SALI Releases LMSS 2.0 A Powertool Driving Legal Market Analysis and Insights

By Jean O'Grady on March 7, 2022

Today the Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance announced the official release of Legal Matter Specifications Standard LMSS 2.0. The enhancement expands the taxonomy to almost 10,000 categories or tags which provide a granular analysis of legal market services. As firms ramp up their Business Intelligence activities the SALI tags can be a powerful tool for pricing and competitive insights.

“LMSS 2.0 is, quite simply, innovation in the legal industry at its finest. It is the culmination of countless hours generously volunteered by professionals in law firms, technology companies, service providers, educational institutions, and clients in different roles, pursuing the same vision,” notes Toby Brown, co-founder of The SALI Alliance and Chief Practice Management Officer at Perkins Coie. “A common language for the legal industry is powerful for all of these parties, from legal operations to business development, pricing, knowledge management, and overall law firm business operations. Standardized data is critical to all of these efforts.”

Congratulations to all the professionals and organizations which devoted time to this initiative which will benefit the entire legal market around the globe.

Here is the full press release:

Continue Reading SALI Releases LMSS 2.0 A Powertool Driving Legal Market Analysis and Insights

Fastcase Docket Alarm Adds Visual Timelines and AI Enabled Motion Grant Analytics

By Jean O'Grady on March 7, 2022

Today Docket Alarm by Fastcase is announcing some major new features including pleading/motion grant analytics and visual timelines. These new features are powered by the Judicata ‘s AI technology to enhance Docket Alarm’s native document repository with pleading tags and the tags from the SALI Open Data Standards. The press release boldly described the new features are marking the “end of it depends.” They are presumably referring to one of the standard waffling responses lawyers are forced to give clients when they are asked to predict the timing and outcomes of motions.

I knew something interesting was bound to come from the Fastcase acquisition of Judicata in 2020. Judicata was a truly visionary platform invented by Itai Gurari and driven by the bold vision of mapping the “legal genome.” Judicata once published a survey “grading” the quality of briefs submitted by leading California law firms. You just gotta’ love geeky lawyers who are always pushing the envelope.

The practical impact is that the upgrades will provide insights on both he likelihood of winning a motion and time to motion grant across all federal courts.

I talked with Damien Riehl, VP, Litigation Workflow and Analytics Content who provided walkthrough of the product.

The new features allow lawyers to can interactively generate the odds of winning a motion in all federal courts, in a specific court, before specific judge, or a specific matter. Timelines for motion grant or denial can also be generated for courts and judges for specific matter types. Riehl stated that feedback from customers indicated “that Docket Alarm’s API is far more powerful than our competitors, permitting Docket Alarm users to create more-complex and more-useful queries.”

Split decisions. One of the features I like most is seeing how they attack the gnarly problem of split decisions. Where there is a partial grant. The outcome of a motion is signaled by color: grant is green, denial is red and partial is orange..

Enhancing Nature of Suit. It is well known that there are limitations in the federal nature of suit (NOS) codes. DocketAlarm is overcoming these limitations by including the 10,000 SALI data points. According to Riehl, an API query results in 99% precision. They are still working on optimized their recall precision. This is in the roadmap for 2022.

Docket Alarm Search and Analysis Options

Fastcase has always embraced a “have it your way philosophy” and APIs are designed to deliver exportable, embeddable and filterable data points. Analytics can be displayed as interactive graphs histograms and tables.

The details of the new features are outlined in the press release:

The new analytics package encompasses more than 11 million “Pleading Tags” across the Federal Judiciary, helping data-driven litigators answer questions such as “How likely is my motion to be granted?” “How long will it take?” “How are the chances different compared to a different district or with a different judge?” Analytics are exportable, embeddable, and filterable by case type, jurisdiction, judge, party and more. Analytics are displayed as interactive graphs, histograms, and tables.

Accompanying analytics include new search-by-motion and search-by-outcome features, allowing attorneys to quickly find high quality winning motions selected from a list of over 200 hand-picked Pleading Tags, filtered by jurisdiction, case type, and judge. Litigators can now easily discover and find winning motions with the same claims, judges, and parties.

The case timeline tool quickly and intuitively summarizes and filters cases into an interactive timeline display. This barrier-breaking visualization makes the review of litigation dockets less time-consuming, especially for complex cases with hundreds or thousands of docket entries. Docket Alarm’s timeline distills complex cases into a visualization of the most important litigation events, with integrated search and analytics tools.

Attendees at Legalweek can see an exclusive preview and learn more about the new features by visiting the Fastcase-Docket Alarm booth in the exhibit hall or by visiting https://go.fastcase.com/Beyondresearch.

For more information, visit https://www.docketalarm.com/welcome/pleading-tags or contact sales@docketalarm.com.

Please Take this Brief Survey on Customer Service and Support in Legal Information and Tech Market

By Jean O'Grady on March 7, 2022

In preparation for my Vendor Relationship session at the upcoming ARK Law Libraries conference in New York on March 2 1-22n , I have developed a brief survey on customer service issues in the legal research and technology market. The survey will take 4 minutes and includes 5 question. I invite my readers who regularly interact with vendors for procurement and support issues to provide feedback for the survey

Here is a link to the survey.

The survey will close at midnight est. on Friday March 11th. Thanks in advance for your participation. The results will be highlighted at the ARK conference and reported here at the end of March.

Ukraine Special Alert – LexisNexis Releases Rule of Law, Human Rights, News and Sanctions Information

By Jean O'Grady on March 6, 2022

Mike Walsh the CEO of LexisNexis has posted lengthy and moving message LexisNexis Stands with the People of the Ukraine. on the LexisNexis website.

Here is a highlight: “The war in Ukraine is a clear violation of international law and the rule of law. Many of our products, solutions, and efforts through the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation are focused on helping citizens and strengthening legal infrastructures in the Ukraine and around the world.”

Here are the LexisNexis commercial and pro bono initiatives addressing the Ukrainian crisis:

Nexis Diligence is providing updated sanctions data to our customers so they can stay informed, take ethical action, and protect their business
Law360 is providing free access to their coverage of the War in Ukraine
Through the first-of-its-kind LexisNexis Rule of Law Monitor, we’re continuously tracking public sentiment on the rule of law in 170 countries to create greater worldwide transparency and raise real-time awareness of rule of law issues. LexisNexis Ukrainian tracking has found that most of the world’s population (67%) now disapprove of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This rises to 76% of the world’s population outside of Asia. Even in Russia, our tracking finds that less than half of the Russian population approve of their country’s military action in the Ukraine
The eyeWitness to Atrocities App is a free mobile app that’s enabling Ukrainian citizens to document potential evidence of war crimes using their smartphones
We are helping the Ukraine Advice Project UK, which provides free UK immigration and asylum advice for Ukrainians and their families from qualified lawyers by ensuring that materials used by their volunteer lawyers are up to date and accurate
The Human RightsApp, developed by LexisNexis and the Australian Human Rights Commission, is a free mobile app providing access to all international human rights law instruments. It’s searchable by theme and instrument name to support individuals in understanding their rights
LexisNexis and the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation are joining together with the International Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the Union Internationale de Avocats to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine
Across the globe, we’re providing our customers with up-to-the-minute information and practical guidance on immigration law, cybersecurity preparedness, news analysis on the impact of the conflict on financial transactions, impacts of Russian sanctions on risk, compliance, and international arbitration, as well as tools and content to support contracts with suppliers in the region

Ukraine Special Alert: ALM and Thomson Reuter Offer Free Ukraine Resources for Legal Professionals

By Jean O'Grady on March 5, 2022

On Friday, I learned about two major legal publishers who are posting Ukraine related content outside their paywalls. ALM is offering a “special report hub” on Law.com, which provide ongoing international coverage related to the war in Ukraine in and it implications for the legal industry. Thomson Reuters is tracking Russian embargo regulations on their Practical Law platform in a Russia Sanctions and Related Considerations Toolkit,

American Lawyer Media: Special Report Hub

Gina Passarela, Editor-in-Chief, Global Legal Brands (The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, The National Law Journal, Law.com International, China Law & Practice) provided the following statement:

“ALM has created a special report hub to house all of its continuing coverage related to the war in Ukraine and its implications for the legal industry. This content, led by our global team of reporters at Law.com International and leveraging our reporting team from ALM’s legal, insurance, financial and Continue Reading Ukraine Special Alert: ALM and Thomson Reuter Offer Free Ukraine Resources for Legal Professionals

Join Me at Ark Law Libraries 2022 Live in New York City March 21-22

By Jean O'Grady on March 3, 2022

The ARK Law Libraries Conference is back in New York and Live for the first time in three years. I will be moderating a panel discussion: Navigating Vendor Relationships: What will Technology Customer Support Look Like in Ten Years? Panel includes, Krista Ford, Steptoe & Johnson, PLLC; Jill Strand, Fish & Richardson and Monica Deal, VP of Global Customer Success, LexisNexis. Are vendors customer support models failing? Are products becoming too complex for vendors to support properly? Is there a customer support bot in your future? What are the challenges facing librarians who support hundreds of sophisticated research products? What are challenges facing vendors in our 24X7 global work environment?

Participate in my Survey. Next week I will be posting a brief survey about customer service issues in which you can provide feedback.

The two days will cover a wide range of topics including; the great resignation, talent retention; competitive intelligence, APIs for data integration; hybrid work environments, digital transformation and the librarian’s role in client retention.

View the full agenda here.

Wolters Kluwer Names Atul Dubey Successor to Dean Sonderegger as Head of Legal & Regulatory U.S.

By Jean O'Grady on February 16, 2022

Several weeks ago I was saddened to learn that Dean Sonderegger was recently named Senior Vice President & General Manager, Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Canada and Research & Learning U.S. Sonderegger will be a hard act to follow. During his tenure at Legal & Regulatory he drove efforts to enhance the premium practice content by embedding workflow and insight solutions. He orchestrated the sunsetting of Intelliconnect so that WK could focus its talent and energy on Innovation in the Cheetah (now VitalLaw) platform which replaced it. He drove initiatives developing new tools for drafting, analytics and insights and explored alignments with a variety of innovative legal tech companies. An alliance with KM Standards resulted in the launch of M & A Analytics. He also drove the integration of Capital Markets data into RBSource. Sonderegger raised Wolters Klwuer’s profile as a player in the legal tech market and was a regular commentator and panelist at National events such as Legal Tech, ILTA and the AALL Annual Conference.

Welcome Atul Dubey. Before joining Wolters Kluwer, Dubey focused on expanding businesses in the fintech space with leadership roles at S&P Global and Citigroup. Let’s hope he can engage with the law librarian and KM community at the AALL Annual Meeting in Denver. I can’t think of a better place to soak up the expertise and perspectives of the legal information community.

Here is the press release from Wolters Kluwer:

Continue Reading Wolters Kluwer Names Atul Dubey Successor to Dean Sonderegger as Head of Legal & Regulatory U.S.

Reuters Legal News – No Paywall! No Onepass! Customizable Legal News

By Jean O'Grady on February 10, 2022

Several months ago there was a “soft” release of a new legal industry news product–Reuters Legal News (RLN). Today Thomson Reuters released several new features enabling lawyers and legal business professionals to create a customizable reading and alerting experience. Reuters which employs 2,500 journalists around the globe, now has a team dedicated to writing, curating and tagging legal news so it can be easily customized for the busy lawyer. The RLN content is organized into four broad categories: Litigation, Transactional, Government and Legal Industry. There is a columnist dedicated to each of the four categories of legal news. In addition to news from Reuters, the site includes selected content from Westlaw Today, The Thomson Reuters Institute, and Practical Law Updates.

Account Setup. Accounts can be set up on the desktop at www.reuters.com/legal or by downloading an ios or adroid app on your Continue Reading Reuters Legal News – No Paywall! No Onepass! Customizable Legal News

Law360 Pulse Releases Law Firm Leaderboard Rankings

By Jean O'Grady on January 27, 2022

Earlier this week, Law360 Pulse released its inaugural Law360 Leaderboard law firm ranking. This completes a trifecta of new surveys developed by Law360 over the past year. The most recent survey highlights what the editors have defined as “well-rounded firms.” The new metric purports to identify firms that excel across a broad range of criteria such as culture, reputation, and business practice.

The Leaderboard combines the scores from the previously released rankings for Social Impact and Prestige. The new score is based on the Practice Footprint law firms have made in the litigation and transactional spaces over a three-year period. Law360 leverage data from Lexis Nexis sister companies Intelligize and Lex Machina. Intelligize data was used to define the size of completed public M&A and registered offering deals. Lex Machina data provided the metrics for Federal Continue Reading Law360 Pulse Releases Law Firm Leaderboard Rankings

Dewey B Strategic Top Posts 2021

By Jean O'Grady on January 13, 2022

Better late than never. Here is my retrospective of top 2021 Dewey B Strategic posts. The top stories reflect a wide swath of issues including rebranding, mergers, innovation, service disruptions, product realignments, launches, workflow and analytics. In looking at the list I am shocked to see that there is no reference at all to COVID-19. How quickly the most disruptive force in decades transformed into an environmental “white noise” – pervasive and inescapable but not generating the surge of research innovation and work-arounds that characterized 2020.. Somehow we all “kept calm and carried on.”