Have you seen the new Westlaw?

About two weeks ago, Thomson Reuters released a new version of Westlaw. It’s called Westlaw Precision, and they say the focus is on precision in search. They invested a lot in adding metadata to their source documents (e.g., judicial opinions) to increase that search precision. Other noteworthy additions are new KeyCite features, like Cited With (i.e., citing proximity), which notes cases that are frequently cited together, even if those cases don’t cite each other, and Overruled in Part, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you have ever taught law students about citators, this latter KeyCite feature should sound pretty exciting to you. It could solve a lot of problems in the new attorney’s understanding of what a red flag really means.

So this new launch is exciting, and if you haven’t already seen a demo, it is almost certainly coming your way. Since so many other blogs and legal news sources have already reported on or reviewed this new product, I doubt I could add much that hasn’t already been said. Given that CRIV is not in the business of promoting the products of legal information vendors, it is probably important to let other people say it anyway. Therefore, if you are looking for reports or reviews of this new product, below is a roundup of blog posts about Westlaw Precision that came out on release day.

LawSites – “Thomson Reuters Unveils Next Generation of Westlaw, Aiming to Make Legal Research Results More Precise”

Dewey B Strategic – “Westlaw Precision Launches With Promise to Cut Lawyer Research Time in Half”

Attorney at Work – “Westlaw Precision: Next-Generation Legal Research With a Human Touch”

Legal Insider – “Thomson Reuters unveils Westlaw Precision, with potential to ‘halve’ research time”

Review-it: Yelp for Law Libraries

Have you heard of Review-it? Review-it won the 2021 AALL Innovation Showcase in three categories: government, law firm, and law school.

Lindsey Carpino, Legal Content Services Supervisor at BakerHostetler, and Annie Mentkowski, Agency Librarian with the United States Railroad Retirement Board Library, submitted the idea.

As a person who works in collections, I think this product looks fantastic! It is a crowd-sourced review tool that is similar to Yelp. It allows customers to provide anonymous feedback, both positive and negative.

There is an analytics dashboard that allows users to filter by vendor, constituency size (firm size/law school size), legal area (transactional, litigation, or general), or content type (case law, ebook, news/alert services). Users can rate based on satisfaction, customer service, ease of use, and cost.

At some point, the creators foresee having a subscription service add-on where subscribers would also receive quarterly or year-end reports and access to more data. They would also like to add more search and filter features and are hoping to hire a web developer soon to take the website to the next level.

The product is still being beta-tested but Lindsey and Annie plan to officially launch in the spring. Watch for an email!

To learn more, check out the LawSites blog post by Bob Ambrogi.