Today LexisNexis is releasing results of an independent study commissioned by LexisNexis.  The study was conducted between August and September 2019 and included responses from 5,061 law students at 201 law schools. The survey was  conducted” to better understand  future lawyer attitudes, behaviors and key drivers of user preference in relation to legal research.”Access the full Next-Gen Legal Tech Report  here.

The press release states that the results indicate that Lexis Advance is preferred over Westlaw for legal research.   Since the report did not include a copy of the survey instrument,   I can not tell if Lexis is providing the results of all questions or only selected questions.  In addition, some questions refer to law students, others refer to “new lawyers” so i wonder if I am seeing the results of multiple surveys. I will report on the “preferred platform” results when I receive responses to my questions from Lexis.

In this post I will only be reporting on the results related to the drivers of preference and recommendations

Research Methodology

LexisNexis Legal & Professional commissioned PwC Research, a global center of excellence for primary research and evidence-based consulting services and part of PwC LLP in the UK, to undertake data collection and aggregate results for the LexisNexis study. 83,909 U.S. law students from 201 law schools were invited to participate in the study which ran between August 12, 2019 – September 9, 2019 and from which 5,061 responded.

Drivers of preference:  Ease of Use and finding information quickly are the top two drivers of use.

 

Next Gen Lawyers

  • 76% find analytics helpful for research
  • 77% say visualization tools make it easier to find research results.

 

Law Students Value Analytics. 76% of students said that legal analytics are helpful!

Only yesterday, I participated on a panel discussion on legal analytics. We speculated on how long it would take for lawyers to graduate from law school with an understanding of legal analytics. I am thrilled to see that law students are not only being exposed to analytics in law school but are grasping the value of analytics in practice.

Next-Gen Legal Tech Survey Recommendations

  • Equip attorneys with technology tools they value – so they work faster and smarter.
  • Provide access to training programs for new and established to users to learn new technologies.
  • Embrace the “know how” of they digital natives and look to them to contribute to training programs across the firms

Lexis has been a pioneer in adding a wide variety of visualization tools for legal research. These tools include:  color coding research terms to ease navigation, the predictive legislation “gauge,”  Lex Machina docket analytics charts, and Ravel Context judicial analytics charts. The impact of these research features is reflected in the survey results.

Stay tuned for a follow up post on the platform preferences reported in the tech survey.

Legal organizations spend an estimated $3 billion dollars on technology according to a recent study by Mitretech
Catching the Wave: :Legal Technology Spend at $3 Billion and growing. Driving product adoption remains a challenge across law firms of every size.

Clients demand that law firms focus on knowledge management, analytics and legal project management and there is a burgeoning market of new products to address these needs. An email blast or an offer a free Danish and bagels no longer motivates lawyers to leave their offices and sit through a demo. Product deployment alone does not assure adoption and a return on investment. In order to optimize the adoption of products there are multiple strategies which can be used to drive the adoption and aid in the determination of ROI.

Eliminating the Obstacles to Adoption This step is often overlooked. It is important to recognize at the outset that policies and the technology itself can create obstacles to adoption. Obstacles to adoption include: imposing client charges of use; Continue Reading Best Practices to Drive Lawyer Adoption of Technology

On November 12th  (11 am PST, 2 PM est.)  I will be moderating a discussion on the value of legal analytics in the practice and business of law.   A panel of research experts and thought leaders will discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by the development of legal analytics products. Specific topics will include the  “use cases” for analytics, driving lawyer adoption, success stories and introducing legal analytics into the research librarians toolkit.

The panel is comprised of research experts and thought leaders from ALM 100 firms.

  • Martin Korn, Director of Research and Knowledge Services @Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
  • Michael Saint Onge, Regional Director, Research & Library Services @Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
  • Brian Blaho,  National Manager of Research Services @Reed Smith LLP

Register for the webinar here.

Blue J Legal had a small booth at the American Association of Law Libraries conference in Washington, DC this summer.  Yet… they had one of the most impressive new offerings in the exhibit hall.  Tax Foresight  can predict the likely outcome of a tax controversy with at least 90 percent accuracy.  The product uses AI – specifically “supervised machine learning” to analyze tax law and rulings and accurately predict the treatment of new tax situations.

One of the co-founders Benjamin Alarie, an associate dean at the University of Toronto was asked to judge the 2014 IBM Watson Challenge at the university. The event is  a contest between students and startups to create “commercial implementations for the technology company’s AI-powered super-computer.”

Alarie was intrigued with the possibility of applying AI to tax law. He was joined by co-founders Brett Janssen and Anthony Niblett in creating the first prototype  in 2015. They decided to design a product that was narrowly focused with deep analysis and highly useful to tax practitioners. Blue J’s development team includes law professors, lawyers, data scientists, management consultants, and engineers. In 2017 they launched Tax Foresight for Canadian market which was followed by Employment Foresight and HR Foresight. In 2018 they launched the US version of Tax Foresight.

 

Here is how it works

Input your scenario – Fill out a questionnaire identifying relevant facts of each your legal issue

Run the Analysis – AI analyses all the prior case law and rulings and makes prediction about your scenario.

Support Your Position – Tax Foresight will provide a custom prediction with explanations of the result and cite to the related precedent.

Document and Share – Download the Foresight Prediction reports and share it with colleagues and stakeholders.

Scenario Planning – Tax Foresight allow allows a lawyer to modify the facts and see the likely outcome in a variety of scenarios. Changing the variables allow a lawyer to see which factors are most likely to influence the outcome.

No Black Box Over the years they have expanded and modified the product based on lawyer feedback. Initially the product just provided the prediction without providing explanatory text. It is no surprise to me that tax lawyers wanted to know why they got that answer. So the company built out the features which expose the cases on which the outcome was based.

Supervised Machine Learning.  How does Tax Foresight analyze past rulings and accurately predict the treatment of new tax situations? They are not “boiling the ocean.” They have selected 18 of the most challenging issues facing tax lawyers and accountants including such topics as determining whether an worker is an employee or a contractor. The product is built using a technique referred to supervised machine learning. They have lawyers who read all the documents. Lawyers and data scientist extract factors that go into a case law decision and create structured data. They use an algorithm to predict outcomes within 90% accuracy. Each issue has its own unique algorithm. The product continues to learn as new case law is continuously added and analyzed.

Tax Foresight Features include:

The analysis module allows you to find an outcome based on filters.

Navigate a feature is based on the statute and it brings you to the answer. They also include the last updating date.

Question answer module usually or has about 27 questions focused on the factors that are likely to drive the outcome. Lawyer can skip up to 3 questions and still get a result.

Scenario testing allows lawyers to interact with the Question Answer Module and model a best case scenario and worst case scenario..

Build a memo.  The results appear in a memo format explaining the outcome.

Similar cases feature highlights faces that match your case on the most important factors.

Shareable Documents can be shared out internally downloaded into a configurable PDF there’s always an order trail you can add the firm name to the memo.

Topics – Tax Foresight covers 18 different topics including transfer pricing, worker classification, deductibility of business expenses.

Tax Foresight can be used for both controversy work and tax planning work. Right now they offer analysis of 18 complex tax issues and will add additional issues in the future. Since the word “prediction” has been used somewhat loosely in the legal market to describe products which provide historic trends, I am pleased that there is finally a product which shows us weighted and scored predictions of specific legal scenarios.

If your firm has a tax practice, I recommend giving Tax Foresight a look. You will also have the opportunity to see a sophisticated new approach to AI enabled legal research.

Pricing is based on the size of the tax group.

 

Every vendor I deal with talks a good ROI game. Very few know how to deliver it. Even fewer  have built the delivery of ROI into their sales and pricing strategy. Well I finally found such a company in the legal tech space.  I was

recently introduced to Alex Babin, the Founder and CEO of a company called ZERO. According to Babin  law firms will not be charged for the ZERO product until the product delivers efficiencies (ROI) equal to the cost of the product. He offered the bold promise: “Don’t trust us trust the numbers in your billing system.”

ZERO is an integrated suite of email tools that uses AI to reduce the time spent on some of the most common and mind-numbing tasks that waste valuable lawyer and staff time.  It works in both a desktop and mobile environment. It is an email management solution which was built for lawyers. According to Babin The challenges of mobility and billable time are core to the solution. Due to the lack of automation, most attorneys or their assistants spend hours filing and managing emails. 60% of the secretaries time is spent managing documents according to a case study in  ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine.

According to the ZERO website  “Accurate data categorization, helpful suggestions and predictions, and a personalized approach to automating one’s daily email routine with edge computing became the DNA of ZERØ’s products.”

ZERO offers a suite of smart features that can process thousands of emails with speed and precision.
It employs enterprise grade security on mobile devices and  processes data on the device without moving it to the cloud. AI determines the right DMS destination.  Lawyers  can file emails individually or in batches or completely automatically. Changes in filing can be executed quickly and easily.

Babin highlighted that every feature of ZERO is built around delivering ROI. ZERO is the first email management system designed for attorneys. It took four years to build the technology. They launched at  the  2018 ILTA   Conference and their primary focus has been on marketing to the biggest law firms.

Benefits include

Easy email Compliance. The system uses  AI  to file emails in the DMS.  According to their study it will save each lawyer half an hour a day.

Reverse Billable Time “Leakage.”. Right now there is no easy way to capture time on a mobile device. ZERO creates an automatic narrative. ZERO captures all client related email work done on a mobile device. Billing entries are created automatically for all work including date, client matter, elapsed time and a complete narrative. These entries can be moved directly into the time entry system.

Avoid Misdirected Emails We have all heard the nightmare stories of lawyers inadvertently sending emails to the wrong person and even accidentally emailing confidential emails to journalists. ZERO includes security feature will prevent a lawyer from sending it to the wrong person by flagging suspect recipients and asking for a final confirmation.

ROI Reporting It sends each user an email describing how much time they have saved!

Doing the Math on Savings The ZERO website offers two savings scenarios:

 

  • Law firms can expect to gain significant hard revenue from ZERØ. A law firm with 1,000 attorneys and a blended billable rate of $300/hour can increase billing by $93,960,000 per year per lawyer (assuming 261 working days) by ensuring that all attorney time spent emailing from a mobile device in captured. In other words, this hypothetical law firm is currently leaving $93,960 of revenue per lawyer on the table.
  • Law firms can also save a substantial amount of money on cost avoidance. This same hypothetical law firm saves a total of $78.3 million per year in non-billable labor hours by having the administrative task of mobile time capture automated.

ZERO has a video explaining how they deliver ROI at this link

Getting to Yes With ROI For several years I have been harping on ROI  and pleading with the vendors of research and workflow platforms to deliver ROI data. Maybe it is time to up the ante and ask them to consider the new model offered by ZERO – the vendor shows them the money in product savings as an assurance that ROI will be delivered. There is no easier way to ‘get to ‘yes’” in a law firm procurement negotiation than to promise savings which exceeds the price.  This is a “no brainier.” ZERO has developed not only an incredibly interesting product but a potentially game changing ROI delivery method.

Want More information on Zero? ILTA will be hosting a ZERO Product Briefing webinar on November 8th. More information at this link.

 

Fastcase is at it again…building alliances that drive content and functionality.

Today Docket Alarm a customizable analytics and docket platform is announcing a a new calendaring feature from Calendar Rules. This new features is being announced at the National Docketing Association’s Annual Conference in Denver, Co..

The CalendarRules feature is integrated into the DocketAlarm research platform and links with a library of court rules and automatically calculates any deadline. Subscribers of Docket Alarm now have these new features available immediately:

  • Track cases with lightning fast updates, whether or not your firm has made a notice of appearance; 
  • Search through the full text of entire case records to find documents in your own or related cases; 
  • Research court rules and scheduling orders, and how individual judges have applied them in the past, quickly find sample documents;
  • Calendar deadlines quickly, by simply selecting a docket entry, and synching it with all attorneys on the case.

The press release quotes Docket Alarm Founder Michael Sander on high stakes docket filing risks. “Missing a court deadline is the number one way law firms end up in malpractice suits,” according to Sander. “Now, docket professionals will be able to access court rules directly on the complete docket, reducing errors and increasing visibility of upcoming deadlines across the litigation team.” 

 Since firms are always in search of ways to reduce risk and drive up efficiency. This new Fastcase Docket Alarm alliance ticks off both boxes.

Here is the full press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 19, 2019

Media Contact:

Jennifer Brand Ransom, 202.731.2114

jbransom@brandsolutionsgroup.com

Docket Alarm Announces Calendaring Feature

New Calendaring Feature to Debut During 2019 National Docketing Association’s

7th Annual Conference

 Washington, DC (September 19, 2019) – Docket Alarm by Fastcase, the leader in customizable litigation analytics and docket research, today released an innovative new calendaring feature in that binds the work of docketing professionals more closely to attorneys. This feature will be showcased during the National Docketing Association’s 7th Annual Conference this September 22-24 in Denver, CO.

“Missing a court deadline is the number one way law firms end up in malpractice suits,” said Docket Alarm Founder and Managing Director Michael Sander. “Now, docket professionals will be able to access court rules directly on the complete docket, reducing errors and increasing visibility of upcoming deadlines across the litigation team.” 

 The calendaring feature combines the most state-of-the-art docket research platform with a robust set of court rules to calculate any deadline. Subscribers of Docket Alarm now have these new features available immediately:

 

Track cases with lightning fast updates, whether or not your firm has made a notice of appearance;

 

Search through the full text of entire case records to find documents in your own or related cases;

 

Research court rules and scheduling orders, and how individual judges have applied them in the past, quickly find sample documents;

 

Calendar deadlines quickly, by simply selecting a docket entry, and synching it with all attorneys on the case.

Docket Alarm helps docketing professionals get their job done quickly. Both docketing and the calendaring feature are combined on one platform, thereby increasing the ease of use, reducing the amount of money and time spent on training, and eliminating any decentralized system of docketing and calendaring.

The calendaring feature is powered by CalendarRules and by docket data pulled from more than 300 million records in Docket Alarm’s database.

“Fastcase’s strategy has been to build a preeminent group of legal tech partners. We’re really excited to be partnering with CalendarRules for Docket Alarm’s new calendaring feature,” said Steve Errick, Fastcase’s Chief Operating Officer. “Working with CalendarRules has been a pleasure and we’ve been able to seamlessly integrate their impressive data with our own.”

Docket Alarm works hand-in-hand with the Fastcase legal research library, which includes exclusive integrated products such as such as Full Court Press publications, expert witness knowledge management with Courtroom Insight, integrated law review articles from HeinOnline, artificial intelligence tools within the AI Sandbox, a library of expert commentary of more than 27,000 expert legal bloggers in the LexBlog network, and access to licensed treatises from James Publishing and Wolters Kluwer/Aspen/CCH.

For a free trial and more information, visit www.docketalarm.com or connect with the Docket Alarm team at the National Docketing Association’s 7th Annual Conference on Sept 22-24 in Denver, CO.

About Docket Alarm

Docket Alarm is a national leader in docket research and legal analytics. Docket Alarm leverages a library of hundreds of millions of litigation records, as well as unique machine learning and natural language processing tools. The Docket Alarm API gives firms and companies the ability to leverage a giant database of PACER cases, alerting capabilities, and analysis in bulk. Docket Alarm was acquired by Fastcase in January 2018, and continues to be a disruptor in the legal analytics market.

 About CalenderRules

Founded in 2007, CalendarRules merges the latest web and cloud computing technologies with court rules content from all over the United States to deliver court rules to calendars of all types. Nationally, thousands of lawyers rely and depend on CalendarRules for real time court rules integration, date and deadline information, and streamlined, consistent data entry. Rules are available for State, Federal, Local, Bankruptcy and Appellate courts.

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.

 

 

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Today Gavelytics announced the addition of millions of trial court dockets, rulings, and other litigation documents from Northern California  including new coverage of Alameda County. They have already begun to expand outside of California with the addition of analytics for Florida and Nevada. In a phone call today I asked  Gavelytics CEO Rick Merrill  which states they planned to launch next. I am pleased to report that Merrill indicated that New York and Texas should be launched in Q4.

New York will be launched in two parts. First the five counties within the boundaries of New York City (New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens and Richmond) will launch.There will be a second launch of  New York counties  which include the counties in the New York metropolitan area  (e.g. Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk) and  the large “up state” counties Continue Reading State Analytics Platform Gavelytics Enhances Northern California Coverage — New York and Texas Coming in Q4

Today Bloomberg BNA dropped the venerable BNA as in Bureau of National Affairs from the company name. The new name  is Bloomberg Industry Group which  gives us a wonderful new acronym in Legal Publishing: BIG.

According to the press release reprinted below — the new name better reflects the diverse range of businesses, professionals and markets which it serves. Flagship product lines will continue to branded as Bloomberg Law Bloomberg Tax & Accounting, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Environment­.

They also have a launch video at this link.

Over the past  year  I wrote several posts  documenting the changes at Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg BNA including an interview with Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda, Bloomberg undertook a major realignment of the legacy BNA products which included both specialty newsletters and digital practice centers. Many newsletters disappeared or were rebranded. The practice centers were moved onto the Bloomberg Law platform and the company recommitted to the simplified pricing which was a foundational differentiator in its competition with Lexis and Westlaw.

Here is the press release:

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg BNA today announced that its new name is Bloomberg Industry Group. The new name better reflects the diverse range of businesses and professionals the company serves and the wide range of markets where it operates. The company will continue to go to market using its flagship platforms—Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax & Accounting, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Environment­—all of which provide an unparalleled mix of news, data, and analysis.

“Since our company was acquired by Bloomberg in 2011, we’ve developed a broad portfolio of products and solutions while serving a changing marketplace,” said Josh Eastright, CEO of Bloomberg Industry Group. “At the same time, we’ve transformed from a periodical publisher to a product- and technology-focused company. Our new name more accurately reflects who we are today—a company that empowers industry professionals with critical information to take decisive action and make the most of every opportunity.”

The name change is effective immediately. There will be no changes to product access or support. To keep up to date with the latest news from Bloomberg Industry Group, follow the company on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/bloomberg-industry-group, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bbgindustry, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bloombergindustry/.

Lex Machina is announcing the launch of the  Consumer Protection Litigation  analytics module covering nearly 145,000 cases, including more than 26,000 class action lawsuits, pending in federal district court since 2009. This is the 15th topical module added to the Lex Machina platform. Every Lex Machina module provides  data driven insights into judges, courts, law firms, individual attorneys, and parties which can be used to win new business or develop litigation strategy.

The new module covers two major areas: consumer finance and unfair or deceptive practices. Consumer protection cases allege at least one of the following federal consumer protection statutes: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Truth in Lending Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or a federal consumer protection enforcement statute, such as the FTC Act or Consumer Financial Protection Act.

Laura Hopkins, Legal Data Expert at Lex Machina, described the value of the product in the press release: “consumer protection is a rapidly shifting practice area with a high volume of case filings, high-profile cases, and large proportion of class action cases. Both consumer protection laws and frameworks for existing laws are often being updated as new technology and trends emerge.”

Lex Machina Consumer Protection Resolutions

Consumer Protection Litigation On the Rise An analysis of the Lex Machina data shows that cases alleging Fair Credit Reporting Act and Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations have skyrocketed in recent years. More than $43 billion in damages have been awarded in consumer protection cases. High profile litigation include Capital One, Equifax, Volkswagen and Facebook. Lex Machina plans to issue a comprehensive Consumer Protection Litigation Report later this year.

Lex Machina Consumer Protection Findings

Each topical module includes practice-specific data tags and filters. which enable users to target high value insights. Among the practice-specific new case tags, damages categories and findings include:

  • Case Tags: Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Report Act (FCRA), Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), FTC / CFPB Enforcement, and Unfair / Deceptive Trade Practices
  • Damages: Statutory Damages, Enhanced / Trebled Damages, Compensatory Damages, Punitive Damages, Restitution, Civil Money Penalties, Settled Claim Damages, and Approved Class Action Settlement
  • Findings: Violation Findings: FDCPA Violation, FCRA Violation, TILA Violation, TCPA Violation, Other Federal Consumer Finance Violation, State Consumer Finance Violation, Fraud, Negligence, Federal Enforcement Violation, and State UDTP Violation
  • Class Certification Findings: No Class Representative Standing, No Ascertainable Class, No 23(a)(1) Numerosity, No 23(a)(2) Commonality, No 23(a)(3) Typicality, No 23(a)(4) Adequate Representation, and No 23(b)(3) Predominance and Superiority
  • Defense Findings: Bona Fide Error Defense, Good Faith Reliance Defense
  • Remedies: TILA Rescission

Webcast on Legal Analytics for Consumer Protection Litigation

On August 28 at 11:00am PDT, Lex Machina will sponsor an ALM webcast entitled, “Legal Analytics for Consumer Protection Case Strategies.” Panelists include Lex Machina’s GC and Chief Evangelist Owen Byrd and Legal Data Expert Laura Hopkins; Jessica E. Salisbury-Copper, a partner at Thompson Hine; and Timothy P. Kingsbury, associate attorney at McGuire Law, P.C. For more information or to register please click here.

What’s Up  Next  from Lex Machina

During the Consumer Protection module demo I asked Own Byrd for some insights into upcoming developments. According to Byrd Lex Machina expects launch the remaining federal topical modules before the end of the year. At that point they will shift their focus to state analytics products

This week, ILTACON 2019 is being held August 18-22, in Orlando, FL. Attendees will have the opportunity to attend a four-part series on the hot topic and still mysterious cluster of technologies known as blockchain. The program is the brainchild of Katherine Lowry, Director of Practice Services at BakerHostetler. I recently interviewed Lowry to gain some insights into the evolution of her interest in blockchain in the law and her goal in designing the ILTA program.
According to Lowry’s LinkedIn write up, attendees who come to the “Blockchain series will have the opportunity to demystify and learn the practical impact of blockchain for lawyers.” Below is a description of the sessions which will run Monday through Wednesday at the ILTA conference in Orlando.

The series facilitator is Amy Y. Wan, CEO, Sagewise & Bootstrap Legal. The sessions and speakers will be:
• Building-a-Blockchain live (without computers) to bring clarity on how permissioned and permissionless blockchains work, but most important, identify what problems are solved using this technology. Speakers: Diana J. Stern and Christian Smith
• Demonstrations on how blockchain technology can be used to support practical business applications today! Continue Reading Demystifying Blockchain: Katherine Lowry Invites You to Build a Blockchain at ILTA