Today the Association of Corporate Counsel and Wolters Kluwer  Legal and Regulatory  are releasing the 2020 Legal Operations Maturity Benchmark Report. The report is over 80 pages long and  is exploding with scatter graphs and bar charts which assess  how well corporate legal departments have adopted various initiatives, such as knowledge management, strategic planning, innovation, technology and information governance. The press release states that the report offers some of the first numerical data to support key findings about legal operations Including:

1) Despite increasing focus on legal operations, most organizations, on average, still do not have a mature legal department.
2) A legal operations professional on staff makes a measurable improvement to a legal department’s maturity rate across ALL 15 functions tested.
3) Although legal operations functions have been shown to reduce costs and increase efficiency, many legal departments continue to face a diversity of challenges in the maturation process.

The full report will be available for download here.

How Innovative Are Corporate Legal Departments? Law firms that have done a lot of hand-ringing about developing their own innovation in the past five years will be comforted to learn that innovation is not as pervasive in corporate legal departments they have feared. In house legal departments have their own innovation and change management challenges. The report documents a spectrum of innovation across industries. For example, legal departments in ecommerce and real estate have the highest operational maturity scores. One can’t help but wonder what similar charts comparing the Amlaw 100 law firms would reveal.

The Survey Survey respondents were from 316 legal operations organizations across 29 countries and 14 industries. The report
Continue Reading ACC and Wolters Kluwer Release Legal Operations Study – Legal Operations Leaders Drive Change But Innovation Lags in Legal Departments

Please take the 2019-2020 Dewey B Strategic Survey here. Review the 2019 highlights below and tell your colleagues about the best and the worst of 2019 in legal publishing and legal tech.The survey will close on Sunday March 1st.

The Highlights 2019 was a relatively quiet launch year in legal technology and publishing.  The

Please take the 2019-2020 Dewey B Strategic Survey here. Review the 2019 highlights below and tell your colleagues about the best and the worst of 2019 in legal publishing and legal tech.

The Highlights 2019 was a relatively quiet launch year in legal technology and publishing.  The year opened with speculation about the impact

The major takeaway from the 2018-19 Dewey B Strategic Hits and Misses Survey is that consumers of legal information regard 2018 as “a miss.” The problem wasn’t so much the products—although products play an important role in triggering the discontent. The major problem is the behavior of legal publishers. Legal publishing is a mature

Today I am launching a new Hits and Misses” survey which will replace the annual “Start Stop” Survey.  The new survey is more structured and should only take 5 to 7 minutes to complete. Please take a few minutes to share your insights on the state of legal publishing industry practices, products and technology. You can access the survey HERE.

This is an anonymous survey,  however respondents who wish to be entered in a drawing to win an Amazon Echo have the option of including their name an contact information.

The survey will be open through January 31st.

What Did You Think About Legal Publishing and Tech Trends in 2018?

2018 was a tumultuous year for legal publishing and technology. Consider just a few of the key events. The American
Continue Reading Welcome to the First Dewey B Strategic “Hits and Misses” Survey – What Did Legal Publishers Get Right/Wrong in 2018?

Here are the results of the 2017 Start/Stop Survey questions related to processes and projects which are being cancelled or launched.

Print Decline Continues

The decline of print in law libraries continued to dominate the workflow changes in law libraries. Libraries are shrinking. Workflow is changing to focus on digital resources and KM support. Almost all the processes and projects being terminated by respondents related to print resource maintenance or management.

New Initiatives 2017/2018

The top 2017 and 2018 initiatives were focused on AI and competitive intelligence alert enhancement.Artificial Intelligence was the top technology mentioned by respondents. AI is being examined as a feature of commercial products from the major vendors (Lexis, Thomson Reuters, Wolters Kluwer, Bloomberg Law) as well as start ups, Fastcase,CARA, Ross. It is also being examined as a technology for internal Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence Projects. Enhancing Competitive intelligence workflow and resources ranked second in the new projects undertaken  by respondents.

Specific initiatives include:
Continue Reading Start/Start Survey for Processes and Projects: AI and Algorithms Lead New Initiatives, Print Libraries Continue to Shrink

My apologies for the delay. February was a “lost month” due to flu season. Please vote here. 

They Survey will close Friday March 16th.

This blog has covered a wide variety of new products including Judicata’s Clerk, Gavelytics, Voxgov, CARA’s Brief Finder and CARA Push NotificationsLex Machina launched new modules including bankruptcy appeals, commercial, employment and products liability. Ravel launched law firm analytics before being acquired by Lexis.

Wolters Kluwer appeared to have been in innovative overdrive building new tools and features on its own and in alliance with other technology companies. Wolters Kluwer launched M&A Clause Analytics,  Smart Tasks, predictive legislation in their Federal Knowledge Center, Clarivate, Standard Federal Tax Plus, SEC RegReview, a new Cybersecurity Product, Enhanced Arbitration Platform and a KTmine IP Alliance.Lexis unveiled an AI tool: Lexis Answers and began to deliver some “mashups” between their various products. They enhanced Practice
Continue Reading Last Call To Share Your Wisdom with Your Colleagues Respond to 2017-18 Start Stop Poll