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 ...