This morning I talked with Andrew Martens, Global Head of Product and US Editorial, at Thomson Reuters who advised me that the company had discovered and corrected a data error in their Litigation analytics  in the Monitor Suite platform which impacted dated between mid-April and July 2017.

What products were affected? Litigation Monitor data in the Monitor Suite platform.

What content was affected? Federal district court data only. Other federal and state court data was not impacted? According to Martens the impacted date represents less than 1.4 percent of their district court docket archive.

What products were not impacted? Thomson Reuters also provides docket data on the Westlaw platform through Courtwire. This is a separate docket datastream and it was not impacted. “State dockets, all state and federal opinions, as well as all intellectual property and deals content were not impacted. Dockets on Westlaw were not affected and were current at all times.”

Help Is Available. In addition to offering an apology, Thomson Reuters is offering some support.

“We are happy to help rerun or supplement your Monitor Suite reports. Please contact your Business Development Consultant at (877) 347-6360 or our Reference Attorneys at (800) 733-2889 if you would like assistance.”

The problem of Multiple Data Streams – Thomson Reuters is Not Alone Getting Burned by the management of multiple data streams. Earlier this year LexisNexis was sued when a customer found errors in a paper back code volume. I also asked at that time why LexisNexis would not have a single stream of statutory and regulatory changes feeding into all of their products.

Is there any risk for law firms? Generally this type of litigation analytics is used for pitches and not for client support activities. It is not impossible that the data could have been used in some client support context, e.g. litigation strategy. In this case, TR benefits from not having rolled their analytics into their main Westlaw product  as competitors Bloomberg Law and Lexis Nexis have. Since the Monitor Suite is normally used by research and competitive intelligence specialists – it will be easier to review any use of the data during the April to July period to determine if reports need to be rerun. Firms which have a resources monitoring system such as Research Monitor or Onelog will find it every easy to identify users and usage during the impacted period.

Here is the letter that TR is sending to their customers:

Dear Jean,

We are writing to make you aware of a recent issue relating to the currentness of one of our data sets in our business development tool – Litigation Monitor, part of Monitor Suite. We recognize that having current information is important to our customers, and we apologize for this issue.

A gap in the federal district court docket collection of Litigation Monitor was found, and the issue has been addressed, bringing the collection back to our normal currency expectations. State dockets, all state and federal opinions, as well as all intellectual property and deals content were not impacted. Dockets on Westlaw were not affected and were current at all times.

The Litigation Monitor issue began as a result of an enhancement project across our dockets collection. These enhancements were immediately available on Westlaw but required additional processing for Monitor Suite. This additional processing resulted in a backlog in loading federal district court dockets to Litigation Monitor.

If you ran Litigation Monitor reports using federal court docket data since mid-April, please know that your data set may have been incomplete and the report may have been impacted. Accessing Litigation Monitor’s quicklinks and enhanced portal links will return current data. We are happy to help rerun or supplement your Monitor Suite reports. Please contact your Business Development Consultant at (877) 347-6360 or our Reference Attorneys at (800) 733-2889 if you would like assistance.

We sincerely apologize for the data delay and for not informing you sooner. The team misjudged the time to resolution, and as a result did not keep you adequately informed of this coverage issue. We have resolved the data issue and reinforced our internal escalation process, and you can be confident that Litigation Monitor is current.

Sincerely,

 

Andy Martens