Earlier  this week,  LexisNexis Legal & Professional     unveiled the upcoming availability of Lexis+ Fact & Issue Finder, at  the American Association of Law Libraries conference . This new feature enables litigators to identify caselaw relevant to the specific  facts and  issues of their client’s case. The new offering covers six litigation practice areas – Personal Injury, Labor & Employment, Insurance, Real Estate, Intellectual Property, and Business & Commercial – with additional practice areas planned.

I met with Jeff Pfeifer, LexisNexis Chief Product Officer during the Conference  to get an overview of the  Lexis+ Fact and Issue Finder.  Pfeifer  alluded to a “abyss of information” which practically paralyses an associate faced with so much precedent and so many research tools.  The Fact & Issue Finder is focused on helping lawyers locate the most factually relevant cases quickly.  According to Pfeifer the product grew out of an attempt to completely deconstruct the research process. The developers used feedback from more than 1,000 customer interactions in order to understand the research experience and address specific pain points. One important goal is to eliminate the “fractured” research process by delivering a set of unified results in a single dashboard.

Fact & Issue Finder is designed from the ground up to mimic the exact processes that legal professionals perform when researching
Continue Reading Associates Flailing in the “Abyss of Information” – Lexis+ Fact and Issue Finder Promises Relief  

Today Lexis is releasing the 2022  CounselLink  Enterprise Management Trends Report. When it was established in 2013 the report included six key metrics. In recognition of the increasingly global legal market, the study now includes a  seventh metric which covers hourly billing rates for Partners in countries located outside the US. The insights in this year’s trends report are based on data derived from more than $49 billion in legal spending covering more than 350,000 time keepers in more than 1.2 million matters.
Key takeaways
  • 2021 was a block buster year for M&A legal fees. The median partner rate was $878 an hour… A 6.1% increase over the prior year median.
  • Law firms continue to increase hourly rates and in-house legal departments are paying them. 2021 partner rates increased 3.4% over 2020.
  • Alternative for your arrangements are increasing but not disrupting the market. Only 14.8% of matters had even a portion of their billing rate set at some thing other than hourly. Only 9.6%

Continue Reading Lexis 2022 CounselLink Report: Partner Rates and Panel Consolidation Continue to Rise

60% of DBS Survey Responders Say Legal Research/Tech Company Customer Support Has Declined in Past 10 Years.

In March I conducted a reader survey to explore the current state of customer service in the legal publishing and technology market. The Survey was open from March 3rd to March 11th. The reader response was somewhat overwhelming.  Not only did 169 readers respond to the 5 question survey but the majority of responders took the time to provide thoughtful responses to open ended questions about the improvement or decline in service.

I was inspired to conduct this survey by my own observations of and participation in the legal information and technology market from its infancy in the 1980’s when online caselaw was an adjunct to print — through today’s market where text has been transformed into data,
Continue Reading Legal Research Platforms Customer Service Survey – Customer Support in a Freefall

Lex Machina  pioneered the introduction of interactive litigation analytics for the law firms with the launch of the Intellectual Property product in  end uses. It launched as a project at Stanford Law School. Now a LexisNexis product, they offer  one of the most sophisticated analytics products in the legal market and  cover all types of federal, They are also expanding their coverage of state litigation.

Today Lex Machina is releasing the 2021 Patent Litigation Report which analyzes all federal patent litigation.

Register here for a copy of the report:  https://pages.lexmachina.com/2022PatentLitigationReport.html

Patent Report Webcast

Lex Machina is hosting a webcast to discuss the report on May 19, 2022 at noon ET/9am PT with Michael Flynn (Partner at Morris Nichols), Elaine Chow (Lex Machina’s Patent Legal Data Expert), moderated by Joshua Harvey (Manager of the Lex Machina’s Customer Success Team). Register for the event or view a recording: https://pages.lexmachina.com/20220519-PatentLitigationReportWebcast_LP.html

Here are some key findings

  • W.D, Tex., D Del., and E.D, Tex. have the highest number of patent filings in 2021
  • Patent case filings are consolidating more into the top three courts, from 47% in 2019 to 57% in 2021.

  • Federal PTAB appellate case filings fell 40% between 2020 and 2021.

  • 23% of federal PTAB appellate cases that terminated from 2019 to 2021 were ultimately reversed.

  • 34% of federal patent appellate cases that terminated from 2019 to 2021 were ultimately reversed.

  • Samsung, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon  were the most active patent defendants in 2021.

  • WSOU Investments LLC ( a patent monetization company) was the most active plaintiff in patent litigation last year.

  • Judge Albright was assigned to 23% of all patent cases filed in 2021.

  • Fish & Richardson top the list of defendant firms representing 669 defendants in  38 districts between 2019 and 2021.

Data and Methodology – I have to confess my favorite part of this report was the two pages explaining how the data was collected,
Continue Reading Lex Machina Releases 2021 Patent Litigation Report and Hosts Launch Webinar

LexisNexis Legal & Professional®,  is releasing a new API Developer Portal which will enables law firms and legal departments to integrate Lexis proprietary legal content,  news,  dockets, business data, and analytics from a variety LN products into firm portals, dashboards and workflows.  Business intelligence has been one of the hottest areas of law firm investment and innovation. For years I have criticized Lexis for accumulating a offering a federation of wonderful products sitting in separate platforms. At least 5 year’s ago CEO Mike Walsh assured me that they were building a Lexis ecosystem. Well today they have surpassed that promise by allowing customers to select content from across that ecosystem and weave it into internal systems in order  to streamline workflow and enhance insights

In a recent demo of the API’s Jeff Pfeifer Chief Product Officer, LexisNexis North America and UK  indicated that 90% of Lexis data is now available through the Lexis API’s, The goal is to meet customer’s where they work and provide them with and enriched workflow
Continue Reading LexisNexis Unveils API Developer Portal to Enhance Business Intelligence and Workflow

Earlier this week, Law360 Pulse released its inaugural Law360 Leaderboard law firm ranking. This completes a trifecta of new surveys developed by Law360 over the past year. The most recent survey highlights what the editors have defined as “well-rounded firms.” The new metric purports to identify firms that excel across a broad range of criteria such as culture, reputation, and business practice.

The Leaderboard combines the scores from the previously released rankings for Social Impact and Prestige. The new score is based on the Practice Footprint law firms have made in the litigation and transactional spaces over a three-year period. Law360 leverage data from Lexis Nexis sister companies Intelligize and Lex Machina. Intelligize data was used to define the size of completed public M&A and registered offering deals. Lex Machina data provided the metrics for Federal
Continue Reading Law360 Pulse Releases Law Firm Leaderboard Rankings

Better late than never. Here is my retrospective of top 2021 Dewey B Strategic posts.  The top stories reflect a wide swath of issues including rebranding, mergers, innovation, service disruptions, product realignments, launches, workflow and analytics. In looking at the list I am shocked to see that there is no reference at all to COVID-19.