On Monday night Bloomberg Law hosted a “semi-secret” preview of their still to be named “brief analyzer.” I will cut to the chase and recommend “B Brief”  as a name for the analysis tool.  After all,  the point of a brief analyzer is to make lawyers more efficient. The product is expected to be released  as a beta test in September and  to launch by the end of the year – depending on feedback from the beta testers. Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda and his executive team held an event in a “speak easy” style restaurant on Blagden Ally in the hipster heart of DC. A select group of librarian and tech journalist invitees received a mysterious key in a rather MI-5 invitation several weeks before the AALL Annual Meeting and Conference. In a darkened back room, the invitees received a preview of the “brief analyzer” product and were invited to give feedback.

Like other brief analyzers the process is launched by dropping and dragging a document into the analyzer tool. The tool extracts and analyses the citations, text and concepts in the document.

Bloomberg’s product demo focused on the workflow for analyzing an opponent’s brief rather than the process for finalizing a brief that is being drafted. Most of Bloomberg’s competitor’s in this space have launched their products focusing on the brief drafting process, the analysis of an adversary’s brief was included as an additional use case.

The bottom line is that for either process, the analyzer tool is designed to speed up the review process and help lawyers focus on the most important Continue Reading Bloomberg Law Joins the Brief Analyser Party – With A Touch Of Intrigue

Today Thomson Reuters is announcing the release of a new AI enabled enhancement for WESTLAW Edge. Quick Check enables a lawyer to “drop and drag” a brief or motion into the Quick Check AI portal and retrieve a thorough analysis of the cited or missing authority. The Quick Check process takes one minute on average. Michael Dahn, SVP Product Management, Carol Jo Lechtenberg, Westlaw Product Management and T0nya Custis, Sr. Director Research Center for AI and Cognitive Computing hosted a webinar demonstration earlier this week for members of the legal press which I attended.

Quick Check use cases include:  Updating an old brief, quality checking a  working draft and  performing final check before submitting a brief to a court. Lawyers can also examine  an opponent’s brief and Continue Reading Thomson Reuters Launches Westlaw Edge Quick Check Raising the Bar for A.I. DrivenBrief and Citation Insights

Today Fastcase is announcing their intention to relaunch Law Street Media  at the end of 2019. Toward that end they have announced the creation of an advisory board. (Disclosure: I will be a member of that board.) For more than a decade LexisNexis has dominated the legal news market. Nexis was always a strong news product then they achieved a near monopoly through acquisitions and alliances (Law360, ALM, Wall Street Journal, MLex, Newsdesk). The legal market could clearly benefit from having more legal news options. Bloomberg Law and Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory have recently signaled their intent to enhance their legal news offerings.

“The legal information news industry has evolved from case decisions to docket alerts, decisions and analytics,” said Fastcase Chief Operating Officer Steve Errick. “Law Street Media will be must-have legal news that directly helps law firms to drive new business across emerging industry practice groups.

News Powered by Analytics. according to the press release “Law Street Media will connect the news platform to its Docket Alarm and Fastcase legal research platform, build out its reporter team, and work with its state bar partners to showcase their local expertise. Fastcase founder Ed Walters, himself a former journalist, has been working to re-tool the Law Street Media platform and business model.”

The inaugural Law Street Media advisory board includes some legal news disruptors and  pioneers such as Bob Ambrogi of LawSites, David Lat, Founder of Above the Law, and Kevin O’Keefe, Founder, LexBlog.

Here is the Full  Roster of the Inaugural Law Street Media Board

  • John Jenkins, Founder, Law Street Media
    Bob Ambrogi, LexBlog and LawSites
    Jean O’Grady, Founder, Dewey B. Strategic
    Kevin O’Keefe, Founder, LexBlog
    David Lat, Founder, Above the Law
    Michael Sander, Founder, Docket Alarm
    Kevin Vermeulen, Partner and COO, Good2bSocial
    Ed Walters, CEO, Fastcase

Law Street Media will connect the news platform to its Docket Alarm and Fastcase legal research platform, build out its reporter team, and work with its state bar partners to showcase their local expertise. Fastcase founder Ed Walters, himself a former journalist, has been working to re-tool the Law Street Media platform and business model.

Fastcase Announces Law Street Media Q4 Re-Launch, News Leader and Inaugural Advisory Board
“News Leads to Business” Platform to Drive Client Development and Industry Alerts

Washington, DC (July 11, 2019) – Legal publisher Fastcase has announced its plans for the relaunch of Law Street Media in the fourth quarter of 2019, as well as its leadership team and inaugural advisory board. The company is developing the new platform around state and federal litigation news and alerting services tied to emerging industries. News content will be free, while additional alerting and tracking tools will be available by subscription for subscribers of Fastcase or Docket Alarm.

“The legal information news industry has evolved from case decisions to docket alerts, decisions and analytics,” said Fastcase Chief Operating Officer Steve Errick. “Law Street Media will be must-have legal news that directly helps law firms to drive new business across emerging industry practice groups.”

Law Street Media will relaunch later this year under the leadership of former Docket Alarm Product Manager David Nayer, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and former Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Law Weekly newspaper. David’s background and training in docket analytics puts him in a unique position to build out the vision behind Law Street.

“There are so many fantastic general news services in the market today. Our vision for Law Street is focused: legal news that can help law firms get business,” Nayer said. “We want to deliver news that is not only engaging but goes beyond the story to help attorneys expand their business. With Docket Alarm, firms can immediately track clients of interest to them, and Law Street will supplement case tracking with news content targeted toward their particular industry or practice area,” he added. “News may be a commodity, but in law firms, finding out news about a client first is everything.”

Joining in the relaunch of Law Street Media is a board of advisers to help ensure Law Street Media meets its mission of “news leads to business” by including industry and segment experts who understand the value of news and alerts in driving business.

Inaugural Law Street Media Board

John Jenkins, Founder, Law Street Media
Bob Ambrogi, LexBlog and LawSites
Jean O’Grady, Founder, Dewey B. Strategic
Kevin O’Keefe, Founder, LexBlog
David Lat, Founder, Above the Law
Michael Sander, Founder, Docket Alarm
Kevin Vermeulen, Partner and COO, Good2bSocial
Ed Walters, CEO, Fastcase

Law Street Media will connect the news platform to its Docket Alarm and Fastcase legal research platform, build out its reporter team, and work with its state bar partners to showcase their local expertise. Fastcase founder Ed Walters, himself a former journalist, has been working to re-tool the Law Street Media platform and business model.

“Traditional news reporting has been in retreat for years,” Walters said, “and Fastcase prizes itself in running against the tide. When the world overcorrects, we see market opportunities. The key is to create a new business model that supports sustainable legal journalism in the 21st Century. The expertise of our advisory board gives me great confidence that we can chart a new course.”

###

About Fastcase
As the smarter alternative for legal research, Fastcase democratizes the law, making it more accessible to more people. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy users sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling the re-sorting of results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 900,000 subscribers from around the world. Fastcase is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, follow Fastcase on Twitter at @Fastcase, or visit www.fastcase.com.

About Law Street Media
Law Street Media is a free web-based platform covering law and public policy. It was founded as a way to provide a single essential resource to law students and young professionals in the rapidly evolving legal industry. Law Street’s Founder and CEO is journalist and author John A. Jenkins, formerly President and Publisher of CQ Press. Law Street Media served millions of online visitors and located its editorial office in Washington D.C., with business operations in New York City. For more information about Law Street Media, visit LawStreetMedia.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Several weeks ago Joe Breda, President of Bloomberg Law sent a communication to Bloomberg Law customers promising a new pricing strategy. Here in the key text from the document:

“Our migration to a single platform has meant price adjustments for some customers. In response, we are recommitting to transparency and predictability in pricing.  Our long-term vision is a fair price that’s consistent with the marketplace and representative of the value Bloomberg Law brings to your practice or business.” (The complete message is included at the bottom of this post.)

I had a conversation with Breda in which he explained that although Bloomberg will no longer sell Practice Centers, customers can get access to practice related content by purchasing  as many seats as are required by any practice Continue Reading Bloomberg Law Returns to Predictable Pricing Model – Enhances Customer Cost Management

Next Sunday July 14th,  I will be moderating a Hot Topic: Embracing Sustainable Innovation Initiatives to Build a Future-Focused Library.   panel (11:30am in Washington, DC at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual  Meeting and Conference. Ron Friedmann, (LAC), Marlene Gebauer (Greenberg Traurig) and Darrin Fox (University of Oklahoma) will be discussing the both the survey results and real life sustainable innovation initiatives.

Several weeks ago Ron and I posted the survey questionnaire on our blogs. We received eighty responses. Today Ron posted a thorough  analysis of the  innovation survey results on Prism Legal.

Aspiration or Actuality  Below is a chart which illustrates one of the key insights from the survey. Many law firms, corporations, law schools and government agencies aspire to engage in innovation. However few devote the money, staff and high level support which would be required to move innovation from aspiration to actuality.

Barriers to Legal Innovation

To read more about survey results visit Prism Legal.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the survey.

 

 

Each year AALL welcomes new exhibitors seeking to reach the decision-makers in law libraries and information centers.  The current powerful generation  of tools in the legal  market often offer multiple features so the products are sometimes not easy to categorize. I have taken the liberty of characterizing each new exhibitor by a single label –although you will see in some cases the products offer features that fall into two categories.  You will have to get the full picture of each product yourself by visiting the exhibit hall at AALL’s Annual  Meeting and Conference in Washington DC July 13-16th.

Here are the new vendors you can meet with in DC.

Analytics

Blue J Legal offers fact specific analytics and predictions. Current modules include Canadian and US tax predictive analytics, employment and human resources. In a nutshell: the product uses Analytics, AI machine learning to predict outcomes and provides a confidence score. According to the website – the product will “continue to learn.”

Gavelytics  started out offering  trial court analytics across California. The product which describes itself as buit by lawyers for lawyers offers analytics about judges workload, peremptory challenges, and a unique feature called a gavel-score. They also offer judges profiles. Over the past year they have expanded into several new states across the US.

Loom Analytics is a Canadian data analytics company that builds SaaS platforms for law firms and corporate legal departments.  Its products include the award winning Court Analytics platform, that provides quantitative outcomes for Canadian courts, and Structura, a data analytics platform for our clients to assess risk and anticipate outcomes for their own matters based on historical trends.

Current  Awareness, Compliance and Insights

Reorg Research  

Reorg Research is already known to many  law firm librarians for providing daily bankruptcy docket alerts. Next week they will be debuting a new “attorneys fees” feature. Reorg’s new Attorneys’ Fees Database uses machine learning to extract billing rates from final fee applications from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, and then creates visualizations of those rates. Reorg subscribers will be able to quickly and easily search this database and filter by firm, jurisdiction, practice area and role to benchmark themselves against their peers and prepare for client pitches.

Golden Arrow Alerts  Spoiler Alert – Golden Arrow is the only only product I know of which was designed and launched by an AALL Member. Martin Korn will be attending this year’s AALL as both a member and an exhibitor.

No surprise — Martin’s law firm experience inspired him to design a product which offers to improve  a law firm’s  bottom line.  The product provides a daily list of  new complaints filed against a wide array of businesses on regulatory issues. In addition to daily alerts, Golden Arrow also offers an added data file for those innovative subscribers who use that data to track and manage the filings and dockets of the agencies in which they practice.  The data files also allow subscribers the chance to automate their business development process by matching party names with client lists.

State and Federal Compliance The iComply product helps law firms, lobbyists and corporations comply  with and report on  lobbying, procurement and political contribution laws.

Information Management

Soutron Global offers Library, archive, digital asset management and a skills database.

NMS Imaging “has a “best of breed” philosophy towards solution partners.  Our in-house engineers and technical staff are experts in all our offerings.  Below are the companies whose products make up our tailored solutions. ”

Legal Education

Themis Bar If only there was something like this in 1986 when I was studying for the NYS bar. Back then bar prep involved sitting in an overcrowded amphitheater getting hand cramp from speed-writing legal Mnemonics in a live nightly bar review lecture. “Themis’s online learning platform provides you with the resources you need to study effectively, ensuring you complete as much coursework as possible. We offer insightful Performance Analytics so you can gauge how you stack up to other students by question, subject matter, and overall performance.”

Hope to see you next week in the Exhibit Hall.

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. continues to expand suite of securities law and workflow products with today’s launch of Capital Markets Clause Analytics. Similar to the M&A Clause Analytics which they launched in 201?, CAPA offers a workflow solution that leverages artificial intelligence and expert human curation. CAPA is the latest addition to Wolters Kluwer’s Transactional Law Suite for Securities, promises to bring new efficiencies to capital markets document drafting workflow. The tool enhanced both knowledge management and competitive intelligence efforts. Law firms use COPA to benchmark their own deals and clauses as well as benchmarking the firm against deals and clauses done by specific competitor law firms or the market as a whole. All of the documents have been extensively coded which provides lawyers with powerful tools for to filtering and focusing on specific deal and clause types.

Capital Markets Clause Analytics Home Page

 

The press release quotes Susan Chain, Esq. Portfolio Director for Securities and Banking at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. “As clients continue to aggressively pursue improved cost efficiency and timeliness from legal providers, legal professionals are in need of workflow solutions that address their most critical pain points.We developed Capital Markets Clause Analytics to integrate powerful technology with our domain expertise to transform the Capital Markets drafting process, boost our customers’ productivity and improve their ROI.”


 

Features

Capital Markets Clause Analytics streamlines the Capital Markets drafting and negotiating process for securities law professionals with:
• Custom Model Agreements: Users can create a custom model based on their unique criteria, search across a database of more than one million individual clauses, analyze agreements clause by clause, and compare their findings to their own agreements and clauses;
• Practical Guidance: Expertly prepared practical guidance, such as elements of the clause checklists, drafting considerations, and intent of the clause, are shown alongside individual clauses, enhancing your understanding at the point of need, instantly surfacing drafting risks, and eliminating the potential for costly mistakes; and
• Benchmarking: Users can enhance their efficiency and boost negotiating leverage with statistics and comparisons based on their specific deal criteria. Several comparison tools allow professionals to efficiently benchmark your own agreements and clauses, providing insight of drafting techniques used by specific law firms or industries.

Since there is a frenzied competition in the litigation analytics market it is good to see Wolters Kluwer expanding the use of analytics to provide insights for transactional lawyers.

To learn more about the Capital Markets Clause Analytics and the power of the entire Transactional Law Suite for Securities, visit: https://lrus.wolterskluwer.com/store/transactional-law-suite/

 

 

I was traveling this week, so I will provide a summary of some legal information and technology highlights.

Fastcase and Florida Bar Launch Case Alerts

Fastcase which seems to have a weekly product launch or feature enhancement – did not disappoint this week. On Tuesday they announced that in collaboration with the Florida Bar they had launched Case Alerts, a daily report of court decisions in key practice areas. The subscription-only service introduced Florida Family Law Alerts, a daily e-mail summary of family law decisions from Florida courts. Fastcase and The Florida Bar will roll out new Florida practice areas throughout the summer, including business law, real property, probate, trusts, and tax law alerts. Read more at this link.

Thomson Reuters Added Jurisdictional Surveys to Westlaw Edge

On Monday Thomson Reuters announced the release of Jurisdictional Surveys, The press release describes the features as allowing users to “quickly retrieve a customized and relevant compilation of laws across all U.S. jurisdictions on virtually any topic.”  My first reaction to Thomson Reuters press release on jurisdictional surveys was to wonder how this feature if different from their 50 state survey offering. I plan to have a demo and will report back on what I learn.

Bloomberg Ending UK Court Coverage

A Bloomberg  Law executive  explained  to me that use of the UK materials had declined and that there were legal Continue Reading Weekly Round Up – Fastcase Adds Case Alerts; TR Adds Jurisdictional Surveys; Bloomberg Law Ends UK Coverage; New Exhibitors at AAALL — Innovation Survey!

I will be moderating a hot topic program at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference in Cleveland. The Event is sponsored by Lucidea. Don’t Just Be Integral: Be Aligned.

 

Building on the themes drawn out during last year’s successful Lucidea-sponsored session, “Don’t Just Be Integrated, Be Integral”, we will present the next in our SLA Hot Topics series on special library sustainability, during which we’ll explore what a special librarian’s mission truly is, and why it encompasses even more than skills, experience, services and approach. The path to success and sustainability includes applying your tools and skills in support of the top-level mission and goals—and adapting the library’s services and deliverables so you’re always aligned with what’s most important to senior leadership.

Time: Monday, June 17, 2019. 9:00am – 10:30am

  • How do you prioritize and delegate projects based on alignment?
  • What are some strategies for partnering and leveraging other departments?
  • How do you practice alignment without guilt?

Panelists

  • Moderator: Jean O`Grady, Director of Research and Knowledge Services. DLA Piper
  • Cindy Moon-Barna, Director, CASE Library. C.A.S.E.
  • Karen MQuillen, Executive Director, Connect. ETS
  • Annette L. Demers, Law Librarian. University of Windsor Faculty of Law

The program will be followed by a panelist Q&A in the afternoon.

It seems like only yesterday that Joan Axelroth and I were Co-Chairs of the 2012 PLL Summit themed as “The Road to 2020.”   That year’s Keynote Speaker was Jordan Furlong, a leading legal industry consultant who inspired the audience with a talk entitled  “Climbing the Value Ladder. Rethinking the Law Library on the Road to 2020” 

Keynote: Jordan Furlong

Furlong is back and this years Summit theme is “The Road to 2030.”  In retrospect, many of Furlong’s predictions about the transformation of libraries and the morphing of librarians into a wide spectrum of knowledge and technology roles have materialized. I am looking forward to another inspiring Furlong road map suggesting how we should respond to the changes ahead.

The keynote will highlight how the growing power and sophistication of legal intelligence will dovetail with and help to accelerate the transformation of law firms’ client services and business models. Furlong will describe how law librarians, knowledge engineers, and data analysts will play Continue Reading Registration Closing for PLLIP Summit: The Road to 2030 with Jordon Furlong Keynote and Design Thinking Workshop