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During the Great Analytics ‘Shoot-Out’ at AALL, law librarians tested and compared the results of seven federal litigation analytics platforms.

Analytics tools enable lawyers to ask completely new questions and gain insights which were virtually unavailable in a text based research world.  It takes a special skill set to ask the right  “data quality” questions when firms are assessing  the dozens of analytics products competing for a share of lawyers desktop or an organization’s information resource budget.

Use cases for analytics include: pitch strategy, AFA responses, litigation strategy, deal negotiation strategy, managing client expectations, diving process efficiency, internal bench marking and developing peer metrics.

Law librarians have been quietly driving the adoption of analytics in the business and practice of law.  Hundreds of librarians, knowledge managers and legal publishing executives jammed into a meeting room at the 2019 American Association of Law Libraries Conference and Meeting in Washington DC on July 15th to attend a two and one half hour “super-session” “ The Federal and State Analytics market: Should the Buyer Beware?” exploring the state of litigation
Continue Reading What Do Law Firms Need to Know About Buying Litigation Analytics Products?

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

The major takeaway from the 2018-19 Dewey B Strategic Hits and Misses Survey is that consumers of legal information regard 2018 as “a miss.” The problem wasn’t so much the products—although products play an important role in triggering the discontent. The major problem is the behavior of legal publishers. Legal publishing is a mature…

Today Courtroom Insight, Daubert Tracker and Expert Witness Profiler  are releasing the  results of a new survey which was “developed to better understand commonly used expert witness research and retention techniques among litigation professionals.” Every law firm with a litigation practice is aware of the pain points associated with identifying, researching and validating experts.

The nationwide survey was conducted by email in late 2017 and early 2018.  Thousands of litigation professionals, including attorneys, law librarians and paralegals, were invited to complete the survey, with 580 actual respondents.  Although advanced technology solutions have been developed for legal research, ediscovery and case management; expert witness research is still a feral and largely untamed workflow. There is no shortage of vendors hawking a “magic bullet” solution – but the survey below indicates that the market is
Continue Reading Surprise -Your Expert Witness Has a Rapsheet – New Survey Examines the Sorry State of Expert Research Workflow in Law Firms

Today Casetext is launching CARA AI which offers significant changes to both the CARA and Casetext research experience. Today CARA  is being transformed from a citation analysis tool into a full fledged legal research engine.

I had a chance to talk to Casetext co-founders Jake Heller and Pablo Arredondo about the launch . Heller, the CEO of Casetext describes these enhancements as “helping attorneys at any phase of their research find better authorities faster.”  Arredondo, who is the Chief Legal Research Officer described  CARA AI as offering a solution like Google, Apple and Amazon Prime — “CARA AI gives you only what you need.”

CARA AI

Key features include:

  • Seamless integration of CARA AI contextual search into the traditional research workflow.
  • The ability to execute searches by loading briefs, motions, complaints and answers.
  • An enhanced user interface, upgraded algorithm and increased speed.

Speed  The press release  states that  these enhancements make Casetext the “fastest research platform.” They did not provide any data to back this statement up,  but the demo I saw showed the new platform delivering near immediate search results and document retrievals. I have to agree –CARA AI is lightening fast.
Continue Reading CARA AI: Did Casetext Just “Drop Kick” Keywords Out of the Legal Research Process?

For years I have been heaping praise on Thomson Reuters for producing one of the first marketing pieces that took a crack at quantifying the time savings delivered by one of their workflow products.  The chart offers a simple comparison of several tasks and shows the time it takes to perform each task and with and without the use of the Practical Law Resources. See Illustration below.

It is probably five years since I saw that first chart and I recently began investigating whether Thomson Reuters has moved from producing a marketing piece to delivering a real tool that could actually help a customer determine or even estimate the time savings or efficiency delivered by Practical Law.   I am picking on Thomson Reuters but the truth is that none of the large legal information publishers ( LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer or Bloomberg Law) which have enhanced their research products with workflow solutions are offering any resource to measuring the ROI of their products.  For
Continue Reading Your Workflow Product Costs Half a Million Dollars — Now How Do I Measure My ROI? Where is the Quickview and PowerInvoice for Practical Law and Lexis Practice Advisor?

The results of the 2017 Start Stop Survey are in. Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. My apologies for the delay in compiling the results – let me blame a series of unexpected events starting in December and continuing through the spring.

Can it Be? The Best New Legal Information Product is FREE!  Although AALL’s daily newsletter launched in late 2016 it really gained traction in 2017. I am also a daily reader. Know It AALL aggregates legal knowledge and technology stories from around the web ranging from academic publications to popular blogs and news sites. It is like a fresh cup of news serendipity to drink in along with your morning coffee. (Full disclosure: I am currently on the Board of the American Association of Law Libraries which publishes the newsletter..) The Know it AALL is available for free to anyone who wishes to subscribe at this link.

What is the best NEW PRODUCT you became aware of in 2017?
Continue Reading Start Stop Survey Results AALL’s — “The Know it AALL” Is Voted Best New Product and Bloomberg Law’s “Docket Key” Best New Feature