Check out the 2015 Fastcase 50 – “…entrepreneurs, innovators, and trailblazers — people who have charted a new course for the delivery of legal services. In law firms – including some of the nation’s largest – with new delivery models, legal tech startups, legal publishers, academia, and the judiciary, these pioneers are giving the world a first look at what’s next for law and technology.”

http://www.fastcase.com/fastcase50-winners-2015/

I am finally digging out the piles of professional reading from my desk. I found this helpful article in last month’s Spectrum about working with vendors.

Tips from the Trenches: Best Practices for Working with Vendors” by Jaye A. H. Lapchet,

Click to access best-practices.pdf

Check out the survey results at Dewey B Strategic –  http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com/2015/03/start-stop-survey-results-products-out.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DeweyBStrategic+%28Dewey+B+Strategic%29

From the LOC press release:

Congress.gov Offers Users New Alert System

Beginning today, the free legislative information website Congress.gov offers users a new optional email-alerts system that makes tracking legislative action even easier. Users can elect to receive email alerts for tracking:

• A specific bill in the current Congress: Receive an email when there are updates to a specific bill (new cosponsors, committee action, vote taken, etc.); emails are sent once a day if there has been a change in a particular bill’s status since the previous day.
• A specific member’s legislative activity: Receive an email when a specific member introduces or cosponsors a bill; emails are sent once a day if a member has introduced or cosponsored a bill since the previous day.
• Congressional Record: Receive an email as soon as a new issue of the Congressional Record is available on Congress.gov.

The alerts system is a new feature available to anyone who creates a free account on the Congress.gov site. Creating an account also enables users to save searches. Create an account and sign up for alerts at congress.gov/account.

Congress.gov is the official source for federal legislative information. A collaboration among the Library of Congress, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Government Publishing Office, Congress.gov is a free resource that provides searchable access to bill status and summary, bill text, member profiles, the Congressional Record, committee reports, direct links from bills to cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, legislative-process videos, committee profile pages and historic access reaching back as far as 1973.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-023.html?loclr=rssloc

As seen on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog today:

LexisNexis representatives are sending out notices that they are now the exclusive provider of The New York Times content for the legal market. For those of you that are keeping score, this adds to LexisNexis’ exclusive content with Factiva (which includes The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Service), and ALM content. It would seem that LexisNexis is doubling-down on the news content area.

See full post here: http://www.geeklawblog.com/2015/01/lexis-gains-exclusive-legal-information.html

Check out the new post on the Dewey B Strategic blog – In 2014 Change Was the Only Constant In The Legal Publishing Leadership. Jean O’Grady discusses Bloomberg, LexisNexis, Intelligize, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer.

http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com/2014/12/in-2014-change-was-only-constant-in.html

Robert Ambrogi provides a summary of law technology news from the last few weeks.

http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2014/12/news-round.html

Read about:

TL NewsWire Top 10 and 25 Products of 2015

Blawggie Awards

new Nexis

Thomson Reuters Firm Central

Sony Digital Paper

Modria.com‘s ODR platform

Check out the new blog post from Dewey B Strategic. Jean O’Grady discusses Bloomberg’s new online bankruptcy treatise – which is NOT an e-book.

http://deweybstrategic.blogspot.com/2014/12/toss-pocket-parts-here-comes-streaming.html

See post by Robert Ambrogi on his blog http://www.lawsitesblog.com/. He discusses http://lawreviewcommons.com/ – a site where you can access over 200 law reviews.

http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2014/11/largest-free-collection-law-reviews-web.html

Take a look at a new article in Information Today.

“Library Technology Forecast for 2015 and Beyond” by Stephanie Handy

The author discusses

• Relentless Consolidation
• Linked Data Opportunities
• Mobile
• 3D Printing and Makerspaces
• Technology to Enhance the Physical Library Experience

http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/dec14/Breeding–Library-Technology-Forecast-for-2015-and-Beyond.shtml

From the Law Library of Congress blog:

This is a guest post by Ann Hemmens, legal reference librarian at the Law Library of Congress. 

Through an agreement with the Library of Congress, the publisher William S. Hein & Co., Inc. has generously allowed the Law Library of Congress to offer free online access to historical U.S. legal materials from HeinOnline.  These titles are available through the Library’s web portal, Guide to Law Online: U.S. Federal, and include:

• United States Code 1925-1988 (includes content up to 1993)
  • From Guide to Law Online: United States Law
• United States Reports v. 1-542 (1754-2004)
  • From Guide to Law Online: United States Judiciary
• Code of Federal Regulations (1938-1995)
  • From Guide to Law Online: Executive
• Federal Register v. 1-58 (1936-1993)
  • From Guide to Law Online: Executive

These collections are browseable.  For example, to locate the 1982 version of the Bankruptcy code in Title 11 of the U.S. Code you could select the year (1982) and then Title number (11) to retrieve the material.

http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/10/free-public-access-to-federal-materials-on-guide-to-law-online/

CRIV has been forwarding PACER issues to the AALL Government Relations Office in an effort to try to address concerns with their Administative Office. If you have anything you’d like to share about problems you are having with PACER, please email Emily Feltron – efeltren@aall.org.