Today  LexisNexis® Legal & Professional  is announcing the launch of InterAction+™, a new cloud-based legal CRM that  integrates the workflow around law firm contacts into Outlook and leverages the firms existing Lexis subscriptions to deliver business intelligence into the CRM experience. The new interface add new features, including a modern user experience, cloud infrastructure, and exclusive content from LexisNexis® to help lawyers manage relationships and identify opportunities and at-risk clients.

Integration with Lexis Content. If you have spend the past 3 years building custom API’s to link litigation data with InterAction contacts, you might want to sit down. InterAction+ now offers an “out of the box” solution which will deliver business intelligence insights from their Context analytics tool. Context provides analytics on litigation events involving clients or prospects which  provides  data on litigation events involving clients or prospects which can be filter and analyze data by firm, practice area, and jurisdiction..

Continue Reading Lexis Launches InterAction+ with Outlook and Analytics Integrations, New Dashboard and Security Options

NetDocuments, a native cloud Document Management System is jumping into the Generative AI market for Legal with is announcement of ndMAX. The company plans a suite of generative AI-powered products designed to streamline the entire legal workflow based on practice group needs.

According to the press release ndMAX “enables law firms and legal teams to securely and responsibly apply cutting-edge AI to their own documents and data in order to extract business intelligence and generate novel content.”

Continue Reading NetDocuments Announces “Responsible AI” for Legal with ndMAX and PatternBuilderMax

My prior post suggested that librarians are the logical candidates for the emerging role of “Prompt Engineer.” Anthropic which recently released an AI enabled tool called Claude agrees with me and they are searching for a Prompt Engineer/Librarian.

In the job posting, Anthropic describes itself as an “AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our customers and for society as a whole.” I signed up to test Claude which can answer questions, summarize ingested documents and produce formatted outputs.

They openly admit the challenges: “Given that the field of prompt-engineering is arguably less than 2 years old, this position is a bit hard to hire for!  As a result, we ask that you share with us a specific prompt engineering project on LLMs that you’re proud of in your application!  Ideally this project should show off a complex and clever prompting architecture or a systematic evaluation of an LLM’s behavior. “

Responsibilities:

  • Discover, test, and document best practices for a wide range of tasks relevant to our customers.
  • Build up a library of high quality prompts or prompt chains to accomplish a variety of tasks, with an easy guide to help users search for the one that meets their needs.
  • Build a set of tutorials and interactive tools that teach the art of prompt engineering to our customers.
  • Work with large enterprise customers on their prompting strategies.

You may be a good fit if you:

  • Have 3-5 years of relevant or transferrable experience.
  • Have at least a high level familiarity with the architecture and operation of large language models.
  • Are an excellent communicator, and love teaching technical concepts and creating high quality documentation that helps out others.
  • Are excited to talk to motivated customers and help solve their problems. 
  • Have a creative hacker spirit and love solving puzzles.
  • Have at least basic programming skills and would be comfortable writing small Python programs.
  • Have an organizational mindset and enjoy building teams from the ground up.
  • You think holistically and can proactively identify the needs of an organization.
  • Make ambiguous problems clear and identify core principles that can translate across scenarios.
  • Have a passion for making powerful technology safe and societally beneficial.
  • You anticipate unforeseen risks, model out scenarios, and provide actionable guidance to internal stakeholders.
  • Think creatively about the risks and benefits of new technologies, and think beyond past checklists and playbooks.
  • You stay up-to-date and informed by taking an active interest in emerging research and industry trends.

I especially love this part – you may have imposter syndrome – Apply anyway!

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you’re interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we’re building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

And the Salary Ain’t Bad Either

The expected salary range for this position is $250k – $375k USD.

See the job listing and apply for the job at this link.

On July 6th Wolters Kluwer and Above the Law released a survey Generative AI in the Law: Where Could This All Be Headed? The survey queried lawyers and other business professionals in the legal industry to assess the expected impact of Generative AI on the Legal Profession. It seems that every day there is a survey or a webinar offering to answer the big question – can AI replace lawyers and other allied legal business professionals? It is a kind of anticipatory l marketing – lets just plant a flag on “Planet AI.”

The long term impact of Generative AI may well be profound, but today there is no consensus on how soon or how dramatically it will impact the practice of law. The survey respondents suggests a pessimistic future for law librarians and knowledge professionals. I have heard it all before. For the past 20 years the end of law librarians was immanent and yet for those 20 years we have been at the forefront of introducing new technologies that eliminated some traditional work and made room for us to climb the value ladder…. analytics, insights, APIs….New roles in support of Generative AI testing are already obvious.

Librarians Invented Prompt Engineering One of the key challenges to using Generative AI is learning how to construct the right query to generate the best result. Well law libraries are already “prompt” experts. Their skills reach back to the early days of “dot command” platforms that practically required a programming language to extract research results. Prompt Engineering sounds a lot less demanding than the technologies we mastered in the past.

The Chief Query Officer In 2013, I predicted the rise of a role I called “The Chief Query Officer” writing that “In a Big Data world, advantage will be  gained by asking better questions….In a Big Data world, every firm will be striving to be one question ahead of the competition……..And it will need to be the right question!” Librarians have mastered the “art of the Query.”.. step aside…

Key Findings of The Wolters Kluwer ATL Survey:

Continue Reading Another AI Survey– Another Cliché about the End of Librarians — But I See the Rise of The Chief Query Officer!

This coming Sunday I will participating in a panel at the American Association of Law Libraries Meeting and Conference in Boston. “Exploring the Opportunities & Risks of Generative AI” is sponsored by Wolters Kluwer. Ken Crutchfield, of Wolters Kluwer will moderate the panel which includes Vishal Agnihotri , of Alston & Bird and Courtney Toiaivao of Holland & Knight.

When::11:30AM on Sunday July 16th, 2023

Where: Hynes Convention Center Room 208 across from the Exhibit Hall

Here is the Program description:

The panel will explore the opportunities and risks surrounding ChatGPT for legal including current views on Generative AI. Legal professionals must prepare for an eventual future that includes ChatGPT-like products being used within the industry. Librarians and Knowledge Management professionals need to be aware of the potential applications, the potential downsides, and possible safeguards to consider when using these products. The promise of AI includes boosting productivity and automating tasks including the drafting of documents. The panelists will discuss issues and ideas that can help librarians and knowledge management professionals contribute to the conversation within their organizations. The session will help with preparing for the inevitability of AI’s use in law firms and even the practice of law. AI is progressing at an incredibly fast pace, and this panel’s audience will be better prepared for the brave new world of Generative AI in the legal industry.

Thomson Reuters’  deal to purchase  Casetext has driven the legal tech hype cycle to a fever pitch. Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of Casetext. I have been an admirer for over a decade. More than once, I have watched them not just beat the market, but redirect the market and invent whole new categories of legal research products. I have spent a lot of time over the past few years musing about innovation,  new product categories and market advantage.

When Casetext created the “brief analysis” tool CARA, it was three years before even one of the largest legal information companies launched a brief analyzer and it was four years before all three,; Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and Bloomberg Law, had a brief analyzer on the market.

Note: vLex (Fastcase) launched the Vincent “brief checker” in the international market in 2018., two years after the launch of CARA. The above graphic was focused on the U. S. market.

Similarly, with Compose, Casetext introduced “parallel search” and a new category of concept searching was born. Or as Casetext co-founder Pablo Arredondo likes to exclaim “parallel search freed lawyers from the prison of the keyword.” This time The market responded in less than two years. LexisNexis launched “Fact and issue Finder” which leveraged extractive AI technology built on a highly tailored version of Google’s BERT to present insights to researchers.   Westlaw responded with Westlaw Precision built with a large editorial team to help with machine learning. The response time in the market is growing shorter.

Industry Insiders’ Perspectives I have spoken to several legal tech industry insiders and the consensus seems to be that within 6  to 12 months, Thomson Reuters’ competitors Lexis, Bloomberg Law, and vLex (formerly Fastcase)  are likely to have developed capabilities which can compete with CoCounsel. No one is starting from scratch. According to Ed Walters, Chief Strategy Officer at vLex, “we already have global AI products in the labs. We don’t release vaporware, but these products are coming no matter who owns Casetext.”

Continue Reading Thomson Reuters $650M Bet on Casetext CoCounsel. Did They Buy Market Dominance or Just Time?

In the oddest of “odd couplings” Casetext which just celebrated their 10th anniversary is being acquired by Thomson Reuters. for more than $650M. Congrats to Casetext Co-Founders Jake Heller, Pablo Arredondo and Laura Safdie.

Here is the press release from Thomson Reuters.

TORONTO, June 26, 2023 –Thomson Reuters Corporation (“Thomson Reuters”) (NYSE / TSX: TRI), a global content and technology company, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Casetext, a California-based provider of technology for legal professionals, for $650 million cash.

The proposed transaction will complement Thomson Reuters existing AI roadmap and builds on its recent initiatives, including a commitment to invest more than $100 million annually on AI capabilities, the development of new generative AI experiences across its product suite, as well as a new plugin with Microsoft and Microsoft 365 Copilot for legal professionals.

Founded in 2013, Casetext uses advanced AI and machine learning to build technology for legal professionals, creating solutions that help them work more efficiently and provide higher-quality representation to more clients. Casetext employs 104 employees, and its customers include more than 10,000 law firms and corporate legal departments. 

Casetext was granted early access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, allowing it to develop solutions with the new technology and refine use cases for legal professionals. Its key products include CoCounsel, an AI legal assistant launched in 2023 and powered by GPT-4 that delivers document review, legal research memos, deposition preparation, and contract analysis in minutes.  

“The acquisition of Casetext is another step in our ‘build, partner and buy’ strategy to bring generative AI solutions to our customers,” said Steve Hasker, president and CEO of Thomson Reuters. “We believe that Casetext will accelerate and expand our market potential for these offerings – revolutionizing the way professionals work, and the work they do.”

“For the last ten years, we have harnessed the power of AI to build products that elevate the practice of law and enable attorneys to serve more people’s legal needs, with the ultimate goal of increasing access to justice,” said Jake Heller, CEO of Casetext. “Joining Thomson Reuters is an incredible opportunity to advance our mission and the field of generative AI solutions exponentially, not only for lawyers but across professions, ensuring this revolutionary technology can benefit as many people as possible.”

Closing of the transaction is subject to specified regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions and is anticipated to occur in the second half of 2023.

Thomson Reuters will hold a conference call to discuss additional details related to the proposed transaction on Tuesday, June 27 at 9:00 AM EDT. A live webcast of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of www.thomsonreuters.com.

LexisNexis® Legal & Professional is  announcing new document analysis tools  for transactional lawyers. space. The feature which is called “Agreement Analysis,” will streamline the manual tasks that accompany researching, negotiating, and finalizing transactional agreements.  The product currently supports M&A transactions, including merger, stock purchase and asset purchase agreements, with more transactions coming in future releases.

Agreement Analysis uses AI to extract and recommend alternate clause language from seven million clauses publicly filed in SEC EDGAR documents, and from Practical Guidance sample clauses, templates and agreements. The feature allows a lawyer to drag and drop their document into the Agreement Analysis tool. The tools focuses on “highly negotiated clauses” and quickly compares and offers alternate language for clauses in their document. Lawyers have direct access to the drafting guidance and insights from  Lexis Practical Guidance and benchmarking data points from their Market Standards tool.

Lexis Nexis Agreement Analysis Dashboard
Continue Reading LexisNexis Adds Extractive AI Deal Analysis Tool to Lexis+

Today ECFX announced that they had raised $7M in funding to expand their court notice management platform. Investors include Growth Street Partners, The Legal Tech Fund. Cove Fund as well as other investors. ECFX was founded in 2019 by attorneys Dan O’Day and Nelson Quintero. Their system is designed to streamline and automate the processing, distribution and internal filing of state and federal ECF notices received by law firms and in -house counsel offices. The system is designed to reduce risk of missed deadlines as well as repetitive administrative work associated with court notices. I routinely harp on the importance of vendors providing ROI tools. ECFX offers a free ROI calculator on their website to help customers and potential customers calculate the potential savings associated with streamlining the court notice workflow.

Here is the full press release:

Continue Reading ECFX Court Alerts Platform Raises $7M

Even lawyers who have been the most ardent print advocates have loosened their grip on their favorite treatises and deskbooks. The pandemic-enforced remote work environment drove most print holdouts to online resources. In 2023 many law firm libraries are completely digital while others have shifted significant amounts of their budgets from print to digital.

Although the large enterprise platforms such as Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law represent a significant portion of most budgets, library directors and knowledge managers also manage dozens and sometimes hundreds of other digital licenses. There has been a proliferation of specialty products targeting specific practice areas or workflows from topics as diverse as credit default swaps, social media monitoring, and predictive litigation analytics. The acquisition and management of these specialty products involves a different kind of licensing analysis, even though many issues may be similar to the large platform licensing issues.

If you are new to the world of digital resource licensing, this checklist will highlight some of the key issues to address when reviewing a license. The first thing you need to understand is that most license agreements are one-sided in favor of the vendor. All the liabilities and risks are on the purchaser. That is why it is so important for you to understand the risks and opportunities associated with digital licensing.

The ground rules. If you are new to your organization, there are several issues that should be addressed in advance. Identify the standard practices and procedures in your firm for procurement, contract review, and security review.

Work with your procurement team. If your firm has a procurement team, you should still be involved in the licensing process. The procurement team needs to understand how the product will be used and who will need to have access. If there is no procurement team, there may be a designated contract attorney who reviews the contracts for the law firm. Develop a collaborative relationship with those professionals. They can be important allies in the process.

Security. Determine if your firm has a specific security review process for vendors. Security compliance can be a complete deal killer. Many firms now require vendors to answer security compliance questionnaires and to disclose their security standards in advance of any trial or contract. Security issues should be addressed in advance of the licensing process. Confirm that the vendor is willing to provide security documentation.

Common Licensing Issues. Below are a sampling of licensing issues that should be considered for all types of digital licenses but are particularly important when assessing a niche product with a limited license. Read the full post at LegalTech Hub

Continue Reading Checklist for the Negotiation of Digital Subscriptions – Budget Control and Risk Management Strategies