Gentle readers— in a distant era (January) when no one was thinking about facemasks and hand sanitizer, I posted the annual Dewey B Strategic Hits and Misses Survey. In an attempt to “carry on” as if everything were normal, today I am reporting on the survey results.Thanks to the  87 readers who  responded to the survey between January and March 15th. Compared to 2018, 2019 was a fairly slow year for the launch of new products and features. As a result this years survey has fewer questions and fewer categories of new products. But this year the survey covered new analytics tools, analytics documentation, workflow tools, law comparison tools. The survey also asked Continue Reading Hits and Misses Readers Choose Best New Analytics, Workflow and Law/Reg Comparison Tools

LegalMation is a pretty impressive product. It uses AI to draft responsive pleadings to a complaint.  If you haven’t had the chance to see a demo at the LegalTech or ILTA conferences, now is the time to get a free trial.

Here is the LegalMation offer:

LegalMation’s artificial intelligence platform can significantly reduce the time you spend on routine litigation tasks. Unlike existing template generators and form fillers legal nations groundbreaking AI system is able to dynamically produce in two minutes or less responsive pleadings and discovery requests and responses and related documents that are tailored to claims allegations and requests in the uploaded legal document all while  incorporating relevant jurisdictional requirements. To see just how much you can maximize productivity while working from home LegalMation is currently offering a 30 day free trial to all new users for its products across all available states and practice areas. Full details available here.

FREE and Powerful: Wolters Kluwer Launches  Suite of COVID-19 Smart Charts Outside the Paywall.

For the past month librarians and lawyers have been scrambling to locate and digest the daily cascade of COVID-19 orders, laws, regulations and policies that have been streaming from every level of government across the fifty states. The Wolters Kluwer COVID -19 resource has aggregated and tagged releases from across the federal government  including  the President and Congress as well as State Governors and  local county health departments.

Today Wolters Kluwer launched a powerful COVID-19 Smart Chart tool which will enable lawyers to quickly locate and compare the laws across multiple jurisdictions. It is the first free advanced digital tool  offering a a “comprehensive Continue Reading FREE and Powerful: Wolters Kluwer Launches  Suite of COVID-19 Smart Charts Outside the Paywall.

This week Casemaker and vLex announced an innovative partnership with the Kentucky Bar Association making the AI enabled research Assistant Vincent available to every lawyer in Kentucky. I wrote about the launch of the Vincent AI assistant in October 2018. Casemaker provides the primary law underpinning the vLex US collection. Vincent is the only Artificial Intelligence tool that can analyze legal documents in two languages (English and Spanish) and across 10 countries.

Under the new agreement all Kentucky Bar members will have access to vLex and Vincent through either the Casemaker or vLex Platform. Kentucky Bar Association members have  had access to Casemaker since 2005. Kentucky Bar Association President summarized the significance of this alliance as a great equalizer for members. “We are thrilled to continue our valued relationship with Casemaker, and now to build upon that by offering cutting-edge AI capabilities to our members,” said John Meyers, Executive Director of the KBA. “For smaller firms, in particular, this will be a great equalizer, enabling them to tap into technology previously only available to the very largest firms in the country.”

Additional vLex Developments vLex recently entered into an arrangement with the  Alberta Law Libraries to provide Continue Reading Casemaker, vLex & Kentucky Bar Association Enter Innovative Alliance — KBA Members Meet AI Assistant Vincent

LexisNexis has dominated litigation analytics since it’s acquisition of Lex Machina and Ravel Law over the past decade. Ravel has been integrated into Lexis Advance, under the Context brand. Today Lexis Nexis announced the launch of Context Company Analytics. The original Context Judges analytics product uses language analysis to gain insights into judges precedential behavior. With the Company Analytics launch they are using language analysis to visualize insights derived from business news, company financials and litigation. Lexis has historically been strong in both company Continue Reading LexisNexis Launches Context Company Analytics –Language Analysis and Insights for Competitive Insights

On April 1st, Intelligize users will experience a major transformation of the platform. The new features will be available to all Intelligize users at no additional cost. I reviewed Intelligize’s unique features when it launched as a startup . It was purchased by LexisNexis in 2016. Intelligize was a late entrant into the SEC research market, but managed to drive most competitors from the field.  It is  built on proprietary algorithms  which streamline not only SEC filings research but more importantly, complex regulatory comment letter and no action letter research. The upcoming redesign will offer a whole raft of new features which drive efficiency and deliver new analytics and insights. New redlining and comparative features are woven into the comment letter, M&A and drafting modules.
The Comment Letter enhancements are designed to help lawyers understand how to avoid SEC scrutiny. The analytics provide insights into how the SEC’s  focus on various issues evolves over time. Machine learning insights help lawyers locate similar comments to the one their client has received and then generate analytics based on that issue.The timeline feature helps lawyers assess the interactions between the SEC and the filer and understand the timing to resolution. The “full thread” results enables lawyers to see the full dialogue between the SEC and the filer. When looking for similar comment letters machine learning will provide a similarity score.
The  Comment Letter Analytics Provide trending topics for the last 12 months, identify which offices are involved in specific issues and  identify the most mentioned SEC examiner. The analytics button  allow lawyers to develop custom analytics on an issue.Timeline results assess the length of time interaction with the SEC and the filer took.
Mergers and acquisitions enhancements Lawyers have the choice of  analyzing deals in a grid  or a card format. Results grid view compare deal points across multiple transactions in a table format. Results t card view  shows the acquirer and the target information side-by-side. Transaction timeline provides a visualization of important documents that were filed during a transaction. The Compare feature allows researchers to more easily  add documents for comparison. Side-by-side red lining show changes in language.
SEC filings, Agreements and Other Exhibits Features include Analytics, New compare document,,New side-by-side redlining. Analytics include. negative events disclosure, filings by month, accounting firms auditing 10 K filers, 10K filings by industry segment.
Securities and Drafting Compliance
A new 8K checklist allows lawyer to create customized checklist  which include only the 8K items applicable to the specific clients situation. These checklists can link out to SEC regulations and SEC filings.These checklists have links  to SEC regulations in SEC filings and comment letters.
There has been an explosion of litigation analytics products over the past three years… Not so much on the transactional side. LexisNexis has invested heavily in their  litigation analytics products Lex Machina and Context (formerly RavelLaw).  Lexis is not the first legal publisher to offer transactional analytics but they now have the most advanced product in that niche.  Bloomberg Law ‘s Draft Analyser and Wolters Kluwer  two transactional clause analytics products  preceded Intelligize  in the transactional analytics space. I can only hope that competition in transactional analytics market will follow the  same upward trajectory as the litigation analytics market.

It will come as no surprise that the roster of legal publishing and tech innovator offerings of Covid-19 resources continues to grow. Fastcase, PacerPro, PubK Law and Tax Notes have new Covid-19 resources.Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg Law mentioned in an earlier post now have added free resources which out from behind the paywall.Well Fastcase has gone “Amazon” – they have basically built a Covid-19 Shopping Mall which includes a gallery of their own resources, affiliates resources, government resources and competitors resources – all for a good cause!

Federal Legislative Response to Coronavirus
Thomson Reuters Skopos Labs

Bloomberg Law has brought their very popular In Focus Covid-19 page out from behind the paywall. There are  3 “trackers ” which provide a survey of  court operations during Covid-19, state quarantine and public health laws and Covid-19 related labor laws.The page also provides, news, analysis, regulatory guidance e.g .reporting Covid issues to the SEC. According to Bloomberg Law President Joe Breda “We are committed to continuing to add to this collection, and possibly other features of BLAW in the future.” There also a Bloomberg Law Corona Virus news page  That offers great deal of public content as well as a free newsletter.

Fastcase Covid-19 “Mall of American Resources”
Covid Resources “Gallery”   Fastcase COO, Steve Errick sent me an email about Fastcase’s Covid-19 efforts. ”We are supporting our bar members by providing them a list of resources including noting where our publishing peers provide Continue Reading New Covid-19 Resources From Fastcase, PacerPro, Tax Notes and PubK Law. Free Covid Resources From Westlaw and Bloomberg Law

It is no surprise that following the launch of their  AI enabled motion drafting platform Compose in February,  Casetext has secured  a new round of funding.  The $8.2 million  brings Casetext’s total funding to $40 million. Inside investors who participated in this round include Union Square Investors, Canvas Ventures and Y Combinator Continuity. The press release also refers to an unnamed “top law firm”  as leading the round.

The announcement comes in the wake of Casetext’s launch of their game changing new Compose software. Compose goes where no legal product has gone before. It actually helps a lawyer draft a motion tailored to specific federal Continue Reading Casetext Secures $8.2 Million Venture Funding

Legal publishers have thrown their considerable editorial and technical resources at crafting new documents, pages, and toolkits to help lawyers locate everything from emergency pandemic declarations to drafting an SEC disclosure about the impact of COVID-19. Lawyers need to untangle the myriad legal issues impacting virtually every area of legal practice. We are surely witnessing the emergence of a new pandemic law practice over the course of several weeks. I have summarized the landscape of tools produced by legal publishers to help lawyers get oriented and “jump start” their practice in the “new normal” of law in a time of pandemic.

Bloomberg Law has created a special resource page In Focus: Coronavirus, which offers news, guidance documents, and trackers including the State Quarantine and Public Health Laws, Court Responses to COVID-19, and international and federal agency information regarding the pandemic. The Coronavirus Tax Watch page includes the latest news on the evolving tax landscape in response to the business and economic impacts of Coronavirus; Continue Reading Legal Publishers Roll Out Covid-19 Resources, Toolkits, Documents, Advice (Some Even Free)

Today Fastcase is announcing the Launch on the Journal of Emerging Litigation. I think we can assume that Covid-19 Litigation will be emerging in the publication pipeline. The Journal is being produced in partnership with HB Litigation Conferences which was founded by Tom Hagy – a pioneer in niche litigation reporting. Hagy is the former Publisher and Managing Editor of LexisNexis Mealy’s Litigation Reports.

The new journal will be published by Full Court Press, the imprint of Fastcase. The new publication will be informed by analytic trends identified in Docket Alarm as well as Law Street Media news Continue Reading Fastcase Announces Launch of Emerging Litigation Journal and Addition of 87 ABA Titles