module added to the Lex Machina platform. Every Lex Machina module provides  data driven insights into judges, courts, law firms, individual attorneys, and parties which can be used to win new business or develop litigation strategy.

The new module covers two major areas: consumer finance and unfair or deceptive practices. Consumer protection cases allege at least one of the following federal consumer protection statutes: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Truth in Lending Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or a federal consumer protection enforcement statute, such as the FTC Act or Consumer Financial Protection Act.

Laura Hopkins, Legal Data Expert at Lex Machina, described the value of the product in the press release: “consumer protection is a rapidly shifting practice area with a high volume of case filings, high-profile cases, and large proportion of class action cases. Both consumer protection laws and frameworks for existing laws are often being updated as new technology and trends emerge.”

Lex Machina Consumer Protection Resolutions

Consumer Protection Litigation On the Rise An analysis of the Lex Machina data shows that cases alleging Fair Credit Reporting Act and Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations have skyrocketed in recent years. More than $43 billion in damages have been awarded in consumer protection cases. High profile litigation include Capital One, Equifax, Volkswagen and Facebook. Lex Machina plans to issue a comprehensive Consumer Protection Litigation Report later this year.

Lex Machina Consumer Protection Findings

Each topical module includes practice-specific data tags and filters. which enable users to target high value insights. Among the practice-specific new case tags, damages categories and findings include:

  • Case Tags: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Report Act (FCRA), Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), FTC / CFPB Enforcement, and Unfair / Deceptive Trade Practices
  • Damages: Statutory Damages, Enhanced / Trebled Damages, Compensatory Damages, Punitive Damages, Restitution, Civil Money Penalties, Settled Claim Damages, and Approved Class Action Settlement
  • Findings: Violation Findings: FDCPA Violation, FCRA Violation, TILA Violation, TCPA Violation, Other Federal Consumer Finance Violation, State Consumer Finance Violation, Fraud, Negligence, Federal Enforcement Violation, and State UDTP Violation
  • Class Certification Findings: No Class Representative Standing, No Ascertainable Class, No 23(a)(1) Numerosity, No 23(a)(2) Commonality, No 23(a)(3) Typicality, No 23(a)(4) Adequate Representation, and No 23(b)(3) Predominance and Superiority
  • Defense Findings: Bona Fide Error Defense, Good Faith Reliance Defense
  • Remedies: TILA Rescission

Webcast on Legal Analytics for Consumer Protection Litigation

On August 28 at 11:00am PDT, Lex Machina will sponsor an ALM webcast entitled, “Legal Analytics for Consumer Protection Case Strategies.” Panelists include Lex Machina’s GC and Chief Evangelist Owen Byrd and Legal Data Expert Laura Hopkins; Jessica E. Salisbury-Copper, a partner at Thompson Hine; and Timothy P. Kingsbury, associate attorney at McGuire Law, P.C. For more information or to register please click here.

What’s Up  Next  from Lex Machina

During the Consumer Protection module demo I asked Own Byrd for some insights into upcoming developments. According to Byrd Lex Machina expects launch the remaining federal topical modules before the end of the year. At that point they will shift their focus to state analytics products

This week, ILTACON 2019 is being held August 18-22, in Orlando, FL. Attendees will have the opportunity to attend a four-part series on the hot topic and still mysterious cluster of technologies known as blockchain. The program is the brainchild of Katherine Lowry, Director of Practice Services at BakerHostetler. I recently interviewed Lowry to gain some insights into the evolution of her interest in blockchain in the law and her goal in designing the ILTA program.
According to Lowry’s LinkedIn write up, attendees who come to the “Blockchain series will have the opportunity to demystify and learn the practical impact of blockchain for lawyers.” Below is a description of the sessions which will run Monday through Wednesday at the ILTA conference in Orlando.

The series facilitator is Amy Y. Wan, CEO, Sagewise & Bootstrap Legal. The sessions and speakers will be:
• Building-a-Blockchain live (without computers) to bring clarity on how permissioned and permissionless blockchains work, but most important, identify what problems are solved using this technology. Speakers: Diana J. Stern and Christian Smith
• Demonstrations on how blockchain technology can be used to support practical business applications today! Continue Reading Demystifying Blockchain: Katherine Lowry Invites You to Build a Blockchain at ILTA

Today Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US announced the successor to Dean Sonderegger who was recently  promoted to the position of Senior Vice President and General Manager.  Ken Crutchfield was previously Senior Vice President & General Manager for the Bloomberg Tax Technology division of Bloomberg BNA was named  Vice President & General Manager of Legal Markets at Wolters Kluwer.

Crutchfield will lead the legal markets group and focus on  Continue Reading Ken Crutchfield Succeeds Dean Sonderegger as Vice President & General Manager of Legal Markets Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

CourtLink was one of Lexis’ earliest product acquisitions and it is seemingly the last to be integrated into the flagship Lexis Advance platform. Starting Monday Lexis Advance subscribers will see a host of new features and a cleaner more streamlined interface. This will be none to soon for customers.
The integration of CourtLink was a massive undertaking. The system contains over 189 million unique dockets and 36.5 milling documents. Over 100,000 new dockets are added every week. The data is now stored in a single unified database which will deliver faster search results.


LexisNexis worked with customers and tracked over 1,00 interactions to interactively tweak and optimize the system. The new CourtLink will provide seamless access, faster navigation and easier administration of alerts.

New Features include: 

  • A single unified search.
  • No more drilling down. All search features and filters are available from a single page.
  • Limit results to civil dockets
  • Filter using timeline
  • New Lexis created taxonomy allows searching for similar cases across state courts. E.g all state specific case types for Labor will be unified as labor cases.
  • Download All or selected. Checkboxes allow researchers to select and download documents in a single transaction
  • Instead of selecting dozens or hundreds of documents.
  • Link out to Lex Machina analysis of a judge.
  • Courtlink Alerts now listed with regular Lexis alerts to steamline management of alerts.
  • Limit party searches to plaintiff or defendant.

One important feature which I did not see in the new platform was the ability to limit search to a specific document type such as a “complaint.” I was assured that this feature is “in the pipeline.”

Overall there is no question that the new CourtLink will will deliver significant efficiencies to docket research. Previouly there was a laborious drill down and navivation process to search or set up an alert ( 7 pages for an alert and 5 pages for a search).

As with all legal products. The law librarian community of power searchers will continue to give feedback and advice Lexis to continue optimizing the product. But the Lexis Advance integration  alone represents a major step in the right direction.

During the Great Analytics ‘Shoot-Out’ at AALL, law librarians tested and compared the results of seven federal litigation analytics platforms.

Analytics tools enable lawyers to ask completely new questions and gain insights which were virtually unavailable in a text based research world.  It takes a special skill set to ask the right  “data quality” questions when firms are assessing  the dozens of analytics products competing for a share of lawyers desktop or an organization’s information resource budget.

Use cases for analytics include: pitch strategy, AFA responses, litigation strategy, deal negotiation strategy, managing client expectations, diving process efficiency, internal bench marking and developing peer metrics.

Law librarians have been quietly driving the adoption of analytics in the business and practice of law.  Hundreds of librarians, knowledge managers and legal publishing executives jammed into a meeting room at the 2019 American Association of Law Libraries Conference and Meeting in Washington DC on July 15th to attend a two and one half hour “super-session” “ The Federal and State Analytics market: Should the Buyer Beware?” exploring the state of litigation Continue Reading What Do Law Firms Need to Know About Buying Litigation Analytics Products?

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters spent the past week showing off newproductsand features at the annual American Association of Law Libraries ( AALL)  Meeting and Conference in Washington DC.  Since the close of the conference on Tuesday, each has announced a new alliance of some kind.

  • Thompson Reuters acquired HighQ Software (July 17th)
  • Wolters Kluwer formed and alliance with Docket Navigator (July 18th)
  • Lexis Nexis formed a join venture with Knowable (July 18th)

Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory announced an alliance with  leading IP analytics platform Docket Navigator  which will make IP and antitrust litigation analytics available through three Cheetah™ platforms: IP Cheetah™, WK Trademark Navigator, and Antitrust & Competition Cheetah™.

 

Docket Navigator is a litigation database tool that tracks current cases from the time a complaint is filed through the filing of the notice of appeal in patent, trademark, copyright and antitrust cases and includes a daily email alert and case analytics. This strategic alliance will allow current Docket Navigator subscribers to access the platform through Cheetah™, Wolters Kluwer’s award-winning legal research platform.

“Business development and an understanding of litigation trends are continual needs for our law firm customers,” said Susan Gruesser, Product Line Director for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. “Through Cheetah, our customers will not only be able to subscribe to our preeminent and authoritative second source material, such as Areeda and Hovenkamp’s Antitrust Law and Goldstein on Copyright, but will also have access to Docket Navigator, a strategic business development and litigation tool. We’re always looking for new ways to help our customers drive efficiency and deliver value, and we are pleased that this alliance will bring even more convenience and ease of use to their workflow.”

 

Thomson Reuters/HighQ Today  Thomson Reuters announced that it has acquired HighQ, a leading cloud based, collaboration and workflow platform for the legal and regulatory market. HighQ currently serves more than 400 customers, including more than half of the Global 100 largest law firms.

It is not hard for me to imagine the HighQ acquisition being leveraged by Thomson Reuters to extend the capabilities of the recently developed Panoramic/Elite3E platform which  integrates business and practice of law processes.

According to the press release “this acquisition will expand on the company’s strategic objective to provide more cloud-based software offerings and will meet a growing market need for legal professionals, aligning with Thomson Reuters focus on legal, tax, compliance and risk. This deal follows our recent acquisition of Confirmation, a leading provider of secure audit services, and reinforces our strategy of carefully investing to grow our core offerings in the world of business information services,” said Jim Smith, president and CEO, Thomson Reuters.”

 

.LexisNexis Legal & Professional /Knowable. has announced a joint venture with contract analytics company   Knowable. Similar to other transnational document review products such as Kira and Luminance, Knowable uses AI and machine learning  to help organizations review large portfolios of documents for due diligence and risk.

Knowable is a spin off from  Axiom  a prominent alternative legal services provider. Today I spoke with  Bob Harris, CEO of Knowable and Ritu Khanna, executive vice president, Global Strategy & Acquisitions, at LexisNexis. They confirmed that Knowable will operate independently. It appears to be a win-win for both companies. Knowable will get access to LexisNexis’  resources and LexisNexis will have the opportunity to expand its reach into customer workflow solutions.

What a busy week for the legal information industry. Good thing the weekend is coming.

On Monday night Bloomberg Law hosted a “semi-secret” preview of their still to be named “brief analyzer.” I will cut to the chase and recommend “B Brief”  as a name for the analysis tool.  After all,  the point of a brief analyzer is to make lawyers more efficient. The product is expected to be released  as a beta test in September and  to launch by the end of the year – depending on feedback from the beta testers. Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda and his executive team held an event in a “speak easy” style restaurant on Blagden Ally in the hipster heart of DC. A select group of librarian and tech journalist invitees received a mysterious key in a rather MI-5 invitation several weeks before the AALL Annual Meeting and Conference. In a darkened back room, the invitees received a preview of the “brief analyzer” product and were invited to give feedback.

Like other brief analyzers the process is launched by dropping and dragging a document into the analyzer tool. The tool extracts and analyses the citations, text and concepts in the document.

Bloomberg’s product demo focused on the workflow for analyzing an opponent’s brief rather than the process for finalizing a brief that is being drafted. Most of Bloomberg’s competitor’s in this space have launched their products focusing on the brief drafting process, the analysis of an adversary’s brief was included as an additional use case.

The bottom line is that for either process, the analyzer tool is designed to speed up the review process and help lawyers focus on the most important Continue Reading Bloomberg Law Joins the Brief Analyser Party – With A Touch Of Intrigue

Today Thomson Reuters is announcing the release of a new AI enabled enhancement for WESTLAW Edge. Quick Check enables a lawyer to “drop and drag” a brief or motion into the Quick Check AI portal and retrieve a thorough analysis of the cited or missing authority. The Quick Check process takes one minute on average. Michael Dahn, SVP Product Management, Carol Jo Lechtenberg, Westlaw Product Management and T0nya Custis, Sr. Director Research Center for AI and Cognitive Computing hosted a webinar demonstration earlier this week for members of the legal press which I attended.

Quick Check use cases include:  Updating an old brief, quality checking a  working draft and  performing final check before submitting a brief to a court. Lawyers can also examine  an opponent’s brief and Continue Reading Thomson Reuters Launches Westlaw Edge Quick Check Raising the Bar for A.I. DrivenBrief and Citation Insights