This message is being posted on behalf of ALM’s Beckie Hubertus:

Thank you for raising the issue that our communication process regarding updates to our most recent Am Law 100 and 200 reports failed to notify subscribers immediately of errors that occurred in those reports.   I apologize for any frustration and confusion caused by this incident.

On May 4^th we issued an update to the Am Law 100 report that was posted on our data base.  Unfortunately another error was discovered in the VPL numbers that were reported for 4 firms on the Am Law 200 report that was published on our ALM Intelligence database and Legal Compass.  A revision was made to the Am Law 200 report to correct this error as well.

The data printed in The American Lawyer magazine was not impacted by any of these issues.

At this time all subscribers and purchasers have been notified of this issue and the reports that are available on our database and website are up to date.

Again I apologize for any concern and confusion this has caused and appreciate the issue being brought to light in order for us to address the issue and correct our communication process.

Sincerely,

Beckie Hubertus
Director of Research

CRIV Liaison and Bloomberg BNA Semi-Annual Meeting

June 5, 2017 at 2PM Eastern

Attendance and Introductions:

Present on the call were: Mike Bernier, Director of Library Relations, Bloomberg BNA; Diana Jaque, CRIV liaison; Rick Montella, Executive VP, Commercial Strategy, Bloomberg BNA; and Joe Breda, Executive VP, Product, Bloomberg BNA.

New Bloomberg BNA Products, Policies, and Other Issues of Interest to AALL Members

Joe Breda summarized major developments to Bloomberg Law since the last meeting. April had a big release which was the most comprehensive release to Bloomberg Law in five years. The changes impact all user segments. The major impetus was to adjust the interface to match how users use the product. The number of menus was trimmed down. Navigation now is on shown on the left side of the screen allowing users to see more content. Labels were changed to be more descriptive and the search bar has more functionality. It is now possible to navigate to any function from the navigation bar. For example, it is possible to access docket searching or find a book directly from the search bar. Searching itself has been improved. The product now supports natural language searching, but Boolean searches are still fully supported. After running a search, users will see results sorted by content types such as primary, secondary sources, and regulations. The group agreed this will be especially helpful for law students. The search bar is dynamic and adjusts to the source that is being searched and tries to hone in on where you are in the product.

The Labor & Employment Practice Center was also updated in April with new content and functionality. It includes an activity heat map state and local for news and shows what is trending. As of now, there are enhanced practice centers in labor & employment, tax, privacy and data security, intellectual property, and employee benefits. More enhanced practice centers, including health care, will be coming in 2018.

Bloomberg BNA has received very specific feedback on some of the April changes including changes to docket searching. The search forms were simplified, and docket power users have asked for some parts of the old search form to be returned. In response to feedback, Bloomberg BNA is vetting additional changes with users and a solution will be implemented soon.

Rick Montella reported that two separate customer contact and support teams have existed in separate locations since the 2014 merger of Bloomberg Law into Bloomberg BNA.  In the next few weeks, these two teams will come together in Bloomberg BNA’s Arlington, Virginia headquarters, all sitting together in order better collaborate to enhance the customer experience.

For the academic market, Mike Bernier reinforced that the training focus will be on second and third year students with online training available for all students and staff. Bloomberg BNA will still provide 1L activation codes on registration cards in print or by PDF or via spreadsheets depending on the schools’ preference.

Requests for Assistance/Member Advocacy Issues (Diana)

There were no member requests for assistance received since our last meeting.

Questions/Updates (Diana)

Diana inquired if there is a current date to sunset BNA.com. Bloomberg BNA responded that no date has been set. The Bloomberg BNA web site continues to be updated in real time for the foreseeable future.

CRIV Vendor Roundtable: Sunday, July 16^th at 1PM

Meeting ended at approximately 2:30 PM Eastern

Today, LexisNexis announced their acquisition of Ravel Law. Read the LexisNexis press release here.

Tonya Knudson from Law Journal Press contacted me recently and let me know that now LJP will publish their pricing and release schedules via their new blog: http://lawjournalpress.com/blog

CRIV Thomson Reuters Vendor Liaison Call

January 26, 2017 – 10 AM PST

The participants on the call were Gilda Chiu (CRIV Vendor Liaison to Thomson Reuters) and Lori Hedstrom (National Manager of Library Relations for Thomson Reuters).  The following were the items that were discussed:

Issues and Concerns

1. Changes in the shipping of bound volumes – a member asked to inquire about any changes to the shipping schedule for bound volumes.  They have noticed that shipping has changed from a more regular schedule (a couple of times every week) to once a month, with deliveries spanning about a week.  They have found it to be very disruptive to their workflow and would like to know if there has been a delivery schedule change and whether this is a temporary or permanent change.

LH – This change was implemented in mid-2015.  It supports our continuous improvement efforts in driving internal efficiencies by reducing material handling and eliminating operations, and provided additional savings in shipping costs.  It also addressed customer feedback regarding package handling by combining multiple shipments into a single ship group so customers did not have to handle packages multiple times.

2. Accurate Westlaw Records in Ex Libris Community Zone – Mari Cheney from Lewis and Clark Law School submitted an issue to CRIV about the inaccurate records available for Westlaw through the Ex Libris Community Zone. She has been in contact with both Thomson Reuters and Ex Libris about the issue since October 2015 and has received no solution from either party. She compiled a timeline for all of her interactions with both companies about the issue, which was sent to Thomson Reuters before the call.  Mari is not the only librarian that wants this resolved.  Several other librarians have reached out wanting a solution to this issue.  I compiled the various emails received for Thomson Reuters to review before the call.  Given how many librarians have been vocal about wanting a solution to this issue, I stressed to Lori the need for this issue to be resolved as soon as possible.

LH – Prior to receipt of the call agenda I was unaware of this issue, but in my initial investigation I have identified two teams with whom I will work to solve this concern, in partnership with Zach Gose, Academic Regional Field Manager, who has been involved.  I will provide progress updates to Gilda Chiu for publication in the CRIV Blog, and our final report will appear in the next print issue of the CRIV Sheet.

3. Recent or Forthcoming Changes/Developments Regarding Thomson Reuters Products/Policies

Westlaw – Fall 2016

We released Statutes for Research Recommendations, Best Portion Navigation, Superbrowse for Regulations, and Court Level sorting.  Account Team members and Librarian Relations Managers can provide training on any of these elements members would like to explore.

Westlaw – February 2017

Secondary Sources are essential for providing guidance and analysis in every area of the law.  A redesign of these resources on Westlaw allow users to secure a strong starting point find leading caselaw, and cite widely respected sources as persuasive authority in arguments to the court.  This effort was undertaken to optimize the online user experience and address customer feedback by simplifying how users find, access, and navigate this content with new filter and sort options:

• Table of Contents – full browsable TOC available on both the publication’s landing page & when viewing a document
• Reading Mode – aggregate multiple documents into a single display
• Scope Screen – additional relevant information including a description of the content and links to other relevant secondary sources
• Pinpoint Linking for Rutter Group publications – Go directly to the cited paragraph in these popular California publications

Westlaw – Coming Spring 2017

We anticipate having statutes recommendations in Folder Analysis and continue our iterative product development and maintenance process, making small changes as customer requests are collected and ranked for prioritization.

Practical Law – in progress 2017

• Continued expansion of jurisdictional content
  • Concentrating on top jurisdictions
  • Developing state-specific versions of key resources in each practice area
• Cross Practice Collections – Life Sciences, Financial Services
• New Subtopic – Out of Court Restructurings (Bankruptcy)
• New What’s Market databases
• Enhancements to Practical Law & Practice Point
  • Tasks in Practice Point search results
  • Start-Ups & Small Business page

Business Law Center research library integration

CRIV Liaison and Bloomberg BNA Semi-Annual Meeting

February 9, 2017 at 2PM Eastern

Attendance and Introductions:

Present on the call were: Mike Bernier, Director of Library Relations, Bloomberg BNA; Kate Hagan, Executive Director, AALL;  Brian Houk, VP and Head of Sales – Legal, Bloomberg BNA; Diana Jaque, CRIV liaison; and Rick Montella, Executive VP, Commercial Strategy, Bloomberg BNA

New Bloomberg BNA Products, Policies, and Other Issues of Interest to AALL Members

Brian Houk: It has been nearly six years since Bloomberg acquired BNA. Since that time, there have been lots of enhancements to the Bloomberg Law platform.  Eventually, Bloomberg BNA expects to get to one platform. Last year, more Bloomberg BNA practice materials were moved to Bloomberg Law to create new Practice Centers. The Practice Centers include improvements in search and navigation. This spring, Bloomberg Law will launch natural language searching. In addition, there is full integration with primary law content within the Bloomberg Law Practice Centers. Currently, there are plans to build out more workflow and visualization tools within each Practice Center. Examples include: chart builders and checklists for drafting. There is also enhanced research trail capability and more alerts and news items. Right now, Bloomberg BNA is concentrating on increased content and functionality on Bloomberg Law. Moving into 2017, early in the second quarter, customers will see the evolution of labor and employment as well as intellectual property material. Healthcare publications are slated for improvement later this year.

Mike Bernier:   The Business Intelligence Center on Bloomberg Law has been enhanced.  The Center brings together many pieces of Bloomberg Law all housed in one area. Within that, it is possible to monitor various industries or sectors on a custom dashboard. Many firms and companies have intranets; this is meant to be similar and is entirely customizable and can be shared with other end users. In addition, at no upcharge to customers, Judicial Analytics has been added to Bloomberg Law. This includes representational analytics and should assist firms in business development and litigation strategies.

In the academic market, Mike indicated that Bloomberg BNA has launched a series of webinars and continues to issue a quarterly newsletter. Within the academic market, the focus has shifted from 1Ls to upper division students. 1L students will primarily be trained with webinars that they can take when it is easiest for them. Upper division student sessions will focus on prepare to practice and summer associate training. Bloomberg Law is shifting from a focus on 1Ls to advanced legal research and clinics and will no longer use student representatives. The general emphasis has shifted to helping to create practice ready graduates. The contractual requirement to teach 1Ls Bloomberg Law in exchange for a discount no longer applies but the discounts given continue to apply. Effective immediately, law firm and law school relationship managers have been merged into one unit called Client Success so that law firm expertise can be shared with academic customers.

Finally, there are expanded MARC records for Bloomberg Law. Concerning the records, they are open to communicating with catalogers and VRAG members directly. They have been contacted by various catalogers and have worked to incorporate suggestions into the records.

Update from AALL (Kate Hagan)

AALL hopes to open registration for the annual meeting by the end of next week. Bloomberg Law is a Gold Sponsor. A special committee is being convened to examine both the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers and the Procurement Toolkit and Code of Best Practices for Licensing Electronic Resources. A committee will be appointed soon. Expect it to take six to twelve months for changes. The chair is undetermined yet. Mike Bernier asked Kate what the attendee target is for the Annual Meeting. Kate responded that it will be 1500 and that the keynote speaker will be announced soon.

Requests for Assistance/Member Advocacy Issues (Diana & Bloomberg BNA Staff)

Diana again shared with Bloomberg BNA the following anonymous member assistance request:

Description of the Issue:  BBNA is raising its prices astronomically for its tax vertical, and requiring firms that wish to get its well- regarded Tax Management Portfolios in any media to subscribe practice group-wide to one of its tax libraries. That is, to obtain the Portfolios digitally or in print, BBNA requires subscribing to content many of its customers do not want this content is available on other platforms that function quite ably. It has been suggested that the behavior might qualify as an illegal tying under antitrust law. Note: previously, firms could subscribe solely to the Portfolios in print, digitally or both. BBNA further threatens that it may withhold subscriptions to the BNA Daily Tax Reporter to libraries that do not subscribe to its tax library. The price increases are certainly in the double digits. The cost of these increases are almost unconscionable.

Steps Library Has Taken to Resolve this Issue:  This is not an issue for a single firm or library. Firms with large tax practices seem to feel coerced to purchase BBNA’s tax products solely because the Portfolios are valued.

Bloomberg BNA Response: Rick Montella

Most large firms purchase Bloomberg BNA products on a practice group basis.  This allows for better workflows and yields a lower effective price per user.  As Bloomberg BNA prepares for the move from Resource Centers to Practice Centers on Bloomberg Law, they found that only a small number of firms, less than 20%, were just selecting a few individuals as designated users.  Bloomberg BNA feels that the fair way to price their resources is at the practice group level.  As a result, those with just a few seats will potentially see a significant price increase.  Their suggestion is for these firms to work with Bloomberg BNA to discuss multi-year contracts in which prices are more gradually adjusted upwards.  Over 50% of firms are selecting multi-year options.  In regards to print subscriptions, Bloomberg BNA will continue to offer Bloomberg BNA Books, but will not be offering new print subscriptions for all other products.  Bloomberg BNA stated that electronic products provide more value and timeliness.  Although they are not investing in print, there are no current plans to sunset existing print subscriptions.  They have received little or no pushback for not selling new print titles.  In response to a question about small firm libraries and their concerns, they responded to have all questions sent to Bloomberg BNA account representative or directly to Mike Bernier (mbernier@bna.com)

In addition, Bloomberg BNA furnished the following statement:

Bloomberg BNA is in the process of rolling out new “Practice Centers on Bloomberg Law,” which are the next-generation versions of Bloomberg BNA Resource Centers. The new Practice Centers include features and functionality long requested in the Resource Centers, including enhanced search, customizable alerting, a full collection of case law, and a citator.

Over the past year Bloomberg BNA has launched a new Tax Practice Center and a Privacy and Data Security product  – both of which have been well received by clients – to better serve the Legal market.  Clients of these Resource Centers are being upgraded to the Bloomberg BNA Practice Centers on Bloomberg Law as their subscriptions renew.

Recognizing that all firms are different, Bloomberg BNA’s approach — as always — is to partner with clients to help them realize the increased value of these enhancements and to provide them with options.

Additional Bloomberg BNA Practice Centers will be released throughout 2017, leveraging the upgraded features and functionality of Bloomberg Law, while providing the familiar, value-driven content our clients have come to rely on from Bloomberg BNA.

Diana inquired if there is a current plan to sunset BNA.com, Bloomberg BNA responded that no date has been set. The Bloomberg BNA web site continues to be updated in real time for the foreseeable future.  

Meeting ended at 2:38 PM Eastern

It was announced on February 1st that Jane Sánchez has been appointed as the Law Librarian of Congress effective February 5th. The press release is available here.

Just a reminder for academic law libraries, Lexis.com will be retiring on 12/31/16. Non-academic customers will be upgraded and will transition within the next twelve months. Click here for further information.

Bloomberg BNA Semi-Annual Phone Meeting

June 9, 2016

I. Present on call:

Mike Bernier: Director of Library Relations, BBNA

Joe Breda: Executive Vice President for Product, BBNA

Kate Hagan: Executive Director, AALL

Diana Jaque, CRIV Liaison to BBNA

Rick Montella, Executive Vice President for Commercial Operations, BBNA

II. Scheduling of Future Calls:

Our next call will be in late 2016 with the 2016/17 CRIV BBNA Liaison.

III. New Bloomberg BNA Products, Policies, and Other Issues of Interest to AALL Members:

There are some exciting new products launching within the next month and substantial enhancements coming this fall!

A new vertical focusing on Tax is coming to Bloomberg Law. It will include a new user interface that was developed after numerous interviews with users and incorporates the results from eye tracking studies. Content will include the Tax Management Portfolios as well as federal and state primary law as well as the complete library of tax content currently available on BNA.com. In addition, the resource consists of historical versions of the tax code back to 1913 as well as a comprehensive collection of agency materials and approximately 15,000 international tax treaty documents. This tax resource has been built as a vertical and is available for sale as a stand-alone product, but will be included in Bloomberg Law subscriptions as well at no additional charge.

In addition, Bloomberg BNA is revamping their Labor and Employment Practice Center on Bloomberg Law and making its content more robust. This fall, all content from the Labor and Employment Law Resource Center will appear on Bloomberg Law as well as additional local labor ordinances and public employee resources.

The Business Development Center on Bloomberg Law is being streamlined and users will be able to build customized dashboards and populate it with widgets covering news, dockets, deals and more. Dashboards can be published and shared firmwide.

Within representation analytics, they also have introduced a jurisdiction view. By the end of the year, judicial analytics will also be available and users will be able to see how judges rule on certain types of motions and, for example, to see how long matters are pending before a particular judge.

IV. Updates from AALL:

Kate Hagan: Summary of recent and upcoming AALL activities.

Most AALL staff members are busy at this time with preparations for the AALL Annual Meeting. The good news is that we are already ahead of the attendee numbers for the past three years. The headquarters hotel is already sold out, but two nearby hotels have been added. Thanks to BBNA for their support of the annual meeting.

“Defining Value: Law Library Best Practices” is an AALL digital publication that is now under production, to be released in the fall of 2016.

AALL is currently recruiting for a Manager, Content Strategy, and is in the interview process now.

V. Requests for Assistance/Member Advocacy Issues: 12/1/15-present:

There were no requests for assistance or member advocacy issues with BBNA since our last phone call.

VI. Questions/Updates:

A. BNA.com: Any plans to sunset?

At this point, most development efforts are focused on Bloomberg Law. The creation of Bloomberg Law verticals continues in different practice areas and allows end users to buy just the material that meets a practice group’s needs. As time goes on, there will be a content gap between the legacy BNA.com legal products and the Bloomberg Law platform. There is no date given for sunsetting BNA.com. Content will be also be available on dual platforms for enough time for users to be adequately trained on the new platform with significant notice to all affected parties. Subscribers to Bloomberg BNA’s Privacy and Data Security Resource Center Law who renew after September 1 will receive Bloomberg Law: Privacy and Data Security as part of their subscription with dual access for a time to be determined. The CRIV liaison strongly encouraged that BBNA users be given at least one year’s notice prior to sunsetting BNA.com.

B. Revisiting: MARC records:

The Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Working Group for TS-SIS has a page concerning the MARC records supplied by BBNA. BBNA will contact VRAG if content needs to be updated.

C. Revisiting: Usage Statistics:

Ashley Moye has compiled a web page listing how to access usage reports for existing legal databases. BBNA to contact Ashley to make corrections as both Bloomberg BNA and BNA are listed.

VII. CRIV Roundtable:

Just a reminder that the CRIV Roundtable will be held on Sunday July 17th at 5:15-6:15 PM in the Hyatt Acapulco room. Topic is still to be announced, but it will focus on the Vendor’s design process for new electronic products.

This week, there were two major announcements from the U.S. Government Publishing Office Director Davita Vance-Cooks. In the first, Vance-Cooks announced Mary Alice Baish’s retirement after five years as the GPO Superintendent of Documents. Congratulations Mary Alice! After May 1st, longtime GPO staffer Laurie Hall will step into the position of Acting Superintendent of Documents.

It’s that time of year, Wolters Kluwer has now posted their annual report.