Every vendor I deal with talks a good ROI game. Very few know how to deliver it. Even fewer  have built the delivery of ROI into their sales and pricing strategy. Well I finally found such a company in the legal tech space.  I was

recently introduced to Alex Babin, the Founder and CEO of a company called ZERO. According to Babin  law firms will not be charged for the ZERO product until the product delivers efficiencies (ROI) equal to the cost of the product. He offered the bold promise: “Don’t trust us trust the numbers in your billing system.”

ZERO is an integrated suite of email tools that uses AI to reduce the time spent on some of the most common and mind-numbing tasks that waste valuable lawyer and staff time.  It works in both a desktop and mobile environment. It is an email management solution which was built for lawyers. According to Babin The challenges of mobility and billable time are core to the solution. Due to the lack of automation, most attorneys or their assistants spend hours filing and managing emails. 60% of the secretaries time is spent managing documents according to a case study in  ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine.

According to the ZERO website  “Accurate data categorization, helpful suggestions and predictions, and a personalized approach to automating one’s daily email routine with edge computing became the DNA of ZERØ’s products.”

ZERO offers a suite of smart features that can process thousands of emails with speed and precision.
It employs enterprise grade security on mobile devices and  processes data on the device without moving it to the cloud. AI determines the right DMS destination.  Lawyers  can file emails individually or in batches or completely automatically. Changes in filing can be executed quickly and easily.

Babin highlighted that every feature of ZERO is built around delivering ROI. ZERO is the first email management system designed for attorneys. It took four years to build the technology. They launched at  the  2018 ILTA   Conference and their primary focus has been on marketing to the biggest law firms.

Benefits include

Easy email Compliance. The system uses  AI  to file emails in the DMS.  According to their study it will save each lawyer half an hour a day.

Reverse Billable Time “Leakage.”. Right now there is no easy way to capture time on a mobile device. ZERO creates an automatic narrative. ZERO captures all client related email work done on a mobile device. Billing entries are created automatically for all work including date, client matter, elapsed time and a complete narrative. These entries can be moved directly into the time entry system.

Avoid Misdirected Emails We have all heard the nightmare stories of lawyers inadvertently sending emails to the wrong person and even accidentally emailing confidential emails to journalists. ZERO includes security feature will prevent a lawyer from sending it to the wrong person by flagging suspect recipients and asking for a final confirmation.

ROI Reporting It sends each user an email describing how much time they have saved!

Doing the Math on Savings The ZERO website offers two savings scenarios:

 

  • Law firms can expect to gain significant hard revenue from ZERØ. A law firm with 1,000 attorneys and a blended billable rate of $300/hour can increase billing by $93,960,000 per year per lawyer (assuming 261 working days) by ensuring that all attorney time spent emailing from a mobile device in captured. In other words, this hypothetical law firm is currently leaving $93,960 of revenue per lawyer on the table.
  • Law firms can also save a substantial amount of money on cost avoidance. This same hypothetical law firm saves a total of $78.3 million per year in non-billable labor hours by having the administrative task of mobile time capture automated.

ZERO has a video explaining how they deliver ROI at this link

Getting to Yes With ROI For several years I have been harping on ROI  and pleading with the vendors of research and workflow platforms to deliver ROI data. Maybe it is time to up the ante and ask them to consider the new model offered by ZERO – the vendor shows them the money in product savings as an assurance that ROI will be delivered. There is no easier way to ‘get to ‘yes’” in a law firm procurement negotiation than to promise savings which exceeds the price.  This is a “no brainier.” ZERO has developed not only an incredibly interesting product but a potentially game changing ROI delivery method.

Want More information on Zero? ILTA will be hosting a ZERO Product Briefing webinar on November 8th. More information at this link.

 

Fastcase is at it again…building alliances that drive content and functionality.

Today Docket Alarm a customizable analytics and docket platform is announcing a a new calendaring feature from Calendar Rules. This new features is being announced at the National Docketing Association’s Annual Conference in Denver, Co..

The CalendarRules feature is integrated into the DocketAlarm research platform and links with a library of court rules and automatically calculates any deadline. Subscribers of Docket Alarm now have these new features available immediately:

  • Track cases with lightning fast updates, whether or not your firm has made a notice of appearance; 
  • Search through the full text of entire case records to find documents in your own or related cases; 
  • Research court rules and scheduling orders, and how individual judges have applied them in the past, quickly find sample documents;
  • Calendar deadlines quickly, by simply selecting a docket entry, and synching it with all attorneys on the case.

The press release quotes Docket Alarm Founder Michael Sander on high stakes docket filing risks. “Missing a court deadline is the number one way law firms end up in malpractice suits,” according to Sander. “Now, docket professionals will be able to access court rules directly on the complete docket, reducing errors and increasing visibility of upcoming deadlines across the litigation team.” 

 Since firms are always in search of ways to reduce risk and drive up efficiency. This new Fastcase Docket Alarm alliance ticks off both boxes.

Here is the full press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 19, 2019

Media Contact:

Jennifer Brand Ransom, 202.731.2114

jbransom@brandsolutionsgroup.com

Docket Alarm Announces Calendaring Feature

New Calendaring Feature to Debut During 2019 National Docketing Association’s

7th Annual Conference

 Washington, DC (September 19, 2019) – Docket Alarm by Fastcase, the leader in customizable litigation analytics and docket research, today released an innovative new calendaring feature in that binds the work of docketing professionals more closely to attorneys. This feature will be showcased during the National Docketing Association’s 7th Annual Conference this September 22-24 in Denver, CO.

“Missing a court deadline is the number one way law firms end up in malpractice suits,” said Docket Alarm Founder and Managing Director Michael Sander. “Now, docket professionals will be able to access court rules directly on the complete docket, reducing errors and increasing visibility of upcoming deadlines across the litigation team.” 

 The calendaring feature combines the most state-of-the-art docket research platform with a robust set of court rules to calculate any deadline. Subscribers of Docket Alarm now have these new features available immediately:

 

Track cases with lightning fast updates, whether or not your firm has made a notice of appearance;

 

Search through the full text of entire case records to find documents in your own or related cases;

 

Research court rules and scheduling orders, and how individual judges have applied them in the past, quickly find sample documents;

 

Calendar deadlines quickly, by simply selecting a docket entry, and synching it with all attorneys on the case.

Docket Alarm helps docketing professionals get their job done quickly. Both docketing and the calendaring feature are combined on one platform, thereby increasing the ease of use, reducing the amount of money and time spent on training, and eliminating any decentralized system of docketing and calendaring.

The calendaring feature is powered by CalendarRules and by docket data pulled from more than 300 million records in Docket Alarm’s database.

“Fastcase’s strategy has been to build a preeminent group of legal tech partners. We’re really excited to be partnering with CalendarRules for Docket Alarm’s new calendaring feature,” said Steve Errick, Fastcase’s Chief Operating Officer. “Working with CalendarRules has been a pleasure and we’ve been able to seamlessly integrate their impressive data with our own.”

Docket Alarm works hand-in-hand with the Fastcase legal research library, which includes exclusive integrated products such as such as Full Court Press publications, expert witness knowledge management with Courtroom Insight, integrated law review articles from HeinOnline, artificial intelligence tools within the AI Sandbox, a library of expert commentary of more than 27,000 expert legal bloggers in the LexBlog network, and access to licensed treatises from James Publishing and Wolters Kluwer/Aspen/CCH.

For a free trial and more information, visit www.docketalarm.com or connect with the Docket Alarm team at the National Docketing Association’s 7th Annual Conference on Sept 22-24 in Denver, CO.

About Docket Alarm

Docket Alarm is a national leader in docket research and legal analytics. Docket Alarm leverages a library of hundreds of millions of litigation records, as well as unique machine learning and natural language processing tools. The Docket Alarm API gives firms and companies the ability to leverage a giant database of PACER cases, alerting capabilities, and analysis in bulk. Docket Alarm was acquired by Fastcase in January 2018, and continues to be a disruptor in the legal analytics market.

 About CalenderRules

Founded in 2007, CalendarRules merges the latest web and cloud computing technologies with court rules content from all over the United States to deliver court rules to calendars of all types. Nationally, thousands of lawyers rely and depend on CalendarRules for real time court rules integration, date and deadline information, and streamlined, consistent data entry. Rules are available for State, Federal, Local, Bankruptcy and Appellate courts.

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.

 

 

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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.