Bloomberg Law CRIV Liaison Meeting

July 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment

June 15, 2022

Attendees:

            Michelle Hook Dewey, CRIV, Board Liaison (Mercer University Law Library)

            Tom Hemstock, CRIV, Vendor Liaison (Albany Law School, Schaffer Law Library)

            Mike Bernier, Bloomberg Law

            Kristyn Hyland, Bloomberg Law

            Vani Ungapen, ALL Executive Director

Prior Business

            None

Current CRIV Member Issues with Bloomberg Law

            None

Mike Bernier and Kristyn Hyland reported on updates and recent changes to Bloomberg Law.

PRACTITIONER TOOLS

  • Bloomberg Law Continues to Enhance its Collection of Practitioner Tools. New content development in this category includes 325+ new Practical Guidance documents so far in 2022.
  • New Tort Defenses Practical Guidance – a companion to our Tort Actions and Tort Damages and Relief coverage – including state-specific content for defenses to claims such as negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, and fraud.
  • State Allocation of Liability Chart Practical Guidance, providing insight into a client’s level of risk in a negligence case. This chart quickly identifies the theories of liability applied by each state and DC.

TRANSACTIONAL TOOLS

Enhancements available in the Transactional Intelligence Center continue and now include:

  • How to Use Transactional Tools & Features Practical Guidance designed to help lawyers unlock the value of our transactional tools and resources, including descriptions of how the tools work, common use cases, pro-tips, and more
  • Marketing & Digital Rights Practical Guidance that provide sample language, drafting tips, and precedent searches to assist Bloomberg Law customers with drafting and negotiating common forms of marketing and engagement agreements that involve digital rights.

LITIGATION TOOLS

  • Market-leading Bloomberg Law Dockets is a mainstay of Bloomberg Law’s litigation offering and has had several recent enhancements.
  • Enhanced dockets search with new filtering options (Resolutions, Class Action, County Courts, and new CSV fields when downloading search results, e.g., nature of suit, cause of action)
  • Enhancing dockets is a key priority for 2022 with more to come.

BOOKS & TREATISES

  • Bloomberg Law will add 40+ new Books & Treatises in July from leading publishers including ABA and James, strengthening the litigation reference library.  A MARC record update in July will cover the changes.  Contact Matthew Newton (mnewton@bloombergindustry.com or Mike Bernier (mbernier@bloombergindustry.com) to be added to our MARC record update distribution list.

PRACTICE AREA COVERAGE

Bloomberg Law continues to strengthen practice area coverage with important enhancements.

Labor & Employment.  More state coverage as a result of user feedback:

Environmental, Social, Governance

Banking & Finance

Tax

  • Redesigned practice group landing coming June 21.
  • Ready-made OnPoints presentations on key tax developments are new, allowing practitioners to use and edit presentations on key tax developments.

LAW SCHOOL INNOVATION PROGRAM

Bloomberg Law has launched a law school innovation program to highlight innovative efforts to teach future lawyers.

Law School Innovation Program identifies and promotes law school programs that are helping students transition successfully to legal practice.  Applications are now open and will close on 9/6/2022.  Bloomberg Law’s law school representatives can answer any questions, and the organizers of the program will be at AALL.

AALL

Bloomberg Law will be present at AALL to highlight what’s new with Bloomberg Law and to answer any questions.  Librarians wishing to sign up for time to meet with a representative of Bloomberg Law before the conference should reach out to Mike Bernier

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CRIV/Lexis May 2016 Call

June 6, 2016 by Leave a Comment

On May 19, 2016 CRIV had its second semi-annual call with LexisNexis. There were no outstanding Requests for Assistance involving LexisNexis products from the membership to discuss.

CRIV inquired about non-disclosure language in LexisNexis licenses so broad that it would prevent libraries from discussing any aspect of the license agreement with CRIV or AALL. CRIV encouraged LexisNexis to adopt more narrowly targeted language to meet its goals, in lieu of language that prevents libraries from bringing potential issues to CRIV or AALL. LexisNexis responded that its non-disclosure language was unlikely to change.

CRIV inquired about LexisNexis’s current offerings of usage statistics, referencing a page on the topic TS-SIS has been curating. LexisNexis was invited to submit more specific information about its usage offerings for this page.

CRIV invited LexisNexis to contact the Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Group and work with them on any MARC records LexisNexis provides.

CRIV reminded LexisNexis of the upcoming Vendor Roundtable at the Annual Meeting in Chicago. The event will be on Sunday, July 17th at 5:15 PM in the Hyatt Regency Acapulco Room.

LexisNexis informed CRIV that its move to agile development is resulting in more frequent updates and releases for LexisAdvance. LexisNexis encourages libraries to take a look at the visualization tool Legislative Outlook. LexisNexis also encourages libraries to keep an eye out for Search Term Maps, which will be rolling out broadly later in the summer.

CRIV will hold another call with LexisNexis in the Fall of 2016.

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CRIV/WoltersKluwer Semiannual Call

February 22, 2016 by Leave a Comment

On December 14th, 2015 CRIV had its first semiannual call with Wolters Kluwer.

There were no outstanding Requests for Advocacy involving WK products from the membership to discuss.

We discussed an ongoing project regarding MARC records. WK is creating MARC records for Intelliconnect and Cheetah. VRAG is working closely with WK to develop what the record should look like.

In terms of upcoming changes and developments- most content is moving over to the new platform, Cheetah. In addition, they recently changed brands. What used to be WK Law and Business will now be Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory Solutions U.S. The legal entity is still CCH Incorporated, but the business unit name has changed. The logo will not change.

WK stressed that they are very much interested in continuing to support AALL programming and educational activities. They would like to be on panels at the Annual Meeting.

Finally, our current liaison, Linda Dutton is retiring in February 2016, and a permanent replacement has not yet been named.

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

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CRIV/Thomson Reuters Semiannual Call

February 4, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The first semi-annual call between CRIV and Thomson Reuters was held on December 15, 2015. In attendance were Lori Hedstrom (Thomson Reuters); Jeff McCoy (Thomson Reuters); Kate Hagan (AALL); and Gilda Chiu (CRIV Vendor Liaison).

The conversation started with discussion about any new products or other issues of interest Thomson Reuters wanted AALL members to know about. Thomson Reuters had nothing concrete to report, though they mentioned there might be some developments coming for WestlawNext and Practical Law during the Spring.

Next some member concerns were addressed. The first was the changes in customer service structure, especially in regards to academic account managers being integrated into the government customer team. Thomson Reuters explained that the decision of merging the academic and government customer service teams was made so that they could widen the access to managers for all of their customers by creating a larger team to even out the distribution of managers instead of having academic managers constantly having to travel to meet with customers. Overall Thomson Reuters believes the move will be beneficial for customers and account managers, especially those that were managing too many accounts.

Another concern was a possible change in the labeling of pocket parts. A librarian mentioned noticing that pockets parts, in her case for the Alabama Code, only contained the volume number in which it should be filed in but not the date of the replacement volume (information typically used to make sure the current volume is being updated and not the superseded volume). Thomson Reuters was not aware of any change in the labeling of pocket parts, also pointing out that the required information would still be on the filing instructions. They will get back to CRIV about whether the missing information is indeed a publishing change or just an error.

The best contact for informing Thomson Reuters about problems with the WestlawNext platform and if Thomson Reuters was going to continue to support indexes for its treatises on the same platform were also discussed. Thomson Reuters said the best way to provide feedback on WestlawNext, whether it is to report errors or recommend improvements, is to contact Product Development through a link at the bottom of any page on WestlawNext called “Improve Westlaw.” A librarian can also call any reference attorney through the dedicated 800 number (1-800-733-2889) and mention his or her concerns and the attorney will forward the comments to Product Development. As for the question about the indexes, Thomson Reuters will absolutely continue to support indexes on WestlawNext. The question came up after a librarian expressed having issues with index links not working and wondering if this meant that Thomson Reuters might be looking to phase out indexes on their platform. Thomson Reuters believes that the problems might have arisen from the migration to the new platform. They will inquire with their team and get back to CRIV about what exactly is the issue with the indexing errors.

As soon as the updates to the above concerns are received they will be added to this post.

The next call is set to be scheduled for some time in late Spring/early Summer 2016.

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CRIV/Bloomberg BNA Semiannual Call

February 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The semi-annual phone call with Bloomberg BNA took place on November 23, 2015. As this was my first call as CRIV Liaison to Bloomberg BNA (BBNA), I wanted a status report on several topics mentioned in Margie Maes’ Vendor Liaison reports: Vendor supplied records, usage statistics, and the 2014 re-organization. In response to my question concerning vendor supplied records, Michael Bernier reiterated that BBNA remains committed to providing free MARC records to the library community and has been responsive to librarian comments regarding their records. At this time, available records include 859 for BBNA products (http://www.bna.com/marc-catalog-records-m17179934026/) and 556 records for Bloomberg Law materials (http://www.bna.com/marc-records-bloomberg-m17179934017/).

BBNA provides, for law school users only, quarterly usage reports by law school packages on the Bloomberg BNA platform including statistics for page views, number of hits, and e-mail summaries sent. If a law school customer does not currently receive these statistics, they should contact their academic BBNA representative. The Bloomberg Law Help Desk can activate client matter billing on Bloomberg Law that allows law firms to track usage by client matter. Lastly, Michael Bernier confirmed that the 2014 reorganization is complete and no new reorganizations are on the horizon. The only upcoming change is that more engagement representatives are being added to the law firm and government markets so that more law firm and government clients may receive training on BBNA resources.

Michael Bernier provided updates on BBNA’s current products and the company’s focus for the immediate future. They are launching vertical slices of Bloomberg Law. This will mean that subscribers will be able to purchase specific libraries of content in areas such as privacy and data security or banking and corporate transactions. Academic customers will still receive access to all content, but other library types will be able to purchase specific content to satisfy the needs of their practice groups.

Other areas of development for BBNA will be a focus on analytics and more specifically law firm representation analytics including which firms represented which company for certain types of lawsuits. In 2016, more analytical tools are expected.

As there are no outstanding member advocacy issues with BBNA, this concluded the agenda for this call. Our next call will be scheduled for late May/early June 2016, however, should a member advocacy request arise, we will speak sooner.

Respectfully submitted by: Diana Jaque

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CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

December 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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.

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