Engage Publishers in the big debates ... but don't mention pricing!

I was reading an objective and well written posting on SLAW about engaging the big Publishing Houses in open debate about the future of legal information provision that got me thinking of my experiences of such occasions.

The Death Stars of Thompson, Lexis and the like are full of "thought leaders" (don't you just hate that phrase) which in plain English means intelligent, strategic and astute business and technology leaders. Given the size and investment capabilities of the companies (and more importantly their parent companies of Thomson/Reuters and Reed Elsevier) these people have opportunities to innovate (or invest) on a scale us minnows can only dream of. They may not be Google or Microsoft but they are the next rung down on the ladder. Yet we've all been at forums and conferences, as the SLAW article alludes to, where we get very little or guarded publisher comment.

Why is this?

Number one and possibly the end of this article (depending on your experiences) ... questions around PRICE! Closely followed by (b) fear of giving away something competitive and (c) the post-New Labour obsession with 'managing the message'. That said my experiences are that it comes back to issues (price) that put the Publishers in fear that if that obvious question doesn't come from the panel it will come from the floor. Now pricing is one we all struggle with, especially when the press is telling us all the time how much money lawyers make. I think it gets harder in this day and age when there are so many forums/blogs/government working groups saying that law and content could be free ... but don't deliver this utopia and probably can't.

I think we should embrace our Publishers, show them a bit of love and recognise them as innovators in delivering content in the format to match their times (remember weekly case reporting and Halsbury's Laws in the early twentieth century, looseleafs in the 1980s, and then electronic and online). Given that we're all missing our loving venture capitalists in the current climate, it may well be the Death Star Publishers that have the resources to move thing forward in the next few years ... we need to get them talking so we can influence their investments.

So be nice (as you can) to your Publishers and get them talking openly and let's get influencing. Makes sure that we focus on getting them talking with the following guide:

(1) the forum is set up to encourage collaboration
(2) the subjects discussed are ones everyone can share learning of what they do and need.
(3) recognise the Publishers bring innovation, rich content and are a technological player you want to get onside.
(4) don't talk about pricing ...

Of course if you get the one of those MBA educated types who gives a carefully rehearsed, scripted messaged line or two and then falls to pieces on the first intelligent question from the floor then tear in!

Innovation in the Legal Industry

Image via WikipediaStrategies around innovation seem to vary between industries, i.e. pharmacutecal companies spend vast amounts of cash on research and trying to develop new drugs, tech companies seem to feed money into start-ups and venture capitals.

So what is it that large firms in the legal industry do? Of course when I say that I mean Law Firms themselves and also Legal Publishers and Legal Technology Firms.

Many people on the outside of this industry would probably think (sometimes rightly), that the average traditional lawyer might not be the most forward thinking of individuals, but people shouldn't under-estimate their intelligence and their thirst for success. Law firms might not neccessarily always look to innovate new "products", but they do look at how they can provide new or improved services or use new software to improve internal and external services and processes.

Examples of these could be initiatives in business development; we've all seen the increase in CRM's system deploys and the recruitment of a more specialist business development/marketing departments in law firms. Firms are also investing more in SEO and SEM, rather than sticking to the traditional routes or law firms directories and referrals.
This brings me onto the technology innovations, from case management to knowledge management, law firms have been relatively quick to pick up new software and technology services where they can see there being a benefit to the firm. Of course there is anectdotal evidence to suggest the opposite, but I think that in general law firms are innovative and forward thnking.

For legal publishers, I think it's seen from the outside that they generally just buy up innovative companies when they prove that it's a viable economically (LexisNexis - Axxia, VisualFiles, Everyform, among others and Sweet & Maxwell - Criminal Law Week, Digita, Lawtel, etc.). However that can be unfair, both companies (and probably Wolters Kluwer too) publish new books every year - generally a reaction to changing climates and new laws.
Internally too they must have done many things to transition themselves from book publishers to online information providers (via CD's!). I understand from sources LN has developed their single sourcing options, something many firms struggle with and they were also the first UK legal publisher to provide online products (thanks to the ever forward thinking Ivan Darby). Sweet & Maxwell came late to the online party, but have proven with their new Westlaw UK that they are able to innovate their products and I hear that there's always a great deal of investment going into their content management systems to enable them to deliver that into Westlaw.
Really though it sounds like it's less of an exciting environment for technologists. I wonder what it is that these firms do (if anything at all) to publicise and encourage innovation within their companies?

Smaller legal industry firms (publishing & software) tend to be the ones who get the most attention for bringing innovative ideas to the market. Firms in the past like PLC, Solicitec/Visualfiles, Axxia, Solcara, Recommind et al have received press about what they can bring to firms. However many of these firms are merely bringing existing ideas and technologies to the industry from other industries that have probably spent more on these areas. However relatively speaking what they do sometimes bring the industry can be truely new and brilliant within the market.

There's obviously innovation out there... but the key seems to be either to start as a small company, innovate and sell up or work at a larger firm and work on less of the cutting edge.

End of the childhood of Web 2.0?

An interesting article on the BBC Technology page showing the effect of La Credit de Crunch on Web 2.0 with the thoughts of the man who coined the 2.0 concept, Tim O'Reilly. For those of us who've had to listen to the rubbish from consultants, web enthusiasts and blogger-types (damn, outed myself there) on how we need to create social networks, get lawyers blogging, sharing the knowledge and using these tools to make and maintain business networks this article makes some great points! Maybe Web 2.0 has finally grown up due to hard times and the need to actually justify itself in terms of (that crazy concept) ... return on investment.

Tim O'Reilly states ""You have to conclude, if you look at the focus of a lot of what you call 'Web 2.0', the relentless focus on advertising-based consumer models, lightweight applications, we may be living in somewhat of a bubble, and I'm not talking about an investment bubble"

Most people would agree that despite the soft benefits behind Web 2.0 from everywhere from a Law Firm internal wiki through to the massive success of Facebook et al there is a distinct lack of commercials and ROI in everything. Talk of click thru Ad revenue, SEO and the like masks the distinct lack of business drivers, return on investment (unless of course you flog your non-money making cool gadget to microsoft!), and profits!

It's not all doom and gloom but at the end of the day this technology needs to ultimately make money, especially if they are to be used in large business enterprises like a Law Firm or Tax Firm. There is a future in Web 2.0, however in these dark hours the commercial and ROI imperative comes back to the fore. It may not be so fun but it will at last be focused and concentrated on the real problems and how this technology can solve these issue. Leaving the final word to Mr O'Reilly:

"The next great companies don't come from jumping on the bandwagon," he said. "They come from finding something really meaty and tough and hard and putting your best minds to work on it and making the world a better place as a result."

Get those grey commercial Web 2.0 cells whirling ... or just hang on for the next Web 3.0 "reality bubble" to emerge if cold, hard commercials are just too scary.

Spoke too soon?

Image by Greeeny via FlickrAs reported on Above the Law, it seems not all firsm are as lucky as Lovells, Norton Rose, et al. I seems White & Case have been phoning around today laying people off, up to 3% if the reports are correct. It's now been reported in The Lawyer.

Looks like we're in for a dark winter...

Lovells profiteering on the current climate

At Image by Grant MacDonald via Flickrlast there's some good news for those of us in the legal tech/publishing industry, it seems Lovells have magaged a 15% increase in first half revenue. They claim to have acheived this through "The firm's undoubted strengths in counter-cyclical areas, such as litigation and restructuring". There is hope and thankfully what some people in the industry have been saying is coming true, that the decline in some practice areas may largely be off set by increase in practice areas such as these. I wonder if Lovells might also be looking at gobbling up a firm whose core practice areas are struggling to try and boost themselves into the top four when the up turn comes?

Other interesting points in the article are that Clifford Chance and Freshfields won't be releasing their first-half results and Norton Rose has acheived 11% growth.

The article in general makes me feel much better despite the dark mornings and evenings as winter fast approaches.

Web sites of the Legal "solutions" providers

Image via WikipediaI'm currently doing the website for my new company (paying a design company lots of money to do it!), I've been doing a little bit of research on what the big legal solutions providers web sites are like, what they have on their sites, whether the front page has marketing info or logins to the products and how the sites are structured. Thought I'd share the feedback here.

First up we have LexisNexis, their main site generally is mostly marketing gumph, lots of text no one is ever going to read and lots of links to various areas. To find a product you have to in through via your sector (Legal, Corporate etc.) and actually finding the login area to a product is nigh on impossible. Interestingly no favicon shows up (the little logo that hows up next the the address on your browser). Seems to be more about selling themselves than anything else.
Grade: C - Back to the drawing board please.

Next we have PLC who go for a completely different tack. They have the login link directly on the front page and you can access each area directly from there. Sure it's pretty busy and the design looks a little tired now and they've basically just crammed more and more on there, but it gives a "user" directly what they want, and also allows you to quickly find information about each product. I think they are able to do this because they don't play in many sectors, like LN does. Also has a favicon.
Grade: B - Could maybe do with a quick face-lift.

Now it's Solcara's turn. They don't have login's to products of course, but theirs is, but it's got a clean interface with everything you'd need on there, quick access to information about their products well delineated and contact information right there on the front page. I rather like the design too, products have their own colour coding which changes the whole site colour as you go into the section covering that product. Slightly meaningless favicon.
Grade: A - Stands out from the crowd and does the job.

I'll cover Sweet and Maxwell's next. Now is it just me or has this one changed recently? It was rubbish before but the redesign (something to do with a Thomson Reuters re-brand?), seems to have made it a little nicer looking and more modern looking. Had a couple of broken links in there, but it might be teething problems if the site is new. Good access to information on each product (though not why they are separated into different products - surely it's all legal information). The main focus of the site seems to be selling books interestingly. No favicon.
Grade: B - Rather generic nothing to make it stand out.

Up next? Recommind. Not a lot to say here to be honest. It's a website, some press releases, links to products/solutions. Design is pretty nice, but nothing to write home about. No favicon.
Grade: B - Generic but clean

The last one I'm going to cover is Tikit. Again, much like the Recommind one it's a pretty standard marketing website, no favicon. Not sure what the image is all about - why an Obama look-a-like with a telephone headset standing over a PC?
Grade: C - Try something a little cutting edge.

Oviously have concentrated on the UK sites, but you don't want to get me started on the LexisNexis.com site!

PLC launching the USA - will they make the US billboard chart?

The Practical Law Company's site shows the upcoming launch of US modules of their successful UK formula. They've been having pre-launch lunches throughout September although I'd be interested to know anyone out there who attended these in the middle of the Credit Crunch. In an interesting piece of timing - good or bad (comments anyone?) - their practice areas are Corporate & Securities and Finance. This has been coming for some months (pre-Credit Crunch) and the Corporate & Securities area covers securities and capital markets, private equity, joint ventures and amusingly venture capital. I guess at least the Finance area covers Bankruptcy ...

Now the interesting questions that come to mind. The big two in the UK have been strangely muted in their reaction to the "threat" of PLC over the years, a reaction only appearing in the last year or so with "practical" modules in the form of Lexis KnowHow and Lawtel modules of precedents and checklists. I'm not sure PLC will get the same benevolence in the US with the Wexis dominance of the market. Is this a genuine attempt to crack the US or a chance to sell up to one of the big boys?

As we know from the music industry the big players in the UK often don't make it big on the other side of pond (the list is endless), I wonder if PLC are going to go to top the billboard chart or end up playing clubs in the Mid-west. Will PLC get the chance to wow the lawyers the same way they have the lawyers at the firms I work with ... give them a few years and they've got a chance but will the big two allow them the opportunity?

Legal Publisher's Patents

Image via WikipediaI've been doing some research regarding my new venture and I've spent most of my weekend doing investigating and filing patents.

While doing so my mind started wandering somewhat (as it usually does!) , so I started doing searches on Someone Reuters and LexisWhatsis on the US Patents Database. They predictably have a few between them, I thought I'd share a couple of them with you. First up is one registered under Lexis Nexis (Dayton, OH), interestingly it has the aforementioned James M. Peck's name in it! The patent number is 6,502,081 is you want to find it and it involves the "System and method for classifying legal concepts using legal topic scheme ", which obviously is the patent for their taxonomy system. Very interesting read and they set out their case for why it's different to other systems well.

The second patent is 7,085,755 registered with Thomson Global Resources AG (some Swiss company - is this a Thomson Reuters tax dodge?), the "inventors" however seem to be all from Minnesota. This "Electronic document repository management and access system" looks like it could be the patent for the much vaunted Novus. There are lots of mentions of things such as Table of Contents (TOC), Alerts and collections.

Changes at the top

Image by NLM - FOTOS via FlickrAs House of Butter has reported, LexisWhatsis has recently made two senior appointments with Carol DiBattiste joining as Senior Vice President of Privacy, Security, Compliance and Government Affairs (try fitting that on your business card!) and James M. Peck being promoted to Chief Executive Officer of LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group.

Not to be outdone Someone Reuters has made the announcement that Manvinder "Vindi" Banga is to join it's Board of Directors from January to replace the outgoing Dick Oliver. I think the most telling quote here would be the "He has deep knowledge of Asian business" angle, obviously they're seriously looking into the "emerging markets" in the near future. Seems to have a good background at Unilever PLC and certainly has a great name.

So that's two out of three of the "death star publishers", come on Wolters Kluwer - where's your changes?

LexisNexis and Interwoven

An interesting article on the slowly leaking news that in the US LexisNexis and Interwoven have stuck a deal to integrate legal and news information within Interwoven's products - see here the announcement on the Interwoven site. Seemingly the start point seems to be Search within the Vivisimo application: "The integration of Lexis Search Advantage with Interwoven Universal Search will combine the market leading enterprise search solution for professional service firms with content and services from LexisNexis® to provide law firm attorneys a single destination to efficiently find and leverage internal work product and trusted content from LexisNexis."

Assuming that this is heading the UK's way there would be plenty of demand within larger organisations, the present situation of dealing with intermediary providers isn't producing satisfactory results, especially on the massive databases of the larger information providers.

I wonder where what starts as a "Search" solution (to use the jargon of the technology providers) will lead ...

Online Information 2008

Image by digitaldust via FlickrI've just been registering myself to attend the Online Information 2008 event (I like the freebies), and looking through the exhibitor list and spotted that Reed Elsevier is spending money on two entries: one for LexisWhatsis Butterworths and the other for Elsevier B.V. (with 3 stands). While on the other hand Someone Thomson Reuters seems to be saving money by having everything under one brand on one stand (a big one?).
Wolters Kluwer also seems to have two stands - they do look like they're together though at least.

Is this a brand harmonisation or a cost cutting exercise I wonder?
Other interesting attendees I'll be visting:
Autonomy Corporation
BIALL
Convera
EBSCO Information Services
Endeca
Ex Libris (UK) Ltd.
Free Pint Ltd. - Hope their freebies live up to their name!
Mondeca
OneSource
Silverchair - Quite why an aussie rock band would be attending I don't know?
TEMIS
ZyLAB

Lexis in Comics?

I spotted this in Amazing Spider-Man #550 on Page 17, I wonder how much that cost for product placement - though I am surprised they didn't ask for the "Knowledge Burst" to be included somewhere. They also got the name slightly wrong; Lexis/Nexis. I very much like Peter's/Spider-Man's reply; Lexis-Whatsis?
Think everyone should use that from now on!

However on Page 22 this then occurs... Mary Jane isn't happy...should have picked a free source:


OK, maybe a bit of creative license there...

Still waiting ...

I asked to have West's additional features adding to my account and several weeks later still nothing! I asked for the very Web 2.0 features of Copy Link and RSS feeds to be added to my access (this isn't a standard feature apparently) but several weeks later still nothing ... it's a pity, from the flash advertising it looks great! This site could already have a latest case feed on the right ... sure the customer services will come good eventually. the excitement factor is building day by day.

let's take the fire escape out of Halsbury House

Did anyone take the trouble of logging onto this developer site to see the true glory of this posting on Practice Source. I look forward to taking the lift to the fourth floor, and then taking the stairs to fifth floor agony aunt. Having been once to the Boardroom on the fifth floor i assume this is the group's CEO!

I look forward to the "elements of ‘lightness’ and enjoyment – readers should chuckle whilst reading the blogs." They've obviously cracked the big one, making law amusing ...