JUST ASK: The Rules of Research for New Associates
As fall associates settle into the reality of legal practice, I am taking the opportunity to share a variety of research “best practices.” These
rules can be applied across all environments: law firm, corporate, public service and government. New associates are facing the messy reality of needing to harness legal and factual issues that need
The Dewey B Strategic 2020-21 Hits and Misses Survey – The Product Most Likely to be Cancelled is — Lex Machina
In a prior post I reported survey results on products to be purchased in 2020 and 2021… which included a fairly broad spectrum of products. Major vendors Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg and Wolters Kluwer were evenly represented at the top of the list. There were dozens of additional products identified by one or two responders. Today I am reporting on responses to the survey results on cancellations which presents a dramatic contrast. One product stood alone as the most likely to be cancelled. That product is LexWestlaw Today – Thomson Reuters Launches a Legal News Platform –Offers AALL Program
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 Practice Area pages offer a curated list of news stories by traditional practice areas. It also offers
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Lexis Launches Market Standards for M&A Deal Analytics
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
12 Tips For Building Your Digital Law Library In The Age Of COVID-19
We all knew that law libraries were shrinking. No one suspected that they would be totally “done in” by a virus. Law libraries have been “going digital” for at least 20 years, but few firms tossed out their last “pocket part” update. But as firms plan their post-pandemic re-openings, retaining a collection of shared books is frankly a biohazard. Should 
librarians develop systems for sanitizing and quarantining books? In today’s digital world -– is it even worth the trouble?
Does anyone really want to take on the backlog of updating books that are nine months out of date next January when lawyers begin returning to offices?
For the past two decades, many law librarians have been assessing products and developing in-house solutions to support virtual library resources.
There is no universal solution. The law firms which have the foresight to invest in strategic information professionals are most likely to have had substantial digital libraries in place last March when COVID-19 brought the world to a screeching halt. Many firms are running parallel digital and print libraries because they are supporting both the last of the “baby boomer partners” and the “born digital” generation of lawyers. COVID-19 has been an unprecedented tipping point which exposes the importance of completing or starting a digital library transition plan.
12 Building Blocks Of A Digital Library
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Hits & Misses Part Two Top Cancellation Candidates: Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg Spending Under Scrutiny
The Hits and Misses Survey was conducted in the pre-pandemic world. Nonetheless the results will have a special resonance with Information professionals around the world perched at home scrutinizing their budgets with scalpel in 
one hand and an ax in the other. Back in January Dewey B Strategic readers were asked to the identify the
Acquisitions, Alliances and Joint Ventures Announced By Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and Wolters Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters spent the past week showing off newproductsand features at the annual American Association of Law Libraries ( AALL) Meeting and Conference in Washington DC. Since the close of the conference on Tuesday, each has announced a new alliance of some kind.
- Thompson Reuters acquired HighQ Software
Wolters Kluwer Expands AI Enhanced Capital Markets Clause Analytics for Drafting and Benchmarking Deals
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. continues to expand suite of securities law and workflow products with today’s launch of Capital Markets Clause Analytics. Similar to the M&A Clause Analytics which they launched in 201?, CAPA offers a workflow solution that leverages artificial intelligence and expert human curation. CAPA is the latest addition to
Registration Closing for PLLIP Summit: The Road to 2030 with Jordon Furlong Keynote and Design Thinking Workshop
It seems like only yesterday that Joan Axelroth and I were Co-Chairs of the 2012 PLL Summit themed as “The Road to 2020.” That year’s Keynote Speaker was Jordan Furlong, a leading legal industry consultant who inspired the audience with a talk entitled “Climbing the Value Ladder. Rethinking the Law Library on the Road to 2020”
Furlong is back and this years Summit theme is “The Road to 2030.” In retrospect, many of Furlong’s predictions about the transformation of libraries and the morphing of librarians into a wide spectrum of knowledge and technology roles have materialized. I am looking forward to another inspiring Furlong road map suggesting how we should respond to the changes ahead.
The keynote will highlight how the growing power and sophistication of legal intelligence will dovetail with and help to accelerate the transformation of law firms’ client services and business models. Furlong will describe how law librarians, knowledge engineers, and data analysts will play
Continue Reading Registration Closing for PLLIP Summit: The Road to 2030 with Jordon Furlong Keynote and Design Thinking Workshop