LexisNexis has announced the launch of  Legal News Hub, the latest enhancement to the Lexis+ ecosystem.  Although Lexis has enjoyed a dominant position in the legal news market, they have faced increasing competition in the past year with the  launch of significant new legal news initiatives from Thomson Reuters. Fastcase and ALM.

The Lexis Legal News Hub will now appear as a new module on the Lexis+ “experience dock. ” The Legal News Hub adds Law 360 current awareness functionality to Lexis+. This means that lawyers can get access to Law 360 content as part of an integrated research experience on Lexis+. Law 360 now covers
Continue Reading Lexis+ Legal News Hub Integrates Law360 Content into Research Ecosystem

The 2020-21 Dewey B Strategic What’s Hot and What’s Not Survey  included a series of questions related to the COVID-19 Crisis.

COVID Resources Every legal  publisher launched some kind of COVID related legal resource. Many of these resources were made publicly available outside the paywall. These products included toolkits, trackers,  practical guidance, advisories, checklists, legislative

Legal News One of the most surprising developments of 2020 was the new focus on Legal News. ALM launched an innovative new alerting services called Law.com Radar which originally launched as (Legal Radar). Here are links to the posts I wrote about  Law.com radar in February and November 2020. Westlaw although owned by the Thomson Reuters news organization had ignored the legal news market they launched Westlaw Today in 2020.  (The predecessor company West Publishing had made short lived attempt  with a product called Westlaw News sometime in the 1980s.) Fastcase which bought Law Street Media began publishing legal news which leveraged data harvested from their Docket Alarm analytics product. ( A new Lexis News offering Law360 Pulse which launched  in January 2021 was not included in this survey but will be included in the 2021 survey.)

Best Legal News Product: ALM’s Law.com Radar

Legal Marketplaces It has become nearly impossible to test and track all the new legal technology tools that flood the market each year. In addition, existing tools are transformed with powerful new functionality. Enter the legal marketplace – a new category of legal resource
Continue Reading What’s Hot and What’s Not 2020-21 Survey: ALM Law.com Radar Voted Best Legal News Product and Thomson Reuters Legal Home Best Marketplace

The results of the Dewey B Strategic 2020-2021  Hits and Misses Survey are in. Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey.

The demographics. The survey was conducted  from February 16th through March 1st 2021. There were 101 respondents. The respondents described their professional positions as follows: 81% librarians/knowledge managers), 11% law firm management, 5% IT professionals, 3% practicing attorneys, 1% data scientists.

As usual I have asked readers to identify the best new products in several categories including news, analytics, workflow. Readers also provided the names of products they plan to cancel or acquire. I could not ignore the defining issue of 2020 – so I asked a series of questions about the performance of legal publishers in response to COVID.

What was the most significant development in legal technology/publishing?

I love and respect my readers but I don’t always agree with them. I have to admit I was truly shocked that readers selected the  shuttering of Ross Intelligence the most significant development of 2020. Here’s why— frankly I only know a handful of firms that had purchased
Continue Reading The Results Are In: Dewey B Strategic What’s Hot and What’s Not Part 1: Westlaw Edge vs Lexis+ vs. Law Firm Budgets

Lexis is releasing a new Context product which they are referring to as Context Attorney Analytics.  I would describe the product as attorney insights.  Analytics are at work “under the hood,” but a lawyer will not see the  trend lines and charts of a traditional analytics tool.  When Daniel Lewis and Nik Reed  launched the

Today LexisNexis is announcing the launch of Lexis+ Litigation Analytics. Litigation Analytics does two things. It integrates analytics into the research and practical guidance  workflow.  Lexis+  now offers “enhanced analytics” from Lex Machina as well as state level analytics derived from CourtLink for the states that Lex Machina does not currently cover.
Karl Harris, C.E.O. of Lex Machina a offered me a demonstration of Lexis + Litigation Analytics.. Harris placed analytics within the context of the new workflow which was introduced with Lexis+.  Lexis+ includes a persistent navigation bar which today adds litigation analytics to the 3 original  pillars of,  Lexis + : workflow: research, practical guidance and brief analysis. The Lexis + home page  is designed around an inviting query “What would you like to research today”  hovering over a large search box.  Analytics are still fairly new to the average  lawyer’s toolkit and I think it is wise to remind lawyers about analytics throughout Lexis+ workflow experience..
Harris explained that the core goals of the Lexis+ enhancement was based on customer feedback which highlighted the importance of   accuracy confidence and efficiency in analytics products. In addition they wanted to  deliver an integrated product experience in what Lexis refers to as the Lexis+ ecosystem.

 Lexis+ Litigation Analytics offers the following types of insights:

  • Judge and court analytics: Contextualize understanding of federal district and state courts and judges.
  • Courts & Judges Comparator Quick Tool: Compare judge behavior and courtroom trends over time in federal district court.
  • Attorney and law firm analytics: Assess the experience of attorneys and law firms in federal district and state courts.
  • Counsel Comparator Quick Tool: Compare law firm and attorney performance based on actual results in federal district court.

Bifurcated Data: Enhanced Analytics and “everything else”

Continue Reading Lexis Adds Lex Machina and CourtLink Analytics to the Lexis+ Ecosystem

I recent months I have repeatedly highlighted the renewed energy and competition in the legal news space. I never anticipated that LexisNexis would be joining their competitors in launching a new legal news publication. After all, LexisNexis controls the majority of the US legal news content (Law360, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and a non-exclusive license for American Lawyer Media content.) And yet today  LexisNexis is launching a new publication Law360 Pulse which will focus on the “business of law” and target readers in large and mid-sized firms as well as in house counsel.

Law360 Pulse is described in the press release as a “business of Law news service” including “ “the  award-winning journalism and research of Law360 with powerful data and analytics from Lexis+ to deliver unparalleled business of law coverage, timely insights and industry intelligence that help law firms and legal departments succeed.”

The service will offer 24/7 breaking news, business of law feature articles, surveys, rankings and reports on law firm practices and trends. The first report, titled Physical Space in a Pandemic: How Law Firms are Adapting, was issued today alongside a broader series on
Continue Reading LexisNexis Launching Law360 Pulse–To Focus on the Business of Law

Today American Lawyer Media and LexisNexis announced the extension of their strategic alliance with a new content agreement. According to the press release, the agreement “lays the groundwork for expanding the integration of ALM content within LexisNexis legal research solutions.”

LexisNexis and ALM,  have an an exclusive agreement since 2011,  which made ALM’s iconic content including The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal, Legaltech News, New York Law Journal and other specialty publications available through the Lexis+ and Lexis® legal research solutions and Nexis® Newsdesk. This extension ensures that current news from ALM will continue to be available to LexisNexis customers.

Breaking News: I also received an exclusive statement from Richard Caruso, General Manager, Global Legal News, ALM, stating that “Lexis no longer has an exclusive to our content archive, allowing us to open up licensing opportunities with other Legal research providers;  we are planning on announcing a new agreement very soon.”

What this means for Lexis and ALM subscribers:

  • Subscribers can now have a license with ALM that is not tied to their LexisNexis contract.
  • ALM will be handling their own sales and not relying on LexisNexis sale reps to manage their customer relationships.
  • ALM will soon be announcing that ALM content will be available though a second Legal research platform.

Market Impact This will offer some relief ALM 100 law firms who are  are rebelling against LexisNexis’ increasingly aggressive tying
Continue Reading Breaking News: ALM Ends Exclusive Relationship with LexisNexis While Extending LexisNexis Alliance

I have ranked the most popular 15  Dewey S Strategic posts of 2020.It is no surprise to me that posts about the release of specialty COVID resources by major legal publishers dominate – 4 of the 15 stories. My annual “Hits and Misses” survey results  were covered in 3 of the 15 top posts. The

We were all blindsided as 2020 unfolded, yet the momentum of technological change and innovation assured a steady stream of new products. I have identified five trends, which I have divided into three categories: unforeseeable, continuing and surprising.

The trends I believe are worth noting — Unforeseeable: COVID-19 impacts; Predicable: state court analytics and innovative workflow tools; Surprising: legal news re-emerges as a competitive focus among major legal publishers and tech marketplaces emerge.

Unforeseeable: COVID-Related Trends

COVID alone triggered four subtrends:

  • The emergence of local law and ephemeral publications. Major legal vendors were no more prepared to track county level health department issuances and Governors’ executive orders than the average law firm. To make things worse these “documents” were issued in a myriad of social media formats, texts, tweets, Facebook pages … . What’s a law firm to do?
  • Librarians and KM professionals stepped into the vacuum and established protocols for locating and harnessing the untidy universe of COVID-19 ephemera.
  • Law firms became publishers of original COVID-19 resources (leveraging the local documents harnessed by librarians).
  • Legal publishers turned out an unprecedented number of free legal resources covering COVID-19 issues. I covered this trend in an earlier ATL post.

Continuing Trends: State Court Analytics And Workflow Tools

Workflow ToolsContinue Reading 5 (Unforeseeable, Predicable, And Surprising) Legal Tech Trends In 2020