In December I offered readers the opportunity to respond to a survey on products and processes that they started/stopped in 2014 or planned to stop or start in 2015. This year readers were also given the chance to describe products or features they are waiting for vendors to provide.

What
s the best NEW PRODUCT you became aware of in 2014?

 Responses to the question “What was
the best “new product that you became aware of in 2014?”  is remarkable because
of the variety of responses.The one feature that is common to many new products
is that they are leveraging big data to provide analytic insights.

 

It appears to me that the legal
information market is experiencing a great reawakening. Innovators in both
start up and in well established companies are recognizing the power of data to
offer new insights. The competitive pressures in the legal market seeking practice
efficiencies and actionable insights for business intelligence and client related
matters make it ripe and receptive to these new offerings.

 

 Lex Machina which provides IP
litigation analytics got the most votes for best new product. It was followed
by PacerPro which is streamlining and eliminating some of the inefficiencies of
using the official government Pacer website.

 

  • Lex
    Machina
  • PacerPro
Other new products mentioned in the
survey are:

 

  • Westlaw
    Intelligence Center
  • Basecamp
  • Quatrove
  • Mlex,
  • Benchmark
    Judges
  • Deal
    Data Point
  • CaseText.
  • RavelLaw
  • West’s
    Business Law Center
  • WestlawNext
  • FiscalNote
  • Neudesic
    Firm Directory
  • Investor-State
    Law Guide
  • PatBase
    Analytics
  • Bloomberg
    Law.
What
was the BEST FEATURE/FUNCTION added to an information resource in 2014?
 

 

The most cited “best new feature or
function” added to an information resource in 2014 was the collaboration between
Fastcase and Heinonline
. Fastcase although not quite a start up is still a relatively young, still edgy newcomer to the legal information market. They offer low cost access
to  primary law using an innovative search algorithm and offering visual displays of
search results. The William S  Hein Company is a very old,
family owned business with roots in serving the traditional library needs for
more scholarly and esoteric research materials including law reviews, treaties,.
Government documents and historical treatise. But since cases and academic
materials have a perfectly symbiotic relationship, one feeds off  and informs the other, Hein and Fastcase deliver a low cost suite of core research
materials.

 

The second most cited product feature was Westlaw Next’s simplified pricing. This
is an issue near and dear to my heart. This was the topic of the blogpost/diatribe
against the complexities of online research pricing which I raised in “ The Myth and the Madness of Cost Effective Lexis and Westlaw Research Training” which put  “ Dewey B Strategic” on the map.The best innovations or new features are:

  • Fastcase/HeinOnline
    collaboration
  • Predictable
    pricing in Westlaw Next

Additional product enhancements
cited:

  • Intelligence
    Center Upgrade to Westlaw Monitor Suite.
  • Favorites
    in Lexis Advance
  • The
    enhancements made to Lexis Advance.   It is now easier to find the databases
    and content you need.
  • New
    Lexis Advance platform – cleaner and with requested enhancements
  • Docket
    Navigator’s analytics
  • Wolters
    Kluwer Intelliconnect’s browser search feature.
  • Ability
    to create custom pages in WestlawNEXT
  • Collaboration/personal
    saved documents space in WestlawNext Canada

Features cited without mentioning a
specific product:

  • Seemless
    collaboration and email tracking with tagging feature
  • Data
    analysis tools becoming more widely available on more litigation support
    review platforms and review tools
  • Increasingly
    prevalence of dashboards.
Name the New
Products which you plan to rollout 2015

 

  • Lex
    Machina
  • Room
    reservation system
  • Quatrove
  • Automated
    Reviews, Learning Management System
  • Lexis
    ebooks via Overdrive
  • Darts-IP
  • Lexis Practice Adviser
  • Considering
    moving to a cloud storage product for our DMS
  • Password
    management software
  • Firm
    directory/experience database.
  • Electronic
    resource management software (e.g., OneLog, Research Monitor, etc.)
  • Aggregator
    (Convergence) to automate CI/current awareness efforts
  • Research
    Monitor and Research Hub (for mobile)
  • Custom
    workflows within our Relativity environment.
  • West
    KM as a federated/enterprise KM tool.

 

 What
PRODUCT did your department/organization STOP using in 2014?

 

There was no real trend here. There
is no one product that a lot of firms are dropping; The only thread I see
connecting the various responses is that they are for the most part products
which have been around a long time and which support  core research activities. Two
are directories (Lawyers Manual and Marindale) which are clearly marginalized
by web based resources.  But generally it
looks like a list of products that were probably cancelled to cut the budget or
in favor of a competitor. There is nothing on the list which suggests a new and
innovative product was tested and found to be not worth the cost or not up to
the hype.

 

  • Lexis
  • BNA
    stand alone databases
  • File&ServeXpress
  • Lawyers
    Diary and Manual
  • Westlaw
  • RBSource
  • Intelliconnect
    Tax Library
  • Martindale
  • Equilar
  • West
    LegalEd Center
  • Infomart
    News
  • Windows
    XP
  • Deal
    Proof
  • Westlaw
    Business
  • 10K
    Wizard
  • Concordance
  • Loislaw
  • Ozmosys

 

Name
any PRODUCTS you PERSONALLY STARTED using in 2014
 

 

These responses also covered a wide range of products. The majority of these products focus on process improvement rather than research. There was also an interesting mix of products that were more likely for personal use. These are listed separately below.

 

  • Lex
    Machina
  • Practical
    Law
  • Lync for video  meetings
  • Bloomberg
    law
  • Benchmark
    Litigation
  • Camtasia web
    recording software for short tutorials on library resources
  • WLN –
    benchmark reports
  • SimpleMind
    (process mapping tool)
  • Windows
    8.1
  • Eagle
    Eye
  • Intelligize
  • Litigation
    Monitor
  • Manzama
  • PTAB Trials

 

Products For Personal Use
  • Fitbit
  •  Fage yogourt.  I’m not joking
  • Giving up hotels in favor of Airbnb
  • Giving up taxis in favor of Uber and Lyft
  • Giving up GPS device in favor of Wayze apps
  • I got my first iphone and I really like watching HBOGO on it
  • I started reading print books instead of reading books on my Kindle
  • Pay by Phone traffic meter app
  • iPad Air
  • Carbonite – online backup

 

Listen Up Vendors. Product ideas. Describe a PRODUCT/SERVICE you would like to see developed, which doesn’t currently exist. Here are the recommendations:

  • I want a universal thumbprint or iris reader to get me into all of my work and personal applications. I use the available technology but it is just not good enough. I still spend way too much time recovering and resetting passwords.
  • Cataloging records for individual products in Bloomberg
  • Auto-Meta tagging system to mark items for practice groups or legal issues.
  • A product that will give you a comprehensive Reverse Whois report. We use Domain Tools but it doesn’t compile the data in a report. Mark Monitor isn’t as complete.
  • Is like a one-stop-shop for our group to organize requests and be able to see who is doing what. Being able to EASILY bill time would be great.
  • A search service that is publisher agnostic, allowing searches of materials from many publishers using a single search technique.
  • CaseText should adds second half to cover EDGAR.
  • Reincarnation of defunct ITC Research database
  • Vendor neutral all-inclusive news database
  • A competitor to Platt’s newsletters
  • A service that would give a comprehensive comparison of periodical/news content/coverage from Lexis, Westlaw and EBSCO.
  • Graphics embedded in periodical literature from Lexis and Westlaw
  • Legal ebooks on a single universal platform for multiple users
  • Attorney-oriented reviews of KM technology that compare features of certain products systematically. For example, point-by-point on Recommind vs. FAST vs. HP Autonomy
  • An OverDrive-like service for private libraries with the option to manage and serve the library’s own digital content.
  • Real time-searching of docket documents; not docket entries.
  • An ediscovery project management tool. More true practice support applications.
  • More IP authenticated searches available on WestlawNext-Links from WestKM documents without login.
  • A database that allows a search by party name across all federal and administrative patent proceedings, that can then be loaded into Excel.
Thanks to everyone who responded. As much as I try to stay aware of new products, my colleagues have once again shared insights, experience and recommendations about products which  which had  flown under my radar or not registered as products warranting a serious look or critical reassessment.Part 1 of the survey results were published on March 20th: The Start Stop Poll Results 2014-2015 Processes and Initiatives: Workflow Improvement In, Print Continues Its Freefall.

The original survey was posted on December 15, 2014.