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Last July Thomson Reuters quietly began the  transformation of  their Practitioners Insights publication into a full fledged legal news service called Westlaw Today.  I  met with  Zena Applebaum, director, Proposition Strategy Rebecca Ditsch – manager, Product Development and received a demo of Westlaw Today .Westlaw is owned by Thomson Reuters which also owns Reuters, the multi-media news agency. It is a total “no brainer” that Reuters should collaborate with Westlaw in bringing a legal news product to the market. (In fact, Westlaw did briefly launch a  short lived legal news service “Westlaw News” back in the 1980’s before it was purchased by Thomson Reuters). I think I share the sentiments of my  information professional colleagues when I say “what took so long?” Our next question will be can Westlaw Today challenge the LexisNexis dominance of the legal news market?

The Westlaw Today  platform will allow lawyers to subscribe to  custom newsfeeds tracking law firms, companies and issues. In addition to traditional practice area coverage Westlaw Today has a newsfeed for “Legal industry” and “Legal innovation” two of my favorite topics. They also offer coverage  special topics such as COVID and Voter Rights. Westlaw Today offers news in a variety of slices.

The Westlaw Today main page has the  look and feel of a newspaper website highlighting  a few major stories rather than imitating  the list of recent headlines and blurbs that Law360 made famous. The main page includes a sidebar with most viewed articles, trending law firms and companies, lawyer contributed content and a link where lawyers can submit proposals for articles they would like to write.

Westlaw Today Main Page

 Westlaw Today Practice Area pages offer a curated list of news stories by traditional practice areas. It also offers 
Continue Reading Westlaw Today – Thomson Reuters Launches a Legal News Platform –Offers AALL Program

Today Lexis Nexis is releasing a new M&A analytics tool called Market Standards which helps lawyers identify, compare and analyze publicly files transactions – to optimize the terms of M&A deals.

Market Standards enables a lawyer to analyze, 150+ deal points, in 33,000 deals spanning 10 years. New deals are analyzed and added within 48…

Thomson Reuters continues to build out features in Westlaw Edge. Today they have announced  a new  A.I. enabled quote checking feature which resides within the brief analysis tool Quick Check which was launched at the  American Association of Law Libraries meeting last July. Quick Check allows lawyers to upload a brief and quickly identify missing

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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

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)

Bloomberg Law has announced  launch the Brief Analyzer product which they previewed shrouded in much intrigue during the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting last July. According to the press release the Brief Analyzer reduces the amount of time it takes to analyze a brief by at least 25%, based on feedback from 80% of beta testers. As with all Bloomberg Law enhancements, the Analyzer will be available to all subscribers at no additional charge.

The Brief Analyzer can be used to analyze a brief during the drafting process or to expose weaknesses in an adversaries brief. Here are
Continue Reading Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer Goes Live

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

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!