I am an optimist by nature and I have remained skeptical of dark forecasts which predict the future based on one dominant trend (AI comes to mind) while ignoring multiple factors that are likely to moderate or change an expected trajectory. Imagine my surprise and delight to read about a recent study on the future
Bloomberg Law Launches AI Enabled Research Features: Points of Law and Citation Maps
In late September Bloomberg Law announced several new research features which leverage artificial intelligence and 
machine learning technologies to accelerate case law research. The The new “Points of Law” feature allows attorneys to quickly find language critical to a court’s reasoning to support their legal arguments . This feature was immediately available to all current subscibers to Bloomberg Law at no additional cost.
The Bloomberg Law platform now features one million points of law and is updated throughout the day. “Points of law” results are generated by the application of machine learning to the Blaw database of 13 million published and unpublished state and federal court opinions. Researchers can either start there research with a point of law or start with a keyword then sort by relevance or most cited.
This new feature was created is response to the market demand for workflow enhancing tools. “Points of law” research results highlight the relevant language in each opinion. The press release describes the benefit as “enabling attorneys to
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Join Me and Vable at October 12th Webinar: Your Library’s Role in Your Organization’s Competitive Advantage
Thanks to Vable for hosting this webinar where I will speak on the transformation of libraries into “insights engines.” Below is the text of their announcement. Register for the Webinar here.
Join Jean O’Grady and Vable on October 12th for a very special webinar, where she’ll be guiding you through the library’s role
LexisNexis Announces Lexis Practice Advisor Transactional Search Powered by Intelligize and Other LPA Enhancements
LexisNexis has spent the past five years on a treasure hunt, acquiring some of the most innovative legal tech start-ups. My refrain in every post about these acquisitions has been – when and how will LexisNexis start integrating the key features of these products into their existing product lines. Today LexisNexis is announcing important enhancements to Lexis Practice Advisor leveraging their acquisition of Intelligize in September 2016. Additional enhancement to Lexis Practice Advisor include a new and more intuitive home page, enhanced navigation and post navigation filtering. The new Home page enables lawyers to begin their navigation by jurisdiction or topic.
The new interface enables users to navigate content by practice area, content type or jurisdiction. In addition, content is organized along a task-based hierarchical tree, which allows users to either browse a comprehensive collection of practice area content or quickly drill down to find more nuanced, specific results.
LPA currently includes guidance such as practice notes, annotated forms, clauses and checklists across multiple practice
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Wolters Kluwer Preparing to Help Lawyers Predict Legislative Changes with New AI Features
I was
beginning to wonder if Wolters Kluwer Law & Regulatory was planning taking a rest from their aggressive schedule of innovation. Well I was wrong, I just learned that WK is preparing to introduce predictive analytics for federal legislation in their Federal Developments Knowledge Center. The legislative analytics will be powered by artificial
St. John’s Division of Library & Information Science To Offer Online Program for Advanced Certificate in Management for Information Professionals
Starting this fall, information professionals will have a new and unique opportunity prepare for leadership roles in libraries and knowledge-centric organizations– such as law firms. St. John’s University’s Division of Library and Information Science is accepting ap
plications for a new online program for an Advanced Certificate in Management for Information Professionals. Information about enrollment
Bloomberg Law Launches 15th Practice Center: E-Discovery
Today Bloomberg Law is announcing the release of its 15th practice center which is focused on E-Discovery. Bloomberg is moving rapidly to consolidate existing BNA news, practice and analytical resources as well as creating new content to enhance attorneys workflow efficiency. The Bloomberg Law Practice Centers are designed to compete directly with competitors in this space: Thomson Reuters Practical Law and Lexis Practice Advisor.
The E Discovery Practice Center offers a comprehensive solution that integrates news, primary sources including both published and unpublished state and federal court opinions, tools, sample forms, and expert guidance. The press release indicates that this is the only resource of its kind available on an integrated legal research and business intelligence platform. The E-Discovery Practice Center will be available to all Bloomberg Law subscribers at no additional cost.
The practice center’s home page features high value content including a curated collection of fully searchable state and federal court opinions, state-specific discovery guidance and rules, and BNA’s E-Discovery Portfolio series. I don’t recall seeing a collection of state ediscovery rules in any other product. Since ediscovery touches on a wide range of complex issues, the E-Discovery Center links to other BloombergBNA materials in related disciplines. Including: cross-border data transfers, government and internal investigations, and data and privacy security.
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Breaking News on Bad Data: Thomson Reuters Discovers Data Error in Their Monitor Suite Litigation Analytics
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:
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Wolters Kluwer Partners with KM Standards and Launches AI Workflow Tool: M&A Clause Analytics
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. continues to release new products and features with astonishing regularity.
On July 24th, they released M&A Clause Analytics, a new workflow tool which combines machine learning and human expert curation to streamline the M&A drafting process. The product is designed to help lawyers quickly locate the best model documents and clauses. Wolters Kluwer Partnered with Kingsly Martin of KM Standards to develop a statistical analysis of 17000 documents from WK’s RB Source database of SEC Filings. According to the press release the product is designed in response to a legal market focused on enhancing “quality, efficiency, and ease of preparing merger and acquisition agreements.” M&A Analytics which covers 13 document types. will be a central component of the Transactional Law Suite for Securities.Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Partners with KM Standards and Launches AI Workflow Tool: M&A Clause Analytics
The Second Oldest Legal Profession: Law Librarians: The Analytics and Algorithms of Change in the Legal C-Suite
The recent AALL Annual Conference in Austin was “hands down,” the most exciting AALL Program I have ever attended. The programs were great – it was often hard to decide which panel to attend. I found my own panels (Moneyball Analytics and Hits and Misses in New Products) up against programs that I hated to miss (the Innovation Tournament and an “all star” CEO panel ( Fastcase – Walters, Casetext – Heller, Ross – Aruda, Ravel – Lewis ) on AI and analytics prodded and provoked by moderator Prof, Susan Nevelow Mart.
Legal Tech thought leaders Bob Ambrogi and Kevin O’Keefe were a familiar sight at the panets, events, exhibits (and the nightly Fastcase after party). Earlier this week Ambrogi lauded AALL as one of the best conferences for those interested in legal tech. Is the market finally getting what information professionals have known all along? The legal profession requires content experts to navigate the burgeoning market of AI and analytics offerings. AALL: The Other Legal Tech Conference
The Second Oldest Legal Profession I spent time in the exhibit hall with Lexblog’s Kevin O’Keefe who commented on the quality and variety of panels and programs at the conference.
O’Keefe was surprised to learn that AALL had been around since 1906. In fact, in the legal community, only the American Bar Association has an earlier founding …1878. AALL predates every other law related association by decades. It was 65 years before the Association of Legal Administrators was founded in 1971, 74 years before ILTA was founded in 1980, 79 years before the Legal Marketing Association was founded in 1985.
O’Keefe also commented on the importance of information professionals by comparison to other law firm administrative functions. “Lawyers could still practice law without technology, or marketing or administrative help, but legal information always was and remains core to the practice of law.”
O’Keefe has a point which goes beyond the core practice of law. Law firms have become complex, regional, national and multi-national organizations. Business intelligence and legal knowledge has never been more critical to the current high stakes competitive market, no one else in the firm is better qualified to assess the potential value of research products offering AI and analytics… and yet…information professionals occupy relatively few seats in the legal C-Suite compared to the technologists and marketing professionals. The person who understand the quality of information should be at the table and not down the organization chart out of ear shot.
But this may be about to change…
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