Congratulations to all of those named to the Fastcase 50 this year. I am always please to see long term knowledge and library colleagues including June Liebert, Holly Riccio, Katherine Lowery, James Duggan and Nikki Shaver included in the roster. It also has to be noted that Fastcase recognizes their competitors including Rick Merrill of  Gavelytics, Ryan Walker of Casetext and Patrick Fuller and Vanessa Blum from ALM. While the list includes many established legal technology companies and law firm it is also giving important attention and exposure to small pro bono initiatives as well as innovators in courts and…

Today the American Association of Law Libraries announced the release of it’s 2nd State of the Profession Survey. The Survey was created and administered by a State of the Profession Special Committee which created three different versions of the survey for academic, firm/corporate and government legal information professionals. The report was designed to gather insights on the opportunities and challenges facing legal information professionals across a wide variety of roles in academic, law firm and government organizations. The members of AALL include law school professors, CKOs, Law  Library /KM Directors, researchers, technologists and competitive intelligence professionals. An Executive Summary is…

Last week Wolters Kluwer released their 2021 Future Ready Lawyer: Moving Beyond the Pandemic. Download the report here. When: June 24, 2021 at 11 am EST Register: At this link Here is information on the session and panelists: Given the new financial pressures on businesses as a result of the pandemic, there will be a brighter spotlight on legal professionals and the performance of law firms moving ahead. Executives will need to navigate information globally while also ensuring they deliver the highest value and ROI. Join our distinguished panel of thought leaders as they discuss global trends, progress, and challenges…

Today Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.   is announcing an expanded version of its COVID-19 State & Federal Compare Smart Chart which is   focused on “return to work” issues. New areas of coverage focus on a wide range of back to office content and caselaw related to the pandemic, accessible for all Cheetah and Cheetah for Corporate Counsel subscribers. The new back to office content compares corporate and local health policies on topics such  as vaccination requirements, face mask and shield requirements, social distancing and capacity limitations, specific restrictions by type of business. “The latest updates to the Smart…

 New feature identifies cases which are contrary to an opponent’s arguments This week Thomson Reuters released another feature to Quick Check. How much easier can cite checking get? Quick Check Contrary Authority helps lawyers zero in on vulnerabilities of an opponents brief. Quick Check Contrary Authority identifies uncited cases that oppose the arguments in an opponent’s brief. Quick Check Thomson Reuters brief checking tool was released as part of Westlaw Edge in July 2019. In 2020 Quick Check Judicial was launched which allows judges to compare the citations in up to six different briefs or motions. Analysis Highlights Negative Treatment…

American LegalNet,Inc (ALN) was founded in 1996 as a platform to provide law firms access to State, Federal, Court, and Agency  U.S. court forms. I was already familiar with the exhaustive catalog of federal and state litigation and administrative forms which ALN provides in their Forms Workflow product. I recently had the opportunity to meet with ALN founder Erez Bustan and got a full tour of how ALN has transformed into a robust litigation workflow solution addressing some of the labor-intensive processes associated with docket filing and management. In March 2021 they launched ALN Cloud which offers an integrated cloud…

 Today Thomson Reuters announced the launch of HighQ Contract Analysis. The produce speeds contract review and analysis with machine learning technology. to answer the specific questions legal professionals want to address – in an easy-to-read report. According to the press release, HighQ Contract Analysis  leverages machine learning and pre-trained models “to help attorneys increase efficiency, reduce risk, and accelerate the contract-review process for transaction due diligence, compliance review and contract investigation.” “AI-powered applications require three key ingredients – data, subject matter expertise and technology – and HighQ Contract Analysis builds upon Thomson Reuters decades-long leadership in AI-driven products for…

PLLIP  has announced an appropriate theme for the 2021 Virtual Summit: Hindsight is 2021: Responding to Chaos and Change.. The PLLIP Summit has a track record of providing valuable strategic content as well as an extraordinary netowrking opportunities for the research and knowledge professionals who oversee private law firm and corporate law libraries and knowledge services. The Summit will be held July 16, 2021, via Zoom, and will begin at 11:30amEastern/8:30am Pacific. More details about the day’s programming can be found here. How to Register: To register for the 2021 Summit, please visit the AALL registration page here. * Complimentary…

Today Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.   announced the relaunch of Corporate Counsel Profiler The new version is powered by analytics and enables lawyers, researchers, marketers and competitive intelligence specialists to uncover custom insights into in houses Counsel Department. Granular information on corporate in-house counsel departments is a critical component of the marketing, pitch and competitive intelligence process. AND it is surprisingly difficult to find. Current users of Corporate Counsel Profiler will immediately notice the more colorful interactive interface and intuitive pre and post filtering available on the relaunched platform. Enhanced Corporate Counsel Profiler from Wolters Kluwer The new…

Bringing Neural Nets to the Law  Casetext opened 2020 with the launch of a revolutionary new motion-drafting tool called Compose. Compose dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes lawyers to draft a motion or brief by serving up the arguments and standards appropriate to the motion type in a specific jurisdiction.  Compose also included a powerful new search functionality called “Parallel Search,” which was the first legal research tool to leverage breakthrough technology called transformer-based neural nets.  Parallel Search proved to be so popular with attorneys that in June of 2020 Casetext made that search capability available as a…

Bringing Neural Nets to the Law  Casetext opened 2020 with the launch of a revolutionary new motion-drafting tool called Compose. Compose dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes lawyers to draft a motion or brief by serving up the arguments and standards appropriate to the motion type in a specific jurisdiction.  Compose also included a powerful new search functionality called “Parallel Search,” which was the first legal research tool to leverage breakthrough technology called transformer-based neural nets.  Parallel Search proved to be so popular with attorneys that in June of 2020 Casetext made that search capability available as a…

Today Reynen Court – an innovative software company supported by a consortium of 20 global law firms announced that they had hired law librarian, legal technologist and innovation provocateur Sarah Glassmeyer  for the role of Legal Tech Curator. The press release describes this as ” a  lynchpin role in generating contact and strategy for the Solution Store which is at the heart of the Reynen Court Platform.” Reyen Court allows participating law firms to test innovative, new, cloud based technologies. The platform is designed to speed up the historically, lengthy testing and evaluation time normally associated with the implementation of…

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 Lex Machina. Two responders mentioned a specific reason – they had acquired Westlaw Edge which…