Bloomberg Law recently announced 3 enhancements to Bloomberg Law which will be available to all subscribers at no additional cost.    These resources include “time to trial” analytics, a unique court focused practice portfolio and a groundbreaking new docket feature, Docket Key which bring a smile to the face of anyone who has ever spent hours slogging through a docket sheet trying to find a specific document.

Analytics for Time to Motion Grant and Case Resolution

The new analytics feature allows lawyers to analyze judges on time to motion grant or resolution by case type. Judges, and district court case timing can be compared to each other and to the average overall case timing. As clients become more price sensitive, predictive analytics on case and motion timing can be used for both pitches and early case assessment.

Analysics comparing judges and district time to trial.

 

NY Commercial Division Practice – Bloomberg Law has partnered with the law firm Patterson Belknap to create a  new civil practice guide which focuses on commercial litigation in the Commercial Division of the New York Supreme Court. Unlike every other state, in NY the Supreme Court is in fact the trial court – not an appellate court. Bloomberg has intensified their focus on developing practice resources that can enhance efficiency and workflow.  They now have 13 sets of practice portfolios. I have previously pointed out  that BNA’s practice portfolios were print resources focused on streamlining workflow, which predated Practical Law by several decades. They had the misfortune of being developed in the “bad old days” when offering lawyers tools to drive efficiency was met with a laugh or a yawn.

According to the press release, the commercial division of the New York State Supreme Court was “formed to enhance the quality of judicial adjudication and improve efficiency of commercial disputes. The commercial division practice presents unique challenges because lawyers need understand both the state rules of procedure as well as the specific rules of the commercial division.”The portfolio provides insight into the inner workings of a commercial division and covers issues including the selection of judges the rules of practice jurisdiction management of cases discovery motion practice as well as appeals from the court. Practice tools include Forms.

 

Docket key (Hooray! Finally, a Way to Search for Specific Documents)

Anyone who does docket research knows that dockets are loaded with cryptic entries which do little to identify the exact nature of the documents associated with each entry. Docket Key is one of the first attempts by any publisher to take a stab at solving this problem. Docket key makes locating specific filings easy.  Bloomberg employed machine learning to identify 20 categories of documents including motions, complaints, notices briefs and orders.

Currently Docket Key supports the most frequently searched 15 federal districts on Bloomberg Law including the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of New York, the District Court of the District of Columbia and the Northern District of California. Docket Key is a search feature on the docket search page and enables researchers to navigate directly to a desired document. For a relative newcomer to the legal research arena – Bloomberg has always had an exceptionally strong docket product. Lexis and Westlaw have had docket products on the market for decades, it is a real “head scratcher” that they have let Bloomberg leapfrog over them in streamlining docket research and making specific  document types discoverable. within a docket sheet. Doesn’t sound like rocket science – but Bloomberg if the first one to get “lift off” on this  particular challenge.

Users will notice that Bloomberg has revised their recent revision of their Dockets page. The recent revisions eliminate tabs and reduce the number of “clicks” to get to a result.