Legal Tech Hub has taken a big leap forward with the launch of a premium subscriptions service LTH Premium.  LTH provides insights for professionals across the legal spectrum (Innovation, KM/Research, Legal Ops, IT) who are tasked with monitoring the legal tech market or identifying the right resource for a specific workflow need. LTH provides “educational resources, objective reports and insights about legal technology, and tools to support the selection, evaluation, procurement, and implementation of legal technology. “

LHT offers quick access to resources such as checklists which can help legal and business professionals assess new tech solutions  across the procurement lifecycle– from assessment through adoption.

LTH Premium is built on the original Legal Tech Hub taxonomy and product profiles are enhanced practical guides commissioned from industry experts,

Continue Reading Legal Tech Hub Launches LTH Premium – Enhanced Procurement Expertise

At the dawn of the digital information age, I learned an exotic research tradecraft “Selective Dissemination of Information” (SDI). Platforms such as Dialog and Orbit contained dozens of databases which included abstracts and descriptors for scientific and business articles and reports. Curated topical updates could be harvested by using a set of complex commands and Boolean logic.

Here’s the catch: daily or weekly alert of new content could only be retrieved by logging onto the platform. There was no automatic delivery.

Everything sped up with the emergence of email and the World Wide Web in the 1990s.  In recent decades aggregation platforms have evolved from simply speeding up and personalizing alerts, to providing immediate real time notifications. The emergence of analytics, AI and neural nets has been a force multiplier to drive the development of exotic features such as predictive insights and sentiment analysis. Microtrends became detectable as social media flooded into the competitive landscape.

In 2004  I was interviewed by EContent magazine and asked — if I could accomplish anything in my career, what would it be. Here is my answer:

“I’d like to be an information climatologist. I’d work with vendors to design information services for determining what is likely to happen next by pulling trends together. Imagine if someone could have known that Enron was about to happen?”

In 2023, aggregation platforms stand poised to fulfill that dream.

Why Law Firms Need Curation Platforms.  

Lawyers are in an information business. The practice of law requires the relentless monitoring Continue reading on Legal Tech Hub

I always believed that Gavelytics was too good a product to disappear. I reported last summer that the pioneering state litigation analytics company was shutting down. Today’s  press release reports that Gavelytics will live again as the core of  Pre/Dicta‘s state court predictive litigation component. This transformation will fulfill founder Rick Merrill’s dream: “Pre/Dicta created what I always dreamed of for Gavelytics; a litigation analytics platform that was forward-looking rather than backward-looking, that could make predictions and not just provide generic descriptive statistics.”

Launched in summer of 2022, Pre/Dicta uses data science to predict whether a case will survive a motion to dismiss by identifying the factors that influence such a decision, including the presiding judge’s net worth, political affiliation, educational and work experience, and other biographical data points that are not intuitively significant and determine whether a case will move forward

The benefit for Pre/DIcta is that this acquisition “dramatically shortens Pre/Dicta’s timeline for creating a tool that offers instant and Continue Reading Gavelytics Lives Again! Acquired by Predictive Analytics Start Up Pre/Dicta

The 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market is being released today. The annual report is  jointly issued each year by the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the Thomson Reuters Institute. The report utilizes data from Thomson Reuters which shows the performance of U.S. law firms and analyses a variety of factors impacting that performance. Download the 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market here.

Several key drivers of the bad news include the decline in profitability which surged in the pandemic, only to stall  as firms absorbed “return to the office” costs.. Expenses further ballooned due to inflation. Law firms once again entered into the talent war “space race” which translates to higher unsustainable salaries for young attorneys whose work can’t be billed to clients. Will law firms ever learn how “not to take the bait?”

Here are the three key take aways: Continue Reading The 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market — Yup It’s Bad

I was recently provided with an internal Bloomberg communication from Cesca Antonelli, Editor-in-Chief at Bloomberg Industry Group*. Antonelli  scoped out Bloomberg’s plans: “ … as we move into 2023, we will substantially grow the size of our newsroom. You read that right. At a time when it seems like our entire industry is shrinking and doing more with less, Bloomberg Industry Group is making a big bet on robust journalism.” Leadership is committed to marrying the best content to the best AI.

Legal News Focus Bloomberg Law is going to focus on “the part of our market that is growing the most: news for Big Law litigators. Our goal is to become No. 1 in litigation news, and that’s where most of these new jobs will be.”  Although no specific hiring target is mentioned, the new positions will include team leaders, deputies, content editors and reporters. The positions will be filled with both internal candidates and external recruits.

The strategy will be to “stand up a team of writers inside courthouses in key locations. There will be “a new SWAT team of general assignment reporters to write stories about the decisions our legal intelligence teams don’t currently have time to get done. New Continue Reading Bloomberg Law is Doubling Down on Legal News– Starts Hiring Spree to Bulk Up Legal Coverage

  1. Thomson Reuters Signals to Lawyers “You’re On Your Own” – Ends Evening and Weekend Customer Support Today
  2. Breaking News –Thomson Reuters To Reinstate 24X7 Research Helpdesk January 18th
  3. Westlaw Precision Launches With Promise to Cut Lawyer Research Time in Half
  4. Reuters Legal News – No Paywall! No Onepass!  Customizable Legal News
  5. LexisNexis Unveils API Developer Portal to Enhance Business Intelligence and Workflow
  6. Lexis Offers Westlaw Users 24/7 Support Through January 17th When Westlaw Resumes Full Service
  7. Associates Flaining in the Abyss of Information Lexis Fact and Issue Finder Promises Relief
  8. Breaking News : Gavelytics Groundbreaking State Analytics Platform to Shut Down Tomorrow June 30, 2022
  9. Ten Years On – Bloomberg Law Releases Documentary on the Collapse of Dewey LeBoeuf
  10. Legal Research Platforms Customer Service Survey – Customer Support in a Freefall
  11. 2022 Report on The State of the Legal Market – Stop Throwing Money at the Talent War!
  12. Law360 Pulse Releases Law Firm Leaderboard Rankings
  13. HBR Acquired by PE Firm – To Join LAC in Renovus Professional Services Portfolio
  14. BriefCatch 3  Offers 11,000 AI and NLP Enabled  Editorial Suggestions to Streamline and Tighten Legal Writing
  15. Power Tools for Budget Planning – TRG Releases Optimize Insights for Research Monitor
  16. Legaltech Hub 2.0 Launches New Insights into Legal Tech and Services Market
  17. The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Publishes Guide to US Primary Law Online
  18. How To Evaluate and Get Started with Data APIs
  19. If Data is the New Gold, then Law Libraries are a Goldmine: Panning for Gold with APIs – Part 1 Getting Started
  20. Wolters Kluwer Releases Sharepoint Integration, New Dashboard and Previews Analyzers At AALL
  21. Lex Machina Launches Federal Appellate Analytics
  22. Lexis API for Courtroom Insight Adds LexisNexis Context Analytics to Judge and Expert Profiles
  23. Fastcase Docket Alarm Adds Visual Timelines and AI Enabled Motion Grant Analytics
  24. Post-Pandemic Legal Research Procurement Survey – What’s Hot and What’s Not?
  25. Fastcase 50 Announced – Congratulations to Class of 2022

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.  is announcing the relaunch of Kluwer IP Law, the master resource for intellectual property rights and registration. The new user experience is designed to maximized  efficient workflow. The new interface allows  users to save their favorite resources and will offer a News Alert service. Kluwer IP Law is Wolters Kluwer’s flagship service focused on all key IP law, providing legal professionals with quick answers and Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Announces Relaunch of Kluwer IP Law with New Intuitive User Interface

LegalOn Technologies (“LegalOn”) a leading legal technology company from Japan,  has announced its expansion into the United States and  the appointment of Daniel Lewis as US CEO. Daniel Lewis is well known in the U.S. legal tech community as the co-Founder of Ravel Law (later acquired by LexisNexis). Ravel Law completely reimagined the delivery of caselaw research results and was the first platform to offer Judge’s “Precedential Behavior Analysis.”

According to the press release “LegalOn has built the world’s leading AI contract review solution for in-house teams and law firms. The company has over 3,000  law firm and law department customers, a team of 400 employees, $101m in recent funding. LegalOn was founded in 2017 by two corporate lawyers and the company is backed by leading investors

Nozomu Tsunoda, CEO is quoted in the press release: “We have over 3,000 customers, a team of 400 employees, $101m in recent fundraising, and now we’ve added an experienced executive, Daniel Lewis, to lead our US expansion.”

Daniel Lewis and Nozomu Tsunoda of LegalOn Technologies

Lewis joins LegalOn as US CEO after five years at LexisNexis leading practical guidance businesses serving 100k+ attorneys. He previously founded and led Ravel Law, a legal analytics software company. “One of the biggest challenges that general counsel and in-house teams face is providing timely review on urgent, high-volume contracts like NDAs and purchase agreements,” says Daniel Lewis, US CEO.

I recently interviewed Lewis and JP Biard, the Head of Global Strategy. Lewis  described how the drag and drop feature provides complete contract analysis in  lightning speed. The product provides clause by clause analysis and guidance. Another unique feature is that the product supports “point of view” analysis meaning that it provides guidance based on the position of the party. There are currently over 60 Japanese agreements supported. LegalOn is in the process of building up the U.S. corpus of contracts it will support by using Natural Continue Reading Daniel Lewis Co-Founder of Ravel Law Joins LegalOn Technologies

As fall associates settle into the reality of legal practice, I am taking the opportunity to share a variety of research “best practices.” These rules can be applied across all environments: law firm, corporate, public service and government. New associates are facing the messy reality of needing to harness legal and factual issues that need to be addressed in real time an often on tight deadlines. No matter what kind of environment a lawyer is in, I recommend finding a research mentor of some kind. Large and medium sized law firm are likely to have a research team staffed by professional researchers, often with an MLS and/or a JD. Countless benefits can follow from tapping into their expertise to guide your research challenges.

Research has changed dramatically over the past decade as technology has replaced standard print finding tools. Volumes of citators and digests have been supplanted by digital and AI enabled tools of breathtaking wizardry. No matter where an organization is on the technology spectrum the basic “rules” below should ease your research journey.

1. Be certain that you understand the assignment. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. There is no shame in asking for clarification.

2. Just Ask! A popular mnemonic “Just Ask” is used by many library teams to remind lawyers

Read full article on Legal TechHub

Law.com Radar, ALM’s technology-driven legal news platform has added a significant new offering to its litigation surveillance tool. Law.com Radar will now offer “breaking litigation” updates from the Delaware Chancery Court. This matters because, the Delaware Chancery Court is one of the most significant courts for commercial litigation in the United States.

Each case filed in the Court of Chancery will be available on Law.com Radar with a concise summary and one-click access to the complaint.

Radar’s alerting features enable subscriber to use filters to customize alerts targeting companies, industries, practice areas and Continue Reading “Breaking Litigation” Alerts From Delaware Court of Chancery Added to Law.com Radar