Today Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.   announced the relaunch of Corporate Counsel Profiler The new version is powered by analytics and enables lawyers, researchers, marketers and competitive intelligence specialists to uncover custom insights into in houses Counsel Department.

Granular information on corporate in-house counsel departments is a critical component of the marketing, pitch and competitive intelligence process. AND it is surprisingly difficult to find. Current users of Corporate Counsel Profiler will immediately Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Relaunches Corporate Counsel Profiler with More Content, Analytics and Powerful Visualizations

Bringing Neural Nets to the Law 
Casetext opened 2020 with the launch of a revolutionary new motion-drafting tool called Compose. Compose dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes lawyers to draft a motion or brief by serving up the arguments and standards appropriate to the motion type in a specific jurisdiction.  Compose also included a powerful new search functionality called “Parallel Search,” which was the first legal research tool to leverage breakthrough technology called transformer-based neural nets.  Parallel Search proved to be so popular with attorneys that in June of 2020 Casetext made that search capability available as a stand-alone product and an upgrade to their Casetext research platform. More than a decade ago, major legal research platforms Lexis and Westlaw freed their subscribers from Boolean search by introducing natural language search. But freedom from Boolean search did Continue Reading What’s New at Casetext? Parallel Search and “Do it Yourself Neural Networks”
Bringing Neural Nets to the Law 
Casetext opened 2020 with the launch of a revolutionary new motion-drafting tool called Compose. Compose dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes lawyers to draft a motion or brief by serving up the arguments and standards appropriate to the motion type in a specific jurisdiction.  Compose also included a powerful new search functionality called “Parallel Search,” which was the first legal research tool to leverage breakthrough technology called transformer-based neural nets.  Parallel Search proved to be so popular with attorneys that in June of 2020 Casetext made that search capability available as a stand-alone product and an upgrade to their Casetext research platform. More than a decade ago, major legal research platforms Lexis and Westlaw freed their subscribers from Boolean search by introducing natural language search. But freedom from Boolean search did Continue Reading What’s New at Casetext: Parallel Search and “Do it yourself” Neural Networks

Today Reynen Court – an innovative software company supported by a consortium of 20 global law firms announced that they had hired law librarian, legal technologist and innovation provocateur Sarah Glassmeyer  for the role of Legal Tech Curator. The press release describes this as ” a  lynchpin role in generating contact and strategy for the Solution Store which is at the heart of the Reynen Court Platform.”

Reyen Court allows participating law firms to test innovative, new, cloud based technologies. The platform is designed to speed up the historically, lengthy testing and evaluation time normally associated with the implementation of new technology. One of the hottest new Continue Reading Law Librarian, Visionary, Provocateur Sarah Glassmeyer Joins Reynen Court in Strategic Legal Tech Curator Role

In a prior post  I reported  survey results on products to be purchased in 2020 and 2021… which included a fairly broad spectrum of products. Major vendors Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg and Wolters Kluwer were evenly represented at the top of the list. There were dozens of additional products identified by one or two responders. Today I am reporting on responses to the survey results on cancellations which presents a dramatic contrast. One product stood alone  as the most likely to be cancelled. That product is Lex

Continue Reading The Dewey B Strategic 2020-21 Hits and Misses Survey – The Product Most Likely to be Cancelled is — Lex Machina

Lex Machina and LexisNexis is announcing the release of the seventh California county: Orange County Superior Court. Los Angeles County Superior Court, Sacramento County Superior Court, San Diego County Superior Court, Riverside County Superior Court, San Bernardino County Superior Court, Alameda County Superior Court.

These counties are key courts for civil cases involving contracts, torts, employment, and other civil matters, and serve more than 24 million citizens.  Like other Lex Machina products, the California modules are created using Lex Machina’s machine learning, natural language processing  and human review to extract  and validate data-driven insights from millions of state court documents. According to the press release legal analytics are now available for any Superior Court civil trial case filed in any of these seven California courts.

Lex Machina faces a daunting challenge bringing Lex Machina’s standard analytics to state courts. Few states have unified systems for Continue Reading Lex Machina Expands California State Court Coverage with Seven Major Counties

The 2020-2021 Dewey B Strategic Hits and Misses survey asked responders to identify products purchased in 2020 or to be purchased in 2021. Despite the financial concerns triggered by the pandemic, law firm librarians continued to consider new products. Some new products such as Westlaw Edge and Lexis + are often driven by an impeding contract renewal. Other product selections are  driven by  practice demands as well as a desire to remain competitive by introducing innovative solutions and enhance productivity.

The Top Products Four was the magic number this year. Each of the top vote getters were identified by 4 responders as new purchases. Continue Reading The Dewey B Strategic 2020-21 Hits and Misses Survey: What Research, KM/Workflow and Analytics Products are Readers Buying?

COVID-19 threw law firms and librarians into the deep end of the local law pool. COVID-19 exposed the limits of traditional legal information vendors who focus on laws at the federal and state level. Long before COVID-19 emerged, Amanda Ostrowitz the SVP and founder of Fyllo’s CannaRegs, recognized the need for hyperlocal law to track the emergence of the Canna CBD Industry. Ostrowitz herself has developed a mastery of canna law and the canna law market.

Like other attorney entrepreneurs Ostrowitz sat at her desk thinking — “there’s got to be a better way.” Ostrowitz was working at the Federal Reserve and had to research financial regulations related to the emerging cannabis industry. There were no standard tools for locating the materials related to canna. As she excavated the regulations she discovered that she was in terra incognita — the unmapped and unharnessed regions of hyperlocal law related to regulation of the cannabis industry. By June 2015, CannaRegs was ready for a soft launch. The company was purchased by Fyllo in March 2021.

The Fortune 500 Drove Cannabis Law Into The ALM 100?

Cannabis law was not immediately embraced by the ALM 100 law firms. Ostrowitz tracked the progression. In 2018, only 15% of ALM law firm websites mentioned cannabis/CBD law and 5% had a specialty canna practice. By 2019, those numbers jumped to 35% of ALM 100 firms mentioning cannabis/CBD law and 10% having a special practice group. In 2020, 75% of ALM 100 law firm websites Continue Reading Excavating The Hyperlocal Legal Landscape With Amanda Ostrowitz Of CannaRegs

Today Wolters Kluwer Legal &  Regulatory is announcing two significant enhancements to RBSource Filings with the addition of IPO Vital Signs and  M&A  deals. This integration will support capital markets practitioners work by delivering both insights and workflow efficiency tools.Wolters Kluwer has been busy in the capital markets arena. This launch comes only a month after the launch of The Merger Threshold Monitor on Kluwer Competition platform.

“With the IPO market on track to break records this year and M&A volume continuing to increase, it’s becoming more important for attorneys to access expert insights that help them stay competitive in the current landscape,” said Ken Crutchfield, Vice President and Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Bulks up Capital Markets Content with IPO Vital Signs, M & A Deals on RB Source

LexisNexis has just released there inaugural Law360 Pulse 2021  Legal Technology Survey. In January and February 2021 they conducted  a survey  of corporate and law firm technology decision makers. The survey was focused on assessing law firm and in-house  technology investments, goals and fears during the COVID-19 pandemic.  A big clue to the results is in the subtitle: Bulking Up During the Office Diaspora. The report also sought to identify indicators of future concerns and investments.  Law360 Pulse was launched in January 2021 as a news service  focused on the business of law. Today they are releasing  the third in a series of  busines of law surveys.
The repost provides a series of snapshots across the spectrum of technology issues, budgets, cybersecurity, A.I., popular tech products by category. post COIVD tech adoption trends. The report examines the significance of cybersecurity threats and the degree to which law firms are responding.

There were just over 20 respondents but the report is positioned as providing anecdotal evidence of industry trends from the point of view of CIOs and other technology specialists.

  • 89% said their IT operating budgets were holding steady or rising.
  • More than 60% are using document automation
  • 20% are using virtual assistance and chat bots
  • More than 90% of respondents have a cyber liability policy
  • Fewer than 10% said they had a data breach in the past year.
  • 75% said they had a dedicated technology expert to support automation of core in-house workflows.
  • AI is being used primarily for legal research 86% and contract review and negotiation 48%
  • Only 32% of the respondents have a minimum hourly  CLE requirement Lawyers to gain technical competencies.
Respondents estimated that an average of 9% of lawyers time can be replaced with automated tasks. I am fascinated with that estimate and I would like to learn more about how they came to that number.  What products were in the mix?
Popular products. The survey identified the most popular products by category. Most popular AI tools include Kira (51%) Neota Logic( 21%).Video conferencing . It is no surprise that Zoom was the product identified by 83%.
The report ends with a summary of the most significant COVID impacts on technology. Impacts include the speed of technology adoption and introduction of new technologies.
For more information visit Law360 Pulse.