Today Thomson Reuters issued a press release announcing that more than 1,500 organizations have upgraded from Westlaw to Westlaw Edge. I guess you can’t begrudge Thomson Reuters trying to change the subject.  On Tuesday I wrote about the re-organization that Has led to the layoff of countless seasoned executives, managers and staff across the organization.

I wish today’s press release provided more demographics about the 1,500 customers. It is not clear how that breaks down among government, corporate and law firm customers. Only two ALM 100 firms are named in the press release. There could be other ALM 100 firms which have a policy not to allow the firm’s name to be used in marketing materials.

I  wrote about the significant new features offered in Westlaw Edge when it was released in July of this year. This new platform represents Thomson Reuters largest investment in Artificial Intelligence since 2010.  Westlaw Edge  features include advanced natural language answers,  a completely new analytics product, an innovative new citation feature “Citation Risk Analyzer” and “Statutes Compare.”

New Features The press release also highlights that since the launch of Westlaw Edge in July Thompson Reuters has continued adding new content and functionality. New features Continue Reading Changing the Subject from Layoffis – Thomson Reuters Celebrates 1,500 Westlaw Edge Subscribers – Still Faces Market Resistance and The Challenge of ROI.

If you have any friends at Thomson Reuters Legal – it is time to reach out and reconnect. Over the past few weeks multiple sources have confirmed  to me that executives, managers and staff across TR have been “invited to find new employers.”  Some of the people impacted have been fixtures in the legal publishing and tech industry for Continue Reading Widespread Layoffs at Thomson Reuters Legal – Office Closings to Follow

Fastcase continues its content expansion strategy. Today they are announcing a new partnership with James Publishing. James Publishing, founded in 1981, publishes  legal practice materials  including model pleadings, client letters, and step-by-step procedural checklists, pattern arguments, model questions,  and practice tips. According to their website they focus on federal practice as well as practice in New York, Illinois, Texas, Florida and California.

Fastcase launched in 1999 as a lower cost online service provider of US primary law in 1999.  In recent years they have pivoted  toward becoming a full service legal research  and analytics platform. This transformation has accelerated over the past two years. In mid 2017 they hired Steve Errick, a seasoned legal publishing executive as COO. This was followed by the launch of a Fastcase print imprint Full Court Press, the acquisition of the Docket Alarm legal analytics platform and  the Legal Street news platform They have announced multiple alliances with secondary source publishers including, The Littler law firm, Wolters Kluwer,  and most recently an alliance with the  American Immigration Lawyers Association to  launch  a new scholarly journal on immigration law.

Getting Access It appears from the press release that the digital version of the James Publishing library which includes 90 titles,will be available as an add-on subscription from Fastcase. James Publishing titles will also be available  in print or ebook format  for purchase through the Fastcase Publishing arm Full Court Press.

Here is the full press release:

Fastcase Expands Law Libraries with Titles From James Publishing

Additional Treatises and Practice Guides Now Available Through Fastcase

 

Washington, DC  (November 8, 2018) – Legal publisher Fastcase today announced a partnership with James Publishing, a leading publisher of legal treatises, books, and practice guides, to include the entire James Publishing collection in the Fastcase law library.

This partnership provides all Fastcase subscribers and nearly 75% of lawyers across the nation with access to the complete James Publishing library. Legal professionals and researchers in law firms, law schools, and law libraries will benefit from access to Fastcase’s growing database of unique, must-have content published in consumer-friendly media formats.

“We are thrilled to share our library with Fastcase subscribers and look forward to making these titles more readily available to legal researchers,” said James Publishing President Kara Prior.

Fastcase subscribers, as well as members of bar associations that provide access to Fastcase’s online law library as a member benefit, will receive unrestricted access to the full library of James Publishing titles at both individual and special bundled retail pricing for annual subscriptions. Law schools, large firms, and government organizations will also be able to subscribe to the collection as part of their Fastcase access.

“Along with our partners in bar associations and law firms, we’ve built a powerful platform, running more than 4 million searches per month, and we’re continually improving it,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “We are so appreciative the James Publishing library is now available to legal researchers who rely on Fastcase for smarter legal research. The James team shares our commitment in making the law more accessible to more people.”

The titles will be available for purchase in conjunction with Fastcase’s other publishing partners, as well as its own imprint, Full Court Press. During its inaugural year, Full Court Press has enhanced Fastcase’s libraries by co-developing digests, journals, books, and blogs with an array of partners, including state and specialty bar associations, leading law schools and law firms, and franchise authors who have a long history of working with Fastcase COO Steve Errick, and who embrace Fastcase as a steward of their works.

 

“We’ve already accomplished some major milestones during our first year as an imprint, and are excited about this partnership with James Publishing,” said Full Court Press Publisher Morgan Morrissette Wright. “As we continue to expand our libraries and offerings, we’re selectively looking for publishing partners who can add their unique content to our platform to the benefit of all, achieving our vision to make the law more accessible and providing an improved research experience.”

 

Fastcase users will be able to search the new treatises within the legal research platform immediately. For assistance with accessing the new secondary materials, users can contact customer support at 1-866-77-FASTCASE (866.773.2782). Those without a Fastcase subscription can try the new integration by signing up for a free trial at www.fastcase.com.

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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.

 

About James Publishing

James Publishing, founded in 1981, publishes and markets practical law books that are loaded with time-saving motions and pleadings, client letters, and step-by-step procedural checklists, pattern arguments, model questions, pitfalls to avoid, and practice tips. For more information, visit www.jamespublishing.com.

 

Law firm subscribers to TRG Screen‘s Quest, Research Monitor and Smart Recharge products will be thrilled to hear that TRG has secured long term strategic investment from Pamlico Capital, a Charlotte, NC based private equity firm. The Research Monitor product helps law firms collect utilization and ROI data on the high ticket digital resources that lawyers and administrators rely to inform the business and practice of law.  Quest is a research workflow tool that helps research teams across multiple offices and timezones manage and optimize  workflow. Both products help law library directors and CKOs optimize digital and staff resources and budgets. According to Steve Matthews, CEO at TRG Screen, about 75% of the Amlaw 100 firms now subscribe to one of TRG’s products.

The press release highlights some important promises to subscribers: “With Pamlico’s backing, TRG Screen will accelerate its investment in its unique portfolio of spend and usage capabilities, adding new solutions that bring Continue Reading TRG Screen Owner of Legal Workflow and Analytics Tools Quest, Research Monitor and Smart Recharge Gets Capital Infusion

Fastcase and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)  announced the launch of a new biannual law journal  focused on the tumultuous landscape of immigration law. The journal which is to launch in 2019, will cover “current and pragmatic” immigration law topics. Editor-in-Chief is Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar and Clinical Professor of Law at Penn State Law in University Park.

Earlier this year I wrote a post  about Fastcase’s launch of it’s own  publishing imprint – Full Court Press. The AILA Law Journal will be the second  Full Court Press journal following  RAIL: The Journal of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Law.   Like RAIL, the new journal will be available in print, as an eBook, and within the Fastcase legal research Continue Reading Fastcase to Launch Immigration Journal with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA)

vLex has been getting a lot of buzz for launching a “drop and drag” research assistant to compete with Casetext’s CARA and Ross’s Eva. Yes vLex has launched an AI enabled research assistant called Vincent which has similarities to the competitors. Vincent is the ONLY “legal assistant” that works in multiple languages.  International legal research remains a challenge in an increasingly globalized legal market. Very few products allow researchers to conduct research in English and get results in both English and the native language of a foreign document.  vLex is very complex product and it is important to distinguish between the vLex product and the Vincent functionality. vLex includes primary law for twenty countries which is a  significant differentiator as it enters the U.S. market.

Vincent

Vincent is currently trained on the law of  9 countries which allows it to recognize  citations and assign topics. Additional countries will be added as Vincent is trained on the remaining 11 countries where vLex has comprehensive or near-comprehensive coverage of primary law.

Vincent can be launched by loading either a document or a link to a public document.

Users can control the results by using contextual filters such as topics, authorities’ similar documents and semantics similarity you can also use keywords to focus.

Vincent offers users more editorial control and filters than competitors.

Vincent Filters

 vLex

Can translate  a query into 13 languages. to find results from documents published in one of those languages, and the results list present matches in the user’s operating language along with the option of switching between operating and original language at a document-by-document basis.

One of the most interesting features is the ability to locate foreign laws on a topic and to see the text of laws side-by-side in both English and the original language.

vLex provies “strength of treatment signals” and negative history treatment from Casemaker

Unlike the vast majority of legal vendors vLex will license their software to law firms and it can be used as SaaS platforms and APIs.

vLex is loaded with unique features – too numerous to highlight in this post.

vLex Global Footprint

vLex – the back story

vLex began in Spain in the late 90s. No surprise – it was started by a lawyer who thought “there has to be a better way” and a technologist who could built a solution. The lawyer was Lluís Faus and the technologist was his brother Angel, a mathematician. In the past  20 years  vLex  has built up a market in Spain, southern Europe and Latin America, and provides  foreign and international law in the North American academic market.    The vLex  Content collections, are obtained directly from sources or through licensing and  now exceed 110,000,000 documents. vLex has comprehensive primary law coverage in 20 jurisdictions, the largest coverage of any provider in Latin Americas and important selections of national level primary law and valuable secondary source materials from over 100 countries in total. In its original market Spain , vLex has as broad a suite of offerings which includes dozens of specialty collections (e.g., Tax, labor, criminal, etc….), practice management platforms, court analytics, litigation workflow tools (virtual paralegal) and practical law tools..

U.S. coverage, which includes 12M federal and state primary law documents (all federal and state codes and caselaw) and 8M secondary source, has mostly been focused on serving global client interest in U.S. materials. Canadian  materials including all cases and statutes for both provinces and national law. have also been added in the past two years. With the release of Vincent, vLex is now,  ready to position itself as domestic competitor in the United States market. Although they will focus on the large law firm market they offer options for solo and small firms  without Vincent – for  $79/month).

A few years ago, vLex undertook a project to develop a completely new back-end for its content collection, management and publishing process. The size and complexity of the vLex’s  data which is ingested from over 2,000 different sources, in multiple languages, jurisdictions, document types compounded the challenges of operating efficiently and continually scaling up the platform. The solution was the development of the Iceberg platform. According to  Colin Lachance, CEO vLex Canada, Iceberg would not only support vLex’s own operations, “but was designed to be made available as an enterprise SaaS platform that could unbundle and put vLex’s tools, AI models and even its content in the hands of organizations with a vision for legal information management and analysis that can’t be satisfied by closed systems.” Iceberg enabled vLex to develop Vincent in less than six months.

Sign up for a free trial of vLex at this link.

 

Organizations interested in a trial of Vincent can request access here.

Today legal publisher Fastcase is announcing the acquisition of Law Street Media legal news platform. Fastcase plans to work with founder John A. Jenkins, the former President and Publisher of CQ Press, and a team of reporters to evolve the online news platform into an enhanced daily news and analytics hub. When the site is relaunched in 2019, the retooled platform will highlight national and state docket litigation, regulatory developments, state bar news, and offer analytics and insights powered by Fastcase’s growing suite of legal information products, such as Docket Alarm and Fastcase 7.

In recent blogs I have expressed concern about the lack of competition to LexisNexis dominance of the legal news market through acquisition (Law360, Mlex, Knowledge Mosaic) and alliance ( American Lawyer Media, Wall Street Journal.) Recently Bloomberg Law announced a realignment of their news staff and product lines – customers are still waiting to see what  this means. Lexblog recently announced that they are expanding their blog network to compete in the legal news space. So the Fastcase strategy to focus on news and analytics is a welcome sign that the market for legal news is becoming healthier and offering law firms more options for gaining legal news insights for  the practice and business of law.

The press release describes how Fastcase leaders Ed Walters and Phil Rosenthal plan to evolve their news and analytics offerings.

“Legal research isn’t just about logging into an online service and running searches,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “It’s also about taking an active interest in developments that clients care about. Legal news means covering the stories behind new cases filed, analytics, new judicial opinions, passed bills, and rulemaking. Lawyers have to stay as informed as their clients, and our partnership with Law Street Media will be an important source of must-have information about the fast-changing practice of law.”

For Law Street Media, Fastcase offers exposure to an active and engaged group of readers.  More than 900,000 lawyers have a subscription to Fastcase and its Docket Alarm analytics platform.

“This transaction represents a full realization of our vision,” said Jenkins, Law Street Media’s founder.  “I am gratified that Law Street will continue as a Fastcase enterprise.  It’s an affirmation of the ground-breaking work done by our team. But the real winners are the millions who trusted us to be their authoritative legal news source.  With the support of Fastcase, Law Street will continue to serve them.”

Fastcase co-founder and President Phil Rosenthal sees the benefit in having state bar partners play an essential role in the news efforts: “What better way to introduce law students to their local state bar and the invaluable insights and connections these bars offer, than to see state bar associations as active contributors providing local expertise in our news feeds?”

Fastcase will connect the news platform to its Docket Alarm and Fastcase 7 platform, build out its reporter team, and partner with its state bar partners to showcase their local expertise.  “Lawyers already get their news from Fastcase’s research alerts, and Docket Alarm is itself named after its alerting service. We can’t wait to explore the legal news potential from telling these stories in Law Street Media,” said Walters.

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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.

About Law Street Media
Law Street Media is a free web-based platform covering law and public policy. It was founded as a way to provide a single essential resource to law students and young professionals in the rapidly evolving legal industry. Law Street’s Founder and CEO is journalist and author John A. Jenkins, formerly President and Publisher of CQ Press. Law Street Media served millions of online visitors and located its editorial office in Washington D.C., with business operations in New York City. For more information about Law Street Media, visit LawStreetMedia.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

A new issue of Thomson Reuters Practice Innovations quarterly newsletter has  been released. This issue contains articles written by a roster of legal innovation and law firm management thought leaders including Sylvia Coulter, Sally Gonzalez, Toby Brown, V. Mary Abraham, Mark Medici and Sharon Abrahams. The full issue is available here.

  • Accelerating adoption of experience management systems by Mark Medici, Senior Director new initiatives in tap Pittsburgh, Pa.
  • Artificial intelligence: the debate between point and platform solutions by Sally Gonzalez senior consultant Fireman and Company Scottsdale, Az.
  • Professional development for staff: key to law firm success by Sharon Abrahams: Ed. D. national director of professional development and diversity and inclusion, Foley & Lardner LLP Miami, Fl.
  • Better business discipline for law firms by Toby Brown chief practice management officer, Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle, Washington
  • Next generation office design an impact for knowledge workers By V. Mary Abraham, knowledge management consultant, above and beyond KM, New York, New York
  • Collaboration will achieve business benefits for your law firm by Silvia Coulter, principal,  Law Vision Group, Manchester, Ma.

Subscribe to Practice Innovations at this link.

Note: Apologies to readers – due to a technical problem at Word Press, a blank post was delivered yesterday. This is the replacement post. JOG

Today Gavelytics and CourtCall are announcing a  partnership that will accelerate the adoption of the Gavelytics judicial analytics platform in a whole new market. CourtCall was established in 1995 and was inspired by — a lawyer who got stuck in traffic on his way to court and decided that  there ought to be a better way . Court Call has developed a remote appearance platform creating an organized  and voluntary way for attorneys to appear for routine matters in civil family, criminal, probate, bankruptcy, worker’s compensation another cases— from their offices homes or other locations.

Gavelytics is currently only available in California, but the company is preparing to launch its AI-driven data visualization tool in other key state court jurisdictions, including Florida, Texas and Illinois. Gavelytics uses AI to identify and visualize patterns and tendencies in judicial decision-making. The CourtCall judicial analytics product will launch in Continue Reading Gavelytics Partners with CourtCall to Drive Analytics into the Small Firm Market While Expanding Nationwide and Adding Enterprise Content for Large Law Market

In recent months Bloomberg BNA has been introducing changes to the format, timing and delivery of their various publications and platforms. Some newsletters are being discontinued, some newsletters are being merged into channels, other newsletters will only be available in a practice center, some practice centers will only be available on the Bloomberg Law platform. For a company that wowed the market with their promise of simplified, standard pricing, the Bloomberg Law acquisition of the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) has become a multi-year content  migration Continue Reading Bloomberg BNA Editor in Chief Outlines Reorganization and Layoffs– Shifts in Content Strategy