Today LexisNexis and American Lawyer Media  announced  a new agreement which deepens their strategic relationship while
ensuring the continued availability of archived ALM legal news  on the LexisNexis platform. ALM owns the “grand-daddy” of modern legal news reporting  The American
Lawyer as well as other well known national titles such as Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal, Legaltech News and regional titles including New York Law Journal, Texas Lawyer and The Recorder.

The Press release provides this quote from Lenny Izzo, President of Legal Media at ALM. ” We know that our customers start their day with a scan of ALM legal headlines delivered to their inboxes— for LexisNexis customers this will be a seamless experience to engage with news and instantly link to case law, briefs, and analysis the minute they see a news article relevant to an active case.”

Integration with Lexis Newsdesk
The agreement will facilitate more deirect integration of the ALM content through LexisNexis. The release specifically mentioned its impact on the delivery of ALM content through LexisNexis Newsdesk. Last year LexisNexis purchased the Morevoer platform which offers a sophisticated aggregation and curation platform for customized news delivery. THe new agreement will streamline the delivery of ALM content through Newsdesk to provide more efficient access to the 3000 news stories generated by ALM brands each month.

Business to New Business
The press relase also describes  the enhancement of lawyer marketing opportunities. This is described as  an
“ALM custom event series providing LexisNexis customers exclusive access to turnkey solutions that bring together law firms and their clietns to discuss emerging practice and business challenges informed by ALM industry research and analysis.

Lexis Advance Integration
New integration points include live links to Lexis Advance for cases cited in ALM publications and a new “single-sign-on” that will provide access to both LexisNexis and ALM content.

Maintaining the Legal News Edge
This is not great news for law firms which have  entered  “sole source” contracts with LexisNexis competitors. As Lexis keeps feasting on the acquisition of legal news content, they strengthen their market position as legal research( originally the heart an soul of LexisNexis)  becomes commoditized.In recent years LexisNexis has strengthened their position the legal news through a series of strategic alliances (Wall Street Journal, New York Times and ALM) and acquisitions ( Law 360, MLex and Moreover)