Law library budgets can easily grow wild like sprawling and untamed gardens. In the past, law librarians could be managing literally thousands of print titles spread across dozens of locations. The pandemic accelerated the full embrace of digital alternatives to print. Today many law firm libraries have small print collections but a large and complex network of digital licenses. Law firm mergers, the opening of new offices and the continuous churn of lateral partners can play havoc with budgets and orderly management of both digital and print collections.

We have all been confronted with an invoice which prompts us to pause and wonder “Why are we paying for that?”

The legal tech market is bursting with innovative new Generative AI products. Sometimes the only way to pay for a new resource, is to purge the collection of lesser used, duplicative or legacy products which have been automatically renewed without any analysis.

Over the course of my career I have grappled with the unruly forces of full “mergers of equals,”  partial mergers, office openings, office closing, spin-offs, practice group migrations…. Practices expand or shrink over time. Partners come and go and often leave behind a legacy of resources that no longer have a devoted champion.

The best way to control costs is to develop processes and protocols for each of the 3 major product lifecycle benchmarks:  acquisition, renewal and cancellation.

The full article is posted on Legal Tech Hub

Continue Reading Why Are we Paying for That?  10 Tips and Techniques for Taming a Library Budget and Optimizing ROI


CHICAGO – March 5, 2024 — The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL)— the
only national organization representing law librarians and legal information
professionals—is thrilled to announce registration for its 117th Annual Meeting &
Conference in Chicago, Illinois, is now open. Register at this link

The 2024 AALL Annual Meeting & Conference—Lead.Innovate.Transform—will be held at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, July 20-23.

Continue Reading Registration Open For AALL Annual Meeting in Chicago

LegalOn Technologies, has launched LegalOn Assistant, which can answer contract questions, draft clauses, summarize contract terms, and more. According to US CEO Daniel Lewis,  “LegalOn Assistant is an extension of your legal team. It saves you time, handles mundane tasks, and is easy to use in day-to-day work.”

LegalOn includes a suite  tools for streamlining contract review and drafting. Functionalities include redlining, practice notes, contract templates, and easy customization for companies with their own playbooks and templates. 

The new LegalOn Assistant will be available to all existing subscribers at no additional cost.

LegalOn Assistant is specially trained and tested for commercial contracting work. “Dozens of engineers and lawyers worked for months to take the power of GPT-4 and upgrade it with legal training and testing,” said Gabor Melli, VP of Artificial Intelligence at LegalOn. “We add to that

advanced security and privacy protections, including SOC II Type 2 compliance, so that companies can trust Assistant with their sensitive documents and questions.”

Continue Reading LegalOn Launches Gen AI Assistant for Contract Questions, Summarization, and Drafting

The American Association of Law Libraries is seeking nominations for the 2024 Product of the year award. Both members and vendors can submit nominations.

This award honors new commercial information products that enhance or improve existing law library services or procedures or innovative products which improve access to legal information, the legal research process, or procedures for technical processing of library materials.

A “new” product is defined as one which has been in the library-related marketplace for two years or less. New products may include, but are not limited to, computer hardware and/or software, educational or bibliographic material, or other products or devices that aid or improve library workflow, research, or intellectual access. Products that have been reintroduced in a new format or with substantial changes are eligible.

The world before and after Generative AI If you are scratching your head and trying to

Continue Reading Nominate Your Favorite Products for AALL’s Product of the Year Award

Today LexisNexis Legal & Professional, released results from a survey of senior leadership at top U.S. law firms and legal professionals at Fortune 1000 companies. The survey   2024 Investing in Legal Innovation Survey: The Rise of GenAI at Top Firms & Corporations  explores  the business impact of generative AI technology on the legal industry.

I can’t recall any prior technology that has simultaneously trigged both of breathless enthusiasm and panicked resistance . While the technology shows game changing promise, there are significant ethical, client relations, security and intellectual property concerns which still need to be addressed. The C-Suite survey charts the issues of concern where are impeding adoption of GenAI.

Rapid Uptake and Generative AI investments

Continue Reading LexisNexis Report: What Every C Suite Leader Needs to Know about Legal AI

Courtroom Insight has announced the  launch of  a comprehensive Lawyer Directory. Courtroom Insight has been aggregating data on professionals (lawyers, arbitrators, judges and experts) as well as a suite of partnership alliances. According to the press release, “this unique, specialized offering expands on Courtroom Insight’s existing model for delivering legal professional insights by aggregating private internal data, dynamically updated proprietary data, and integrated partner content into one centralized platform.”

The “dynamically updated” lawyer data, which includes detailed educational backgrounds, work histories (including clerkships), admissions, subject matter expertise, and self-reported diversity information.

Customers can opt to integrate  Courtroom Insight’s proprietary data with integrated content from partner providers, including case histories from LexisNexis and Docket Alarm. The enhanced lawyer directory can be used to drive business initiative across the full spectrum of business unitions. including including: alumni tracking, business development, experience management, and research.

Courtroom Insight CEO, Mark Torchiana, stated “For years, clients have been asking us to build an authoritative lawyer directory. Our new solution fits seamlessly into our existing mission of creating an authoritative resource for all people in legal by aggregating critical data and automatically identifying individuals’ connections to lawyers and organizations. We are excited to deliver this important new dataset and functionality.”

Several testimonials were included in the press release:

Keli Whitnell, Director of Firm Intelligence at Troutman Pepper, explained why her firm signed up for the Lawyer Directory’s early access. “Accurate attorney data plays a pivotal role in driving numerous strategic initiatives, spanning from business development and experience management to alumni tracking and recruitment. Courtroom Insight’s capability to provide this crucial information through their platform significantly influenced our decision to invest in their solution. We are particularly grateful for their collaborative approach, tailoring specific data fields, filters, and other customizations to align with our data needs. Troutman Pepper is proud to be the first firm to integrate Courtroom Insight’s adjudicator directory into Litera Foundation Firm Intelligence and prioritizes further enhancing our data ecosystem with the new lawyer directory in 2024.”

Adam Pollet, a Securities Enforcement and Litigation Partner at Eversheds Sutherland, explained his firm’s rationale for making the purchase. “I’ve wanted a tool like this for years. Access to dynamically updated lawyer data is a differentiating business development tool for my practice. Combined with its comprehensive arbitrator and expert database, Courtroom Insight provides our firm with the ability to provide superior risk management and litigation services to our clients.”

For more information go to Courtroom Insight.

Lawyers always want to be at least one insight ahead of their clients. Law firm librarians, marketing and knowledge professionals have been tackling the challenges of business intelligence with a continuously evolving marketplace of tools for aggregation and analytics. It was only a matter of time before someone designed a news and insights platform that was designed to exploit the power of Generative AI. Sumathi Pundit, Founder and CEO of Kaitongo had just such a vision and agreed to be interviewed for Legaltech Hub.

Read the full interview at Legal TechHub

 LexisNexis® Legal & Professional  Lexis+ AI is a  a generative AI solution driven by LexisNexis’ proprietary search engine and authoritative content. Lexis+ AI   delivers results based on the LexisNexis’ proprietary content which assures that results include “verifiable, citable authority. This follows the 2023 launch of  Lexis+ AI in the United States.

Lexis+ AI technology offers conversational search, insightful summarisation, intelligent legal drafting capabilities and document upload capabilities, all supported by state-of-the-art encryption and privacy technology to keep sensitive data secure.

Conversational search simplifies the complex and time-consuming legal research journey, providing a search experience for diverse legal questions with citations, facilitating lawyers’ ability to complete research effectively and efficiently.

Enhanced summarization provides a custom summary of legal documents to speed up and guide insightful analysis.

Continue Reading LexisNexis Launches Commercial Preview of Lexis+ AI in U.K. and Canada

Today, Thomson Reuters, and the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law has released the 2024 Report on the State of the US Legal Market.

The report opens with the sobering tale of the collapse of Pan American Airways because leaders stuck with an old strategy and failed to pivot as more nimble competitors emerged and an oil embargo changed the economics of international travel. We have seen this executive paralysis and  failure to  recognize the emergence of a market disruptor repeatedl: Kodak, Blockbuster, Swiss watchmakers … the theme documented in Clayton Christensen’s book  “The Innovator’s Dilemma.”  

The report continues the warning by noting how several fundamental shifts in the market threaten to upend traditional law firm business models, most notably the emergence of Generative AI. Law firms continue to inflate the rates balloon and clients wield market power in demanding higher discounts to deflate the increases.

Shifting market factors include:

Continue Reading Thomson Reuters 2024 Report on the State of the Legal Market — Cloudy With a Chance of Disruption?

In case you missed any of the top stories of 2023 I have compiled a list of the “most read” stories of 2023. Here are links to the most popular Dewey B Strategic stories of 2023:

Breaking-News-Thomson-Reuters and Microsoft Announce Microsoft 360 copilot partnership

Breaking News: Thomson Reuters to Acquire Casetext

 Lexis+ AI Launches with Two Customer Initiatives: Commercial Preview and AI Insider Programs

vLex and Fastcase Merge to Form World’s Largest Global Law Library (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once)

The 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market — Yup It’s Bad

Lexis+ AI Launch Promises Secure, “Hallucination Free” Generative AI Solution With Linked Legal Citations

Thomson Reuters $650M Bet on Casetext CoCounsel. Did They Buy Market Dominance or Just Time?

Bloomberg Law is Doubling Down on Legal News– Starts Hiring Spree to Bulk Up Legal Coverage

LexisNexis Adds Extractive AI Deal Analysis Tool to Lexis+

LexisNexis Announces Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot/Generative AI Solutions

 Move Over ChatGPT — Casetext Debuts AI Legal Assistant “CoCounsel” on “Morning Joe”

Thomson Reuters Launches Generative AI-Powered Solutions  for Research and Workflow – Previews Generative AI Strategy

Thomson Reuters Releases Report on Impact of AI of Future of Legal Professionals.

Lexis+AI Suite Of Tools Expanded with Lexis Snapshot and Lexis Create

ECFX Should not be Impacted by Federal Judge Meyer’s E.D.N.C. Standing Order 3

 I was “Righter” Than I Realized: Anthropic is Hiring a Prompt Engineer/Librarian and it Pays Serious $$$

The Lost Art of the Vendor Business Review – Checklist and Survey

Don’t Kill the Golden Goose – Survey on 30 Years of Legal Publishing Mergers

NetDocuments Announces “Responsible AI” for Legal with ndMAX and PatternBuilderMax

Lexis Launches InterAction+ with Outlook and Analytics Integrations, New Dashboard and Security Options

Budget Busting, Bundling & Bungling: The Worst Legal Information Mergers & Acquisitions

 vLex Launches First Global AI Legal Assistant: Vincent AI for Research and Drafting

Standing on the threshold of change: 2023 in review (A somewhat irreverent review of the AI hysteria That Swept Through the Legal Industry)