Scott Mozarsky


Greg McCaffery, BloombergBNA, CEO and Scott Mozarsky President
of the BloombergBNA legal division discuss Bloomberg BNA strategy, AI,
predictive technologies, gatekeepers, advisory boards and BNA platform
migration plans. Contrary to recent rumors McCaffrey emphasized that customers
will be able to continue purchasing BloombergBNA vertical products after the
content is migrated to the Bloomberg Law platform.

Following the departure of Bloomberg Law President, David
Perla, I interviewed Greg McCaffery and Scott Mozarsky on some “hot topics” in
legal tech and legal publishing.

McCaffery kicked of the discussion by acknowledging David
Perla’s  important contributions during
his two and a half years at BloombergLaw. 
McCaffery described BloombergBNA as being in “heavy execution mode” and
underscored how Mozarsky’s  background is
perfect for continuing the development strategy begun under David Perla. Perla’s
legacy includes the development of the Bloomberg Law Corporate Transactions and
most recently the Litigation Analytics product.  McCaffery is confident that Mozarsky’s
background developing Bloomberg’s cross-platform capabilities is perfect for
continuing the strategy. Mozarksy joined Bloomberg three years ago after
practicing law in  private law firms and as
inside counsel. His cross-platform portfolio included: the Convergence
aggregation and publishing platform, CLE, media marketing, law firm event
support and Big Law Business—one of
my favorite daily reads. His focus has been on helping law firms leverage
Bloomberg Law resources to differentiate themselves.

JOG: Will this leadership change have any immediate impact
on your strategy?

GM: Our Strategy will continue to focus on combining
Bloomberg’s business news and analytics with BloombergBNA’s content expertise. We
expect to grow by double digits with a strategy of displacing other products. We
are having great success displacing niche providers in law firms.

JOG: What are Mozarsky’s top priorities?

SM: My first priority is to spend as much time as possible
with customers since customer feedback is critical to innovation. I also plan
to spend time with our employees. BloombergBNA has recently infused a lot of
new talent into the organization and I want to understand their talents so we
can continue to drive innovation through collaboration.

JOG: Is there anything in the pipeline that you can tell me
about?

SM:  We will continue to build out analytics. The goal is
to be in the legal market what the Bloomberg terminal is in the financial
market.

JOG: Do you have plans to eliminate the BNA Practice Library
platforms?

GM: We will be  migrating the content from the legacy BNA  platforms onto Bloomberg Law.  This content includes the Labor Law Resource
Center and the IP Law Resource Center. 

JOG: Will customers be able to purchase individual practice
libraries after the content is migrated onto the Bloomberg Law platform?

GM: “Yes. No one will be forced to purchase Bloomberg Law in
order to get topical content. There will be new functionality on the Bloomberg
Law platform. Customers can set up alerts and will have access to a full citator
as well as other enhanced Bloomberg Law functionality.

JOG: Is there any content that will not be available to topical
library subscribers?

GM: “Yes. Dockets, Bloomberg News and the Business Development
Center will remain exclusive offerings on the full Bloomberg Law platform.”

JOG: What is your view of the recent “gatekeeper”
controversy? Do you think of librarians and information professionals as “gatekeepers?”

SM: “I have a different perspective. I think that the very
large majority of librarians that I have dealt with are extremely strategic and
knowledgeable. A large majority of the innovation that we have undertaken  as an organization is driven by ideas we get from librarians in law
firms.”

JOG: Bloomberg BNA is the only major publisher that does not
have an advisory board composed of librarians and information professionals .  Would you consider having one?

GM: We have asked librarians to act as advisors in the past.
 We had one day summit in New York in 2014
. We put fifteen librarians around  a table and came away with wonderful new product ideas.”

SM: I think that being able to test ideas and get feedback
from customers is extremely important. I like the idea of having an advisory
board of librarians who can provide regular feedback from a variety of perspectives.
We will definitely consider doing that.

JOG; Are you looking at predictive technology?

SM:  Bloomberg has very large data sets and the technology
to look at patterns and trends.  We expect Litigation Analytics to be used as a  predictive tool. We will continue to leverage  the predictive technologies which have been developed
on the business side of Bloomberg to enhance the BloombergBNA  products.

JOG: Where do you think Artificial Intelligence fits in your
strategy?

SM: AI is both a challenge and an opportunity, but it needs
to be focused on real needs that will benefit the market.

GM: There is an AI team at Bloomberg. AI already being used
to create stories for Bloomberg business news. It has been in use for several
years. In the early days  you could tell
when stories were written by a machine, but the technology has improved
dramatically. Bloomberg lists the source of those stories as ‘Automated News,’  and those stories are being written by
algorithms.

JOG:  You indicated
that your goal is to have BloombergLaw  be positioned in law firms,  the same way Bloomberg
Business terminal is positioned in financial services firms. Can you elaborate?

GM: The business terminal is a workflow tool that supports
many constituencies in a financial serviced firm. We are developing
BloombergLaw to be a multi-faceted workflow platform offering the best content
and functionality across the spectrum of roles in law firms  whether the user is an associate, partner, business
development  or research team member.