CRIV/LexisNexis® Semiannual Call

The CRIV/LexisNexis® semiannual call took place Friday, December 16th at 12:00 p.m. Central. Attendees on the call were:

Carolyn Bach, Sr. Manager, Knowledge & Research and Faculty Programs

Simon Weierman, Sr. Director, Large Markets

Monique Gonzalez, CRIV Liaison to LexisNexis®

Vani Ungapen, Executive Director of AALL

Michelle Hook Dewey, AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV

The semiannual vendor calls provide an opportunity for the CRIV vendor liaison to discuss and follow-up on any requests for assistance that have come in from AALL members, related to that particular vendor, as well as an opportunity for the vendor representatives to apprise CRIV, and, by extension, the AALL membership, of any recent product updates since the last call. CRIV has not received any requests for assistance pertaining to LexisNexis® in the last six months, so the call consisted of news and product enhancements released between July and December 2022.

New Developments

Lexis+®

  • Released Fact and Issue Finder, a powerful, practice-specific feature empowering litigation researchers to rapidly find resources pertinent to issues, topics and facts. Winner of the LegalTech Breakthrough Award For “Legal Search Solution of the Year”
  • Search experience:
    • Query building tools (connectors and segments) for Search Within
    • Run Search As, a toggle for transparency & control over your query
    • Improved relevance and presentation of  Lexis+ Answers
    • Enhanced segment searching ofNational Labor Relations Board decisions
  • Multiple Shepard’s® enhancements were rolled out, including:
    • Ability to narrow citing decisions by publication status in Shepard’s® Statutes Reports.
    • Extended coverageto over 14,000 TTAB decisions for complete agency coverage
    • 85+ agencies were extracted for citations to cases and statutes—and incorporated as citing decisions in Shepard’s reports.
    • 52 state and territorial administrative code citing sources added to the Shepard’s report.
    • Tennessee Workers Comp Claims and IL Labor Relations Board history connections were completed for the entire collection.
    • Enhanced for Shepardizing™ administrative decisions—citing references will display preview text and links to the cited reference in the full documents that use a parallel citation of the Shepardized™ citation.
  • Expanded tools to improve Document review, including:
    • Court Rule Compare tool enabling customers to compare current and archived versions of federal and state court rules.  
    • Federal & State Legislation Compare feature for single‒click comparison of bill versions.
    • Filings tab in Cases added for easy access to all related court materials corresponding to the case being viewed.
    • Enhanced Copy with Citation to include TX Petition and Writ History as defined by the Greenbook. Shepard’s® histories were added to over 100K Texas Court of Appeals documents in support.
  • Extended Legal News Hub coverage through integration of 40 Mealey’s® Litigation News focused publications, Law360® Real Estate Authority, and FTC Watch™
  • Improved tools for monitoring and leveraging content through Lexis+®:
    • Refined Search Alert form for easier alert setup
    • Ability to sort Work Folders documents by jurisdiction
    • Annotations and Highlights options added to Download dialog for documents saved in folders
    • Improved Alert delivery with the option for full-text document grouping
  • Law School Student Preference Update:   LexisNexis® Widens Lead as Top Research Platform Among Next-Generation Lawyers
  • Coming Soon: More Like This Passage, enabling researchers to identify an important passage in a case law document and with one click find other cases with highly similar language using a highly targeted approach.

Lexis+® & Lexis® – Content Additions

  • Released 32 exclusive Matthew Bender® treatises and guides including Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain & Smart Contract Law, Corbin on Contract Drafting, Corbin on New York Contracts and Dorsaneo & Chandler’s Texas Claims and Defenses.
  • Released 49 licensed treatises from the American Bar Association, American Lawyer Media, state bar associations and Wolters Kluwer, including Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and Their Application (Areeda & Hovenkamp), Fundamentals of Municipal Finance and Employment Law Answer Books.
  • Released Jury Instructions in seven states, extending market-leading coverage to 47 states compared to Westlaw® coverage of 37 states and Fastcase® coverage of 26 states.
  • Added over 127K federal cases, 82K state cases, 539K trial court orders, and 830K brief, pleadings, & motions documents in H2 2022 to our leading primary law collection

Practical Guidance

  • Market Standards, Antitrust module released with 1400+ deals, 40+ specialized deal points with precedent language and market trends data visualizations
  • Improved searching and sorting within Automated Templates
  • A new Construction practice area was launched
  • Expansion of practical guidance in video format with over 375 short, practical videos now available
  • Explore the latest practice insights in our Practical Guidance Journal
  • See more of what’s recently been updated within Practical Guidance in our Issue 2 (August) and Issue 3 (November) Newsletters
  • Coming Soon: Commercial preview of Agreement Analysis— a new document analysis tool that supports transactional attorneys in analyzing, negotiating and finalizing transactional agreements.  

CourtLink®

  • Rollout of CourtLink update Search page designed to be faster and more responsive when entering your search criteria
  • Expanded criminal docket collecting in the U.S. District courts, to automatically collect new proceedings in every docket throughout the day
  • Released coverage for 10 new courts not previously available
  • System updates to improve overall performance & reliability including restored connections with select courts (offline for their own maintenance) impacting access to documents and document delivery through CourtLink
  • Updated the “Last Retrieved” date field for tracking dockets to reflect the most recent successful docket update
  • Added  Document Type filter for more precise search capability and expanded  range of searchable federal docket number formats to include judges initials

Lexis® Verdict & Settlement Analyzer (VSA)

  • Added new filters to narrow your search results including plaintiff age and sex
  • Updated work folder & delivery capabilities consistent with Lexis+®
  • Integration of cases by resolution analytics into Lexis+ when searching Jury Verdicts & Settlements as a preview allowing for deeper insights—available through Verdict & Settlement Analyzer
  • Improvements to the presentation of graphical analytics on VSA
  • Updated user experience for presentation of results to be consistent with Lexis+
  • Improved search relevance, consistent with searching on Lexis+
  • Improvements targeted to improve accessibility to VSA

Lex Machina®

  • Launched State Motion Metrics—taking the next step forward in providing the most accurate, comprehensive and complete litigation analytics on the market by incorporating Legal Analytics for state motion practice (“State Motion Metrics”) into the platform. State Motion Metrics allows users to quickly assess their state motion strategy and easily identify winning arguments.
  • Rollout of legal analytics coverage for a new practice area,Internet Law—adding over 10,000 cases to the Lex Machina® dataset.
  • Legal analytics coverage added for Chapter 11 Proceedings in Bankruptcy Court, providing unparalleled insights into an entirely new U.S. Court system— adding over 115,000 proceedings filed since 2009 under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.
  • Launched multiple industry trend reports (available to non-subscribers)
  • 2022 Employment Litigation Report – While employment case filings declined throughout the pandemic to the lowest number in a decade, COVID-19 cases and damages awards have remained robust
  • 2022 Torts Litigation Report – While torts case filings (excluding mass torts) have remained fairly steady over the past 10 years, motor vehicle and premises liability cases have increased over the same period
  • 2022 Contracts: Commercial Litigation Report – Commercial litigation case filings have declined steadily throughout the last ten years to the lowest number in a decade, while the total amount of damages awarded each year has remained steady
  • 2022 Bankruptcy Report – Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in 2021 dropped to the lowest number in a decade; case filing trends revealed the disparate effects of the pandemic on different Chapter 11 bankruptcies
  • 2022 Surety Bond Litigation Report – Surety bond litigation cases, including Miller Act cases, dropped to the lowest number in a decade in 2021, while total amount of damages awarded remained generally steady over the past ten years.

Law360®

  • Launch of Law360® Pulse Small Law, delivering industry-leading business of law news directly to small law legal professionals to keep them informed.
  • Named the #1 Legal News Source by the ABA Law360 is named the “Leading Fee-Based Online Services Most Preferred for Legal News” and “Leading Fee-Based Online Services Used for Legal News” by the ABA® Legal Technology Survey Report 2022.

Nexis Newsdesk

  • Expansion of Usage Stats – Download Newsletter Usage Data
  • Ability to delete previously added RSS/User Added feeds
  • “Favorites” and “Group Content” sections added to Saved Content panel
  • 3 additional editorially created National Source Lists: U.S. Major Newspapers, UK National Newspapers, and Netherlands National Newspapers
  • Newsletter Edit & Send Changes:   rearrange or remove articles prior to sending

Resources for Legal Information Professionals:

LexisNexis, Lexis, Lexis+, Shepard’s, CourtLink, Lex Machina, Mealey’s and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks of RELX Inc. Law360 is a registered trademark of Portfolio Media, Inc. Matthew Bender is a registered trademark of Matthew Bender & Company, Inc. FTC: Watch is a trademark of MLex Limited. Westlaw is a registered trademark or trademark of Thomson Reuters. Fastcase is a registered trademark of Fastcase.com, Inc. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CRIV/LexisNexis® Semiannual Call

The CRIV/LexisNexis® semiannual call took place Thursday, June 30th, at 12 p.m. Central. Attendees on the call were:

  • Carolyn Bach, Sr. Manager, Knowledge & Research and Faculty Programs
  • Simon Weierman, Sr. Director, Segment Management
  • Ashley Ahlbrand, CRIV Liaison to LexisNexis®
  • Vani Ungapen, Executive Director of AALL
  • Michelle Hook Dewey, AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV

The semiannual vendor calls provide an opportunity for the CRIV vendor liaison to discuss and follow-up on any requests for assistance that have come in from AALL members, related to that particular vendor, as well as an opportunity for the vendor representatives to apprise CRIV, and, by extension, the AALL membership, of any recent product updates since the last call. CRIV has not received any requests for assistance pertaining to LexisNexis® in the last six months, so the call consisted of news and product enhancements, released between January and June 2022.

New Developments

  • First commercial launch of Lexis+® UK to small/mid law customers.
  • Lexis® Create, a new solution designed to surface insights for attorneys while drafting in Microsoft Word, is set for Beta testing in Q3 2022.
  • Acquisition of Contract Lifecycle Management Solution Parley Pro to complement LexisNexis’ industry-leading Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) platform, CounselLink®.
  • API Developer’s Portal a self-service portal that allows law firms and legal departments to integrate unmatched legal data, content and analytics from a variety of LexisNexis® applications and data sources into their existing systems, applications and processes.
  • NetDocuments commercially released “Highlights” powered by LexisNexis® to the small legal market. This is the significant milestone in an 18-month collaboration where LexisNexis enrichments are incorporated directly into NetDocuments’ document management solution.

The Lexis+® Experience

  • Shepard’s History at a Glance: Displays a visual of the cases that impact or are impacted by your shepardized case. Use it to quickly find the cases that tell you whether it is still good law from an appellate history perspective.
  • Ability to filter Shepard’s reports using Motion Type filters on Lexis+.
  • Recommended Secondary articles & resources in association with LexisNexis Headnotes.
  • Hotkeys were enabled in Lexis+ documents for improved accessibility.
  • Codes research: Cited Law Preview to get an advance understanding of cited laws without leaving your current document
  • New Pending Regulations feature to quickly identify and review pending & adopted regulations impacting federal and state administrative codes
  • Merging of ‘sub-content type’ post filter under high level content types to more quickly and easily narrow to results of interest on Lexis+
  • Brief Analysis: new “upload text” feature to get recommendations from cases, practical guidance, treatises or find similar briefs without requiring an entire document. 
  • Access to initiate Brief Analysis directly from a brief, pleading, or motion on Lexis+
  • MLex regulatory news and analysis integrated into Lexis+ Legal News Hub 
  • Support to select and deliver documents the full document page for greater efficiency in the research workflow.
  • Lexis+ Copy with Cite: support for accurate pinpoint citations when a quote is within a footnote.
  • Lexis+ awarded Best AI Enabled Content Solution, 2022 SIIA CODiE Winner
  • Coming soon: Fact & Issue Finder for Lexis+

The Lexis+® and Lexis® Services – Content Additions

  • New caselaw source to US for American Maritime Cases (“AMC”) that includes new AMC cases released by Lexis since the acquisition of the AMC content portfolio in 2020.
  • New caselaw source to Lexis+ for Vaccine Cases in the US Court of Federal Claims.
  • Expanded statute indices with over eight states released and an additional 40 statutory indices targeted for rollout in 2022.
  • 1.4M new trial orders, briefs, pleadings, and motions have been made available year to date.
  • 400K+ state trial documents were added, many from major metropolitan areas in California, Texas, Georgia, and Nevada.
  • Added access to Laws & Regulations for Switzerland & Luxembourg laws, access to Singapore statutes.

Practical Guidance

  • A new Healthcare practice area was launched.
  • Lexis+® Practical Guidance Video Center released with 180 videos guiding users on legal tasks.
  • Usability improvements to eliminate entry of Client ID when utilizing Practical Guidance on Lexis+ (based upon customer preferences for Cost Recovery).
  • New “suggested documents” for quick access to relevant documents when entering a search.
  • See more of what’s new from Practical Guidance in Q1 2022.

The Lexis® CourtLink Service

  • Launched Alaska court coverage and added coverage for thirty new state courts across five states.

Lex Machina®

  • Approximately 400,000 federal courts of appeals cases added in support of the launch of Legal Analytics for federal courts of appeals (“Appellate Analytics”).
  • Launched multiple industry trend reports (available to non-subscribers)

Intelligize®

  • Released their Climate Change Disclosure Report which examined comment letters issued by the SEC to companies both before and after the agency’s Division of Corporate Finance published a sample comment letter on climate change-related disclosure in September 2021, which updated guidance from 2010.

Nexis Newsdesk

Resources for Legal Information Professionals:

LexisNexis® at AALL 2022

Summer Associate Training Resources

Federal Legislative History Research Guide

LexisNexis® War in Ukraine Resource Page

Coverage of the Dobbs decision from Law360®

Lexis+ Certification Program: available for your law firm’s information professionals. Please contact your LexisNexis Knowledge & Research Consultant to learn more.

{LEGALESE}

LexisNexis, Lexis, Lexis+, Shepard’s, CourtLink, Lex Machina, CounselLink, and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks and LexisNexis. Law360 is a registered trademark of Portfolio Media, Inc. Intelligize is a registered trademark of Intelligize, Inc. MLex is a registered trademark of MLex Limited. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Summer Associate & Intern Guidance from Vendors

The three leading legal research vendors – Bloomberg, LexisNexis, and Thomson Reuters (Westlaw) – each offer free online guidance and resources to help law students and new graduates use their products in the legal workplace.

These resources are current for summer 2022 and may be helpful as a complement to on-the-job training or as a refresher on platform-specific research tools and tactics. Consider sending the links below to your students, associates, or interns for their preparation and reference this summer.

Keeping Up with the Vendors – In Their Own Words

Tracking developments in legal information vendors’ products and policies is an important part of many law librarians’ jobs, and it’s a valuable pursuit for keeping current in the profession.

While the major legal database and content providers all offer a variety of access points and formats for news about changes to their platforms and offerings, being aware of them all, let alone connecting with them regularly, can be a challenge.

To help, the list below brings together resources for staying abreast of announcements and product-related communications from Bloomberg, Fastcase, HeinOnline, LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Wolters Kluwer. Be sure to bookmark, subscribe, follow, etc. whichever are useful to you, and/or save this blog post for future reference. Please email me at christensena@wlu.edu if you know of anything missing; I’ll plan to keep it updated.

Bloomberg Law

Fastcase

HeinOnline

LexisNexis

Thomson Reuters Legal / Westlaw

Wolters Kluwer

Legal Podcasts from Law 360

Podcasts are great entertainment for long commutes, road trips while eating lunch, or just for some much-needed downtime. But what happens when you’re tired of true crime podcasts?

Law360 (Lexis) has podcasts!

Right now, Law 360 produces three podcasts – Pro Say (not a typo), The Term, and Legalization. Each episode is about 30-40 minutes long and available via traditional podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher as well as directly via the website here.

Pro Say is “a weekly podcast from Law360, bringing you a quick recap of both the biggest stories and the hidden gems from the world of law. In each episode, hosts Amber McKinney and Alex Lawson are joined by expert guests to bring you inside the newsroom and break down the stories that had us talking.” There are over 200 episodes available as of February 2022.

The Term “is a podcast for the busy U.S. Supreme Court watcher. Give us about 15 minutes each week and we’ll catch you up on all the big action at the nation’s highest court, along with a list of what to watch in the coming sessions.” Right now, there are almost 100 episodes and understandable this podcast will likely become more relevant as controversial cases appear before the Court.

Legalization “explores some of the murky legal scenarios playing out for cannabis businesses across the country. We share first-hand accounts from the businesses and attorneys grappling with an industry that is often legal at the state level but prohibited at the federal level.” It is just starting a second season.

Want to Choose Your Content? LexisNexis Digital Library Is a Solution

Our library subscribes to LexisNexis Digital Library which uses the OverDrive platform for content.

The best thing about this product is that it allows us to select individual titles that we think our students, faculty, alumni, or guests will actually use! We don’t have to buy a huge, expensive package full of titles that we do not want or that will not be used just to get the titles that we do want.

Because we have a health law focus, we’ve chosen a handful of American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) titles for our faculty who do research in health compliance areas. For our students, we have selected Carolina Academic Press textbook and study aid titles that we formerly purchased in print for our Course Reserve collection. For our alums and guest attorneys, we have added LexisNexis New Jersey practice content. And, for all our users who are interested in social justice and other interdisciplinary and non-legal content, we have purchased various monograph titles from the OverDrive Advantage marketplace. 

Like every program, there are pros and opportunities for improvement.

For our library, here are some pros:

  • We can select textbook and study aid titles of strong interest to our students.
  • We can access the Advantage program which allows us to purchase non-legal and interdisciplinary content that OverDrive sells.
  • We can purchase audiobooks from OverDrive, and this allows us to offer a solution to auditory learners and those who take advantage of learning while commuting or exercising.
  • OverDrive offers various lending models: one user, simultaneous user, metered access, etc.
  • Borrowing the ebooks and audiobooks is easy.
  • Highlighting, bookmarking, and annotating books is easy and intuitive.
  • Running usage reports is easy.
  • We can switch content if usage is low.
  • OverDrive and LexisNexis reps are quick to respond and answer questions.
  • There is now a link to the platform via the product switcher in Lexis+ which will allow faculty and students to quickly access content in LexisNexis Digital Library.
  • Most titles are available in OverDrive knowledge base collections for discovery in library catalogs (although, LexisNexis provides a custom title ID to replace the OverDrive title ID).

I’ve identified some potential opportunities…

  • The program is a little different from other programs because while you can select the titles you want in the plan, you also pay for each title individually regardless of bibliographic format. For the serial and integrating resource content, it seems normal to pay each year since the content is updated; it’s a normal renewal. For monographs that do not get updated, you must also renew each year, but you don’t get an extra copy like you would if you paid for a print monograph or ebook (from ebook vendors such as Ebsco or ProQuest) a second time.

But, going back to a pro listed above, you can switch out content if a title is not being used. So, if our users are not using Understanding and Mastering the Bluebook, we can switch it out for a title that we think might be used more. Monitoring use of individual titles is insightful and challenges the traditional thinking that a certain title is “used all the time.” Monitoring usage allows for more selective collection development. For us, at this time, it is still worth it to renew monograph titles each year given the convenience of access.

  • The content is not in pdf. However, the Bluebook (Rules 15.9, 16.8, etc.) provides guidance for citing ebooks and content that is not in pdf.
  • While borrowing ebooks is very easy, returning borrowed ebooks is less intuitive. We’ve drafted user instructions to assist.

In looking at the list of pros and potential opportunities, it is clear to see that there are more pros. During this pandemic, access to digital content is most important to our users so we’re happy that LexisNexis allows us to include individual textbook, study aid, and OverDrive Advantage titles in the package.

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

Held: December 8, 2021, 12:00 p.m. (Eastern).

In attendance:

  • Carolyn Bach, Sr. Manager, Knowledge & Research and Faculty Programs, LexisNexis
  • Simon Weierman, Sr. Director, Segment Management, LexisNexis
  • Vani Ungapen, Executive Director, AALL
  • Michelle Hook Dewey, AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV
  • Ashley Ames Ahlbrand, CRIV Liaison to LexisNexis

This update includes product enhancements released between July and December 2021.

The Lexis+® Experience

  • Improved the search experience on Lexis+ with updates to:
    • Extend the reach of Lexis Answers® to secondary sources
    • Add a new Motion Type filter in briefs, pleadings and motions search results
    • Add support for sorting by TOC order when searching TOC sources
    • Launch the Search Tree for natural language and refine presentation of the Boolean Search Tree
    • Enhance the Search Within Results capability so users can target selected document sections, and add control to include or exclude documents matching the user-provided terms
    • Enhance filtering of Arbitration Decisions by enabling users to filter by a particular arbitrator 
    • Enable the Graphical View of search results (aka Search Term Maps) for an additional nine content types
  • Rolled out multiple enhancements to Shepard’s® Citations Service, including:
    • Shepard’s integration into the Document view for quick access via tabs
    • Shepard’s interactive visualization of the citing decision treatment by jurisdiction or date
    • Additional support for delivery of Shepard’s At Risk indicators with the delivered report
  • Improved upon Brief Analysis through multiple updates, including:
    • Rollout of Judicial Brief Analysis, which enables users to compare up to six documents (three for each side) and receive one comprehensive report of all case law arguments, citations and quotes to help determine accuracy, relevance and argument strength
    • Launch of an integrated Quote Check capability for users to validate that they have quoted primary source materials correctly with the right pin cites for the location of their quotes
    • Integration of expert tips and cases recommended in treatise publications and Practical Guidance through secondary source recommendations
  • Enriched Lexis+ Litigation Analytics coverage through:
    • Addition of new courts from seven new counties in California and Georgia
    • Upgraded existing court coverage to Enhanced level in New York, Florida, Utah, and Wisconsin
    • Updated Practical Guidance interface with a user experience refresh within Lexis+
  • Enhanced the Lexis+ Legal News Hub with smart tabs that customize the experience with user intervention, and added new content sources, including Law360® UK, Law360 Tax Authority, Law360 Employment Authority and Law360 Insurance Authority
  • Launched related secondary source document recommendations based upon the LexisNexis headnote and the case law document the user is viewing
  • Improved the Work Folder experience by enabling users to search within full-text documents saved to folders
  • Enhanced the Negative News feature with LexisNexis Smartindexing Technology™ filters by subject

The Lexis+ and Lexis® Services

  • Extended a multi-year global licensing agreement with The New York Times®, added 300+ publications from Newsbank Inc., and 100+ publications from ProQuest® and the Tribune Content Agency to our news collection
  • Added 1.8M briefs, pleadings, motions, and trial court orders online to expand the leading LexisNexis collection
  • Added new international primary law collections for Syria and Cuba, totaling 27 new countries added in 2021
  • Added Browser Zoom Notification Messages on Lexis and Lexis+ to inform users of the ideal viewing and display experience when utilizing Zoom functions
  • Launched Burton’s Legal Thesaurus on Lexis and Lexis+, giving users access to distillation of  complex legal terms into plain language and offering 14,000 synonyms, legal phrases and associated concepts

Practical Guidance

  • Expanded Market Standards, our solution for analysis of market trends, to include new deals; it now contains more than 37,000 M&A deals, 4,900 employment agreements and 2,700 credit agreements
  • Released Clause filters, enabling users to find on-point clauses more quickly
  • Rolled out new content including:
    • NY Employee Handbook Supplement, a sizable collection of annotated NY and NYC employee handbook policies for attorneys to use when developing handbooks for employers
    • Key estate planning templates for all U.S. states and territories (290 total templates) in Trusts & Estates
    • A new Civil Litigation Brief Writing Fundamentals video in Practical Guidance, enabling users to get up to speed on the essential elements of successful brief writing in a visually engaging and user-friendly format; includes related content links for deeper guidance on motion practice
  • Launched nine new litigation process maps in the Civil Litigation practice area for federal court litigation, including visualizations orienting users to where in the litigation lifecycle their selected phase fits; this resource curates essential content on a litigation phase or subphase, all in one place, and also helps users anticipate and plan for workflow needs further in the litigation process
  • Refreshed the Practical Guidance Author Center to align the look and feel and add new author search functionality, as well as new links to authors’ law firm webpages.

Lexis® Search Advantage

  • Lexis Search Advantage | Litigation—Enhanced the search experience including support for advanced search, configurable pre-search filters and results page, expanded sources when selecting entities, and support for Single Sign On (SSO)
  • Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional—added support for Single Sign On (SSO)
  • Updated the Dockets & Documents page for easier review of recent downloads and dockets in a table format, including more details for each entry
  • Updated the Courts selection menu, enabling users to select their targeted courts more easily
  • Released new courts (California and Illinois) and reactivated dozens of other individual state courts that were temporarily offline due to changes in the state court system

Lex Machina® Capabilities

  • Released the new False Claims Module (October), which provides Legal Analytics for litigation involving the False Claims Act (FCA), as well as related claims under state law; false claims litigation centers on the allegations of fraud against the government by a person or company

Intelligize® Tools and Content

  • Released two new tools for researching Public Companies’ Performance on ESG Issues:
    • A new Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) application that brings together a wide range of ESG-related content for individual companies or peer groups to help companies, advisors and researchers evaluate legal and regulatory risks, devise disclosure strategies and tell their ESG stories effectively to broad audiences
    • A new ESG tab added to the Company Insights offering to help customers (1) streamline ESG disclosure research by paring down complex topics with a simple point and click and (2) drill deeper into graphical representations of trending ESG topics and customize ESG analytics to compare against selected peer companies

MLex® Regulatory Insights

  • Launched new content called “Future Mobility” to follow major regulatory trends impacting the transport industry
  • Added topic tagging that enables more precise search and alert results

CaseMap Cloud Case Analysis Tools

  • Now available in the cloud for user access from anywhere at any time to collaborate, organize, visualize and analyze case facts, issues and documents

Nexis Newsdesk

  • Released a new, modern interface that aligns with the look and feel of Lexis+ and improves the user navigation and search experience
  • Enhanced the Insights display with features especially helpful for business development—pop-ups with details on spikes in coverage, integration of topic and sentiment visualization, summary cards, geo maps revealing global spread and ability to download Insights PDF
  • Enhanced the Saved Content Panel, including the ability to add an article to a search and ability for admins to add and manage groups of users here
  • Enhanced sharing functionality, providing the ability to share multiple newsletters at once and improvements to clipping options
  • Updated Nexis Newsdesk Mobile App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nexis-newsdesk-mobile/id1567099763
  • Won SIIA CODiE™ Award for best Content Search & Discovery Solution for the fifth consecutive year

Nexis Diligence

  • Released an updated visual design to improve the product’s ease of use and address customer feedback
  • Launched a new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Custom News Search capability

LexisNexis® Dossier

  • Enhanced to offer comprehensive reports on 350+ million public and private companies as a result of integration of CA.com content

New Resources:

{LEGALESE}

LexisNexis, Lexis, Lexis+, Lexis Answers, Shepard’s, CourtLink, CaseMap, Lex Machina, Intelligize and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks and LexisNexis Smartindexing Technology is a trademark of RELX Inc. Law360 is a registered trademark of Portfolio Media, Inc. Intelligize is a registered trademark of Intelligize, Inc. MLex is a registered trademark of MLex Limited. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Lexis+ “Legal News Hub” Tracks Headlines, Trends from Law360

In case you missed it (like me, admittedly, until a chat with our academic account rep this week), LexisNexis has recently incorporated a valuable feature to Lexis+: Legal News Hub.

Accessible from the tool and task icons at the left of the Lexis+ homepage, the Legal News Hub provides a continuously updated stream of headlines and content from all of Law360’s topical news areas and Law360 Pulse, the specialized news platform that focuses on the business of law.

It is available to all Lexis+ subscribers, and those who additionally subscribe to the Law360 platforms can view entire articles in either the Legal News Hub or Law360 environments.

The Lexis+ Legal News Hub provides access to:

  • Top Stories: The main page shows headlines and concise summaries for the top 20 recent articles across all Law360 and Law360 Pulse areas.
  • Trending: The Trending section lists the articles currently receiving the most views on Law360 and Law360 Pulse.
  • Practice Areas and Industries: News coverage for all 76 topics, industries, and practice and geographical areas provided by Law360 and Law360 Pulse.
  • Searching: Users may search all Legal News Hub content for the most recent 20 stories that match their search terms.

While the Legal News Hub most clearly enhances the Lexis+ platform for those without access to the Law360 and Law360 Pulse products, all users can benefit from this interface in an age when headlines—and a brief summary to boot—are often enough to stay up to speed on developments across the legal landscape.

For more information, see the LexisNexis website, their July press release, or their short YouTube video introduction to the Legal News Hub.

A screenshot of the Legal News Hub, accessible from the icon at the left of the Lexis+ homepage.

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

Conference call took place June 11 at 11:00 a.m. EDT.

Participants:

  • Carolyn Bach – Senior Manager, Librarian Relations and Faculty Programs, LexisNexis
  • Simon Weierman – Sr. Director Segment Management, LexisNexis
  • Ashley Ahlbrand – CRIV Liaison to LexisNexis
  • Karen Selden – AALL CRIV Board Liaison
  • Vani Ungapen – AALL Executive Director

This update includes product enhancements released between January – June of 2021.

Lexis+™

  • Lexis+™ Litigation Analytics released in late January as part of the Lexis+ ecosystem. Lexis+ users now have access to a powerful toolset for litigation analytics in a single, integrated workflow providing precise, relevant, data-driven insights from Lex Machina® and Lexis® CourtLink® to quickly evaluate or compare judges, courts and counsel.
  • Shepard’s® At Risk helps ensure users are citing the best authority for a point of law. It was extended beyond the full-text case opinion to display in other context across Lexis+, including Brief Analysis and Shepard’s® reports.
  • Brief Analysis was included at Lexis+ launch and offers powerful insights by analyzing legal briefs (users or their opponent’s) and providing recommendations to craft stronger legal strategies and drive winning outcomes. This year to date, multiple updates have been rolled out to further improve Brief Analysis, including embedding Shepard’s analysis in the “Cited in your Document” tab, enabling users to filter recommendations for specific legal concepts and jurisdictions, and launching enhanced PDF processing capabilities.
  • A recent case study was published about Brief Analysis by AWS, LexisNexis® Builds AI-Powered Legal Brief Analysis Tool Using AWS, which highlights the collaboration between Lexis Labs and AWS through a “Working Backwards” innovation approach to develop a capability which improves productivity and decision-making for our customers.
  • Other recent Lexis+ updates:
    • The experience dock choice a user makes (Research, Practical Guidance, Brief Analysis or Litigation Analytics) now remains as the default across sessions, so users can pick up where they left off.
    • In a similar manner, the Explore Content area of Lexis+ that enables users to browse our collections of content and resources, was enhanced to persist the last tab utilized so users can pick up where they left off across research sessions.
    • Annotations and highlights are now made visible when a user returns to a document without requiring the document be saved to a Lexis+ work folder.
    • The Lexis Answers® tool is now made available when searching Practical Guidance materials on Lexis+.
    • The full-text document display across our content collection was updated to improve the presentation, focusing on readability and navigation.

Lexis® and Lexis+

  • Law360® Pulse, which launched in January and provides unparalleled business of law coverage, was integrated for access to archived articles through Lexis and Lexis+.
  • Our International Primary Law collection, already leading in coverage from beyond the U.S., was expanded to include laws and regulations through machine translations and original-language source documents. The initial wave began with Latin American countries (January), with later additions of Germany and Indonesia (April) and then Spain (May). Sixteen new countries have been added within 2021, increasing our total collection to 25 plus the European Union.
  • The LexisNexis® Public Records user interface was refreshed to align with Lexis and Lexis+.
  • The Trial Court Orders content collection was expanded by over 100K documents through March. 
  • Search Relevance enhancements were launched for Statutes & Legislation and case law searching, which will improve the relevance of results for Lexis and Lexis+ users.

Practical Guidance

  • The approach to search was updated by combining results across previously separate content categories, leading to more relevant results when searching Practical Guidance.
  • An updated presentation of the Practical Guidance home page and starting practice area pages was launched to all users to improve discovery of important resources and simplify product navigation.

Context

  • A new module of Context, Context Attorney Analytics was released in March, which applies the powerful language analytics capabilities of Context to attorney data. Our solution provides unique insights into the records and experience of attorneys and uncovers the precise arguments they have made in prior motions and briefs, helping attorneys neutralize their arguments and strategy.
  • Context Judges and Courts for Canada was released, expanding our powerful language analytics capabilities to international use.

Law360® and Law360 Pulse

  • Navigational support was added between Law360.com, Law360 Pulse and the Law360 Authority products through the left-hand navigation panel on each website.
  • Law360.com search was extended across products. Users on Law360.com can now search across all content and filter results, helping reduce research time. Content exclusive to Law360 Pulse, Law360 Tax Authority and Law360 Employment Authority is labeled as exclusive.
  • Our mobile applications for iPhone® and Android® devices now include all Law360 brands for on-the-go coverage. Law360 Enterprise and Platform customers have access to the Law360, Law360 Tax Authority, Law360 Employment Authority and Law360 UK products in the app. The Law360 app can be downloaded at the Google Play™ store or Apple® App Store.

InterAction®

Lexis® for Microsoft® Office

  • Texas Greenbook citation formatting rules on Lexis for Microsoft Office have been updated to the 14th edition, along with enhanced Lexis for Microsoft Office Canada McGill’s formatting rules for legislative citations.

Nexis Newsdesk™

Multiple enhancements have been made to Nexis Newsdesk newsletter management and analytics capabilities.

  • The Nexis Newsdesk Insights view helps surface key events and trends in a graphical display without running a full analysis.
    • Read the top stories for each search.
    • Identify the most active sources and their sentiment.
    • See which people and companies are dominating the conversation.
    • View topics word cloud and sentiment charts now in the Insights view.
  • Dashboards are now customizable to resize or reorder the widgets.
  • Sources cards reveal key information about the publication.
  • Journalist articles panel quickly displays more articles from a selected author.
  • One tab is used for newsletter management options.
  • Playable clips are included for TV/radio (for accounts with the TV/Radio Broadcast add-on).
  • For accounts with the Premium Social Media Package:
    • Volume column and pause control for Twitter streams
    • Full-length tweets now visible in the search results.

Summer Associates

The new Summer Associate web page includes a wealth of resources for training and guidance, including career advice from legal professionals, practice area resources, essential legal research skills and more.

AALL

  • LexisNexis is proud to be a Platinum sponsor of the 2021 AALL Annual Conference. Please join us in the Virtual Exhibit Hall on July 19, plus additional sessions on July 20 – 22, to learn about the most recent product updates and announcements. View offerings here.  In addition, LexisNexis is sponsoring the following conference-related events. We’re looking forward to connecting with you at the conference.
    • July 21 at 2 p.m. ET Program Session: “What’s in a Name? Expanding the Concept of Libraries and Librarians in the 21st Century,” Panel Discussion

LexisNexis, Lexis, CourtLink, Shepard’s, Lexis Answers, InterAction, Lex Machina and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks, and Lexis+ and Nexis Newsdesk are trademarks of RELX Inc. Law360 is a registered trademark of Portfolio Media, Inc. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2021 LexisNexis.

Prepare to Practice, New and Notable: The Ever-Growing Collection of Practice Ready Tools from Bloomberg Law, Lexis, and Westlaw

prepare to practice graphic

At this time of the year, as the spring semester winds down (how is that already possible?!?), my mind always seems to wander to thoughts of law students heading off to their summer jobs, putting their legal analysis, writing, and research skills to the test in a real-world setting. These thoughts then naturally drift to the many practice-focused products legal information vendors offer. In this post, I highlight the new and notable products from Bloomberg Law, Lexis, and Westlaw.

Bloomberg Law

The first development that caught my eye was Bloomberg Law’s new In Focus: Core Skills – Litigation feature in the Litigation Intelligence Center. This resource begins with quick links to core research tools, such as their docket search, court opinions search, and litigation analytics, and includes a box of links to litigation-related reference materials, such as the ABA’s “How to Succeed as a Trial Lawyer.” But the other thing that struck me about this resource were the visual aids, including two flowcharts, one on research and writing and one on document review; and an interesting graphic about the variety of Bloomberg Law resources available across the platform. Legal research databases have so much rich content today that it can be a challenge to know what all is available; while I am sure this graphic doesn’t cover everything in Bloomberg Law, it is an interesting method of introducing users to the types of resources and tools at their disposal.

While we’re at it, I’d like to give a shout-out, in general, to the entire In Focus series on Bloomberg Law. These are great information portals on an array of timely topics in law and law practice. Most recently I’ve found the In Focus: Lawyer Well-Being resource of particular interest, with sample surveys and forms for the workplace, quick links to state lawyer assistance programs, and other news and analysis on the subject of wellness in the legal profession.

The In Focus series is by no means the only practice-focused tool in Bloomberg Law. From the Brief Analyzer to the Draft Analyzer, Practical Guidance to Practice Centers, not to mention the Certification Courses law students can take, there are many, many resources users can take advantage of to build their practical skills.

Lexis+

Two newer practice-focused tools in Lexis+ are Practical Guidance and Brief Analysis, both off to the left of the Lexis+ home page. In Practical Guidance, you can search or browse by practice area, task, jurisdiction, or content type (here, content types include documents such as checklists, practice notes, and clauses, rather than statutes, cases, and secondary sources). Additional tools here include everything from state comparison tools to smart forms to training videos.

Brief Analysis, similar to Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer, scans a user’s work product and uses the Lexis+ research platform to seek out any additional or alternative recommended authority based on the arguments made in the uploaded document. Brief Analysis even scans the uploaded document for viruses!

Again, these are two of the more recent, but certainly not the only, practice-focused tools from LexisNexis. With their own set of trainings and certification courses, not to mention their many practice-focused add-on products, such as Lexis Tax and Products Liability Navigator, there are a variety of tools here too that students might use to become more efficient in their legal research and analysis.

Westlaw Edge

Westlaw’s best known practice-focused suite of tools, of course, is Practical Law, with its checklists, practice notes, sample forms, and more, covering a variety of legal subjects and specific law tasks. In the student Law School Survival Guide, the Practical Law editors have even put together a series of podcast episodes about careers in various areas of law. Like Bloomberg Law and Lexis, Westlaw too has training videos and certifications, from basic to advanced research skills, transactional to litigation skills, and even a specific and separate prepare to practice certification. Similar to Lexis’s Brief Analysis and Bloomberg Law’s Brief Analyzer, Westlaw’s Quick Check tool helps the user analyze their own legal document by suggesting additional or alternative legal authority.

Whether a student will be working in a transactional or litigation environment this summer, whether they prefer, or will be restricted to the use of, Bloomberg Law, Lexis, or Westlaw, all three offer an ever-growing variety of practice-ready tools and certifications to help them build their skills and make a great impression with their summer employer.

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

Date: January 14, 2021, 10:00 a.m. EST

Participants:

  • Carolyn Bach, Senior Manager, Librarian Relations & Faculty Programs, LexisNexis
  • Simon Weierman, Senior Director, Segment Management, LexisNexis
  • Vani Ungapen, AALL Executive Director
  • Karen Selden, AALL CRIV Board Liaison
  • Ashley Ahlbrand, CRIV LexisNexis Liaison

Product Brand Updates: Rebranding and streamlining of several existing product names, making it easier for customers to identify and navigate LexisNexis® products (September 2020):

Lexis+™:

Commercial product launch of Lexis+ (September 2020). Released to the law school market in July, and commercial markets in September

  • Feature-rich, premium legal solution that unites advanced research, Practical Guidance, Brief Analysis and enhanced tools with a modern user experience to deliver data-driven insights, greater efficiency and better outcomes
  • Dramatic visual styling and simplified layout designed to set a new standard in ease of use 
  • Striking imagery, bold colors and typography to help improve readability, reduce visual “clutter” and emphasize essential information and tasks
  • New Experience Dock that creates an integrated starting point for core legal tasks and enables seamless switching between product experiences and workflows
  • New and intuitive features, such as Search Tree, Code Compare and Shepard’s® At Risk, to make it easy for practitioners to access the information and insights they need, control their search experience and provide better counsel
  • Delivers on the demand for legal solutions that look and work more like the modern technology products attorneys use in their personal lives

Multiple incremental updates to Lexis+ following initial commercial market rollout (October through December 2020)

  • New “light/dark” home page toggle option
  • Code Compare feature updates with expanded coverage, additional display options and delivery support
  • Shepard’s At Risk enhancements that display within Shepard’s reports
  • Brief Analysis enhancements including the Shepard’s Preview, At Risk indicator and Cited in Your Document tab, updated with more information and additional delivery options
  • Work folders enhancements to enable document highlights and annotations without saving to a folder
  • Search relevance improvements launched to drive more relevant case law results
  • Lexis Answers® feature updates to recognize implicit questions and offer answers curated from Practical Guidance

Lexis+ and Lexis®: Incremental platform updates applicable to Lexis+ and Lexis

  • New Exclusion Filter added to News search results to filter out “noise” from news, including stock stories, non-business news and obituaries 
  • 861K new trial court cases, briefs, pleadings and motions added online 
  • Acquired American Maritime Cases, a specialized collection of maritime and admiralty cases and AMC’s in-depth index of maritime topics, to become the exclusive provider moving forward 

Law360® updates:

  •  Launch of Law360 Employment Authority (December 2020): Law360 Employment Authority, offering actionable intelligence for employment lawyers through exclusive insights, in-depth analysis and deep news coverage. Covers three key areas in employment law: discrimination, wage and hour and labor. Each section offering breaking news, timely features and thoughtful analyses for readers who specialize in labor and employment law
  • My Law360, enabling customization for  Law360 & Law360® Pulse news and analysis experience

Law360 Pulse: a new product offering that released in early January 2021

  • Brand-new Law360 Pulse business-of-law news service, combining the award-winning journalism and research of Law360 with powerful data and analytics from Lexis+ to deliver unparalleled coverage, timely insights and industry intelligence to help law firms and legal departments succeed   
  • Complements the industry-leading Law360 practice-of-law coverage, giving legal professionals a single best source for comprehensive legal news with LexisNexis

Practical Guidance:

  • Launch of new Market Standards for M&A solutions (October, 2020): the new Market Standards for M&A solution enables searching, comparison and analysis of publicly filed M&A deals, helping users jump from insight to action with the most current and comprehensive M&A coverage—and the interactive analytics needed to make more data-driven decisions.
  • Multiple incremental updates to the Practical Guidance product to aid users in locating critical guidance, improving their document drafting experience and sharing greater insights with users:
  • Enabled alerts on Practical Guidance at the document level to track changes in the law that affect their practice
  • Enhanced forms on Practical Guidance, enabling users to download forms with in-line drafting notes and alternate/optional clauses so they can better engage with annotated forms
  • Updates to improve discoverability and navigation of International Practical Guidance content
  • Refined Practical Guidance search experience to offer a combined search result that surfaces all Practical Guidance content in a single place
  • Launched Clause Finder on Practical Guidance to help users quickly research and find relevant clauses by Agreement Type, Point of View (i.e., buyer/seller) and Jurisdiction
  • Launched the Survey of Commercial Lease Terms in Practical Guidance, providing up-to-date intelligence about the commercial leasing market and giving real estate attorneys a clear view of market standards and trends to aid them in lease negotiations

Courtlink®: Multiple product updates to improve CourtLink ease of use

  • Updated alert and track result display in table format with additional view and delivery options
  • Support to save favorite courts for searching to simplify and streamline docket research
  • Search improvements, including a unified search form, for a simplified search experience
  • Support added to edit the criteria of existing alerts
  • Improved Summary Alert email presentation for easier review and deeper insight

Lexis® Search Advantage: Multiple updates to drive greater insights and efficiency for users

  • Released Context and Lexis Search Advantage integration, enabling Lexis Search Advantage users to link from references within firm documents to judges, attorneys and expert witnesses into Context to gather insight and analytics on the entity
  • Rolled out new motion type and sub-type document classifications to enable precise search and filtering of firm documents within Lexis Search Advantage | Litigation
  • Refined the landing and results pages of Lexis Search Advantage | Litigation to support customization and research integration

Lexis® Verdict & Settlement Analyzer: New Lexis Verdict & Settlement Analyzer search filters including Filter by Judge, Filter by Attorney and improved Practice Area and Topics filtering

InterAction®: Updates to this business development solution

  • Launch of “Strategic Data” subscription tier
  • Embedded analytics—visualizations on process status and integrated views of relationships
  • Nexis Newsdesk™ embedded into user interface for easy view of public news information curated to contacts
  • Partner integrations with Foundation Software (integrated experience management) and Bunnell Idea Group (video coaching on business development)

Nexis Newsdesk: Multiple enhancements to improve administrator ease of use and efficiency of relevant information distribution through Nexis Newsdesk, improved readability for end-users

  • Launch of entity cards to help ensure accuracy of news results by matching to companies
  • Simplified process to add topics to searches within Nexis Newsdesk
  • Refreshed Manage Sources page for administrative ease of use
  • Updated clipping flow for selecting content
  • Ability to access saved content from landing page
  • New Trends Chart for additional insights
  • New Post-Search Filter to avoid duplicates
  • Article load date replaced with publish date per user feedback 
  • Readability of newsletters through mobile devices improved through mobile friendly newsletter theme
  • Self-service support for managing Twitter feeds within Nexis Newsdesk

Web Newsletter Easy Subscribe to permit readers to opt-in for email delivery when using a web link

New Librarian Resources:

  • Competitive Intelligence Toolkit: a comprehensive resource, created with the assistance of CI specialists, designed to help law librarians and other legal professionals complete CI research more efficiently as it relates to the LexisNexis® products they have access to. The kit Includes helpful checklists for public companies, private companies, industries, attorneys, law firms and people
  • LexisNexis® InfoPro site: contains a variety of updated resources for legal information professionals, including research tips, webinars, newsletter content and product information

New from Lexis: Litigation Analytics

If the title of this post makes you think I’ve been living under a rock for a few years, I completely understand. To say that litigation analytics are new to Lexis would be highly inaccurate — LexisNexis has a vast suite of analytics tools, Litigation Profile Suite and Context, to name just a couple, not to mention the case law analytics available through Ravel Law‘s visualization technology — but their newest analytics product, Litigation Analytics, stands out in a couple of key ways.

First, Litigation Analytics is an analytics tool within the Lexis+ research platform, rather than a standalone product. From the Lexis+ homepage, users access the tool from the left-hand menu.

Lexis+ Litigation Analytics - example with Jane Magnus-Stinson of the Southern District of Indiana.

Second, Litigation Analytics offers vastly different information than their next most recent analytics product, Context, which launched a few years ago. Litigation Analytics harnesses the power of Lex Machina, a legal analytics company LexisNexis acquired in 2017, to provide a bird’s-eye view of the caseloads of particular judges, courts, attorneys, or firms. This includes everything from the overall number of cases per year, case types, length of cases, and damages. You also have the ability to compare analytics with another court, judge, firm, or attorney. Context, on the other hand, takes a deeper dive into the behavior of judges, courts, and firms, looking at activity at the motion level, identifying most-cited opinions, most-cited judges, and most-cited language. (My favorite feature is their analytics on expert witnesses. But I digress….)

Lexis+ Litigation Analytics - comparative analytics example with Jane Magnus Stinson of the Southern District of Indiana, compared to the court as a whole.

To dive deeper into the analytics in Litigation Analytics, you can link out to the Lex Machina platform. If you do not have a subscription to Lex Machina, there are advantages and limitations here. The advantage is that you can still look at the data on Lex Machina, even without a subscription to the product, but the limitation is that you cannot do much with that data; it is in read-only form, so you cannot drill down deeper into the data to learn more, without that separate subscription to Lex Machina (see Image 3 as a reference).

Lex Machina read only mode for non-subscribers

Comparisons will certainly be measured in the future between Lexis+ Litigation Analytics and similar products from competitors, but within the LexisNexis suite of products, Litigation Analytics is certainly a powerful new tool, and the fact that it is incorporated into the Lexis+ research suite is an added bonus. If you have access to this product, be sure to try it out. With Casemaker and Fastcase’s recent merger announcement and their intent to focus on analytics as well, it’s clear that litigation analytics will continue to be the development future for legal research platforms. Lexis+ Litigation Analytics is just the next step.

For more write-ups on Litigation Analytics, check out Frank Ready’s article on Law.com , Jean O’Grady’s post on Dewey B Strategic, and Bob Ambrogi’s post on LawSites.

Lexis Provides Information on its Dealings with ICE

Today, Lexis sent an email to Law Faculty to explain its relationship with ICE in response to the #NoTechForICE petition. One of the issues that has been prevalent in the past few years is the interaction that the legal research vendors have with ICE, as the agency has cracked down on illegal immigrants during the Trump Administration. The email noted that all federal agencies can purchase access to LexisNexis products under the contract the company has with the federal government. According to the email, ICE has purchased some ancillary public records services, which account for approximately 10% of the contracts reported in the petition. The email goes on, stating “[w]e are not providing jail-booking data to ICE and are not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist in their efforts (emphasis in original). The email also notes that LexisNexis has a contract with ICE, which provides core legal research services to detainees including cases, statutes, secondary materials, bilingual user guides, and immigration forms. The email also stated that LexisNexis does not sell subscriber user information to ICE or any other government agency.

Intelligize to Lexis

Last month Lexis announced their intention to acquire privately-held Intelligize, Inc.  This move will provide Lexis users additional tools for Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) research. In 2013, Lexis acquired Securities Mosaic and integrated it into the Lexis platform. The combination of Lexis Securities Mosaic and Intelligize will create a robust securities and M&A research tool.

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

On December 1 CRIV had its first semiannual call with LexisNexis. There were no outstanding Requests for Advocacy involving Lexis products from the membership to discuss. CRIV asked LexisNexis for clarification on who the primary contact should be for AALL members on any issues involving LexisNexis products and services outside the core Lexis.com and LexisAdvance. These include, but are not limited to, recent Lexis acquisitions (e.g. Lex Machina and Law360) and Lexis products primarily marketed overseas (e.g. JurisClasseur and LexisNexis Africa). CRIV was advised that AALL members should contact Library Relations Manager Cindy Spohr for all of these LexisNexis products and services. CRIV will update its Vendor Contact List to reflect this.

CRIV inquired about the timing of the transition from Lexis.com to LexisAdvance for federal government libraries. On the call Lexis confirmed that only a few federal agencies were unable to transition to LexisAdvance. Subsequently, on December 9, Lexis was able to confirm that all federal government libraries were eligible to transition to LexisAdvance. Any libraries with questions about this process should contact their LexisNexis Client Manager.

CRIV also asked for some clarification on the latest LexisNexis/ALM deal. LexisNexis has assured CRIV that the deal represents an extension of the status quo for most LexisNexis and ALM customers. Only the AmLaw200 libraries will see a significant change, which is that LexisNexis will be taking over for ALM as the Sales Team for ALM news products. CRIV will ensure its Vendor Contact List reflects this, as well.

LexisNexis wanted to ensure CRIV was aware of the recent LexisNexis acquisition of both MLex and Lex Machina. LexisNexis also wanted CRIV and the AALL membership to know that its releases for LexisAdvance will be more frequent, and that there will also be more minor updates between the major releases. These include the entire news archive being released in the first quarter of 2016, as well as better deduplication of news results. Finally, LexisNexis requested CRIV remind the membership of LexisNexis’s InfoPro newsletters, to keep libraries and customers up-to-date on the latest LexisNexis developments.

CRIV will hold another call with LexisNexis in Spring of 2016.