Vendor Liaisons and Requests for Assistance

May 23, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Another week in May, and we continue highlighting the CRIV website and the tools available there for the AALL membership. This week’s focus is on resources established for addressing specific vendor relations issues — CRIV’s Vendor Liaisons, and the Request for Assistance Form.

Vendor Liaisons

The Vendor Liaisons were established by the Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV) to maintain a channel of communication between AALL and the four largest vendors of legal information resources. These four vendors were chosen because they have the most customers among the AALL membership: Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and WoltersKluwer. Each year the CRIV Chair determines the assignment of a member of the committee to each vendor. Since CRIV membership is three years, often a vendor liaison is appointed in their second year on the committee, and the assignment will continue into their third year. This helps with continuity of relationships and institutional memory.

Each Vendor Liaison meets twice per year with their assigned vendor. Each vendor typically assigns its own employee contact to communicate with the liaisons and coordinate the semi-annual meetings, which typically take place in May/June and November/December. When there are issues of interest to the CRIV Advocacy Subcommittee, or when there have been Requests for Assistance submitted by the membership, these topics are added to the agenda for the next Vendor Liaison meeting. The meetings also usually include updates from the vendor about new products, new features, changes to their business practices, and anything else they would like to inform the membership about. The AALL Executive Director and the CRIV Board Liaison also attend these meetings. Notes about the meeting are shared with the AALL Board and published on the CRIV Blog and in the quarterly CRIV Sheet.

Members are welcome to contact Vendor Liaisons with questions or issues they would like to propose for the semi-annual meetings. You can also use Vendor Liaisons as a channel for providing comments or feedback to the “big four” information vendors.

Request for Assistance Form

The Request for Assistance Form (RAF) is available on the CRIV website, and serves as a conduit for members to document their disputes with any legal information vendor and request the aid of the committee in achieving a resolution. Ideally, a person considering using this form would contact a member of CRIV to discuss their problem, especially if the issue is time-sensitive, but anyone can use the form at any time, for any issue.

The RAF asks you to describe your issue and the actions you have taken to attempt to resolve it on your own. Everyone has disputes with a vendor from time to time, and it is our own responsibility to work them out; however, when there is an impasse, or when a vendor fails to respond to an issue (or does so unfairly), this is when the committee can attempt to assist. Use the form to explain the issue and what has happened so far. Someone from CRIV will respond to your request for assistance and discuss options with you for moving forward. The committee does not promise to fix everyone’s problems with vendors! But they will try to assist with finding a solution. Sometimes merely filing the request for assistance will get things moving toward a satisfactory resolution.

Up next week — The CRIV Blog!

Filed Under: Legal vendors Tagged With: ,

CRIV / Bloomberg Law Semiannual Call

February 23, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Jeanne Frazier Price
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Participants: Jeanne Frazier Price (CRIV Liaison to Bloomberg Law), Lauren Kaplan (Head of Strategy, Bloomberg Law), Michelle Hook Dewey (AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV) & Ross Pendley (Customer Experience Manager, Bloomberg Law)

Updates from Bloomberg Law

Mike Bernier, former Director of Library Relations at Bloomberg Law, had long served as Bloomberg’s liaison to CRIV. Mike retired at the end of November 2022. While we very much miss Mike’s helpfulness, good nature, and kindness, we look forward to working with Lauren and Ross.

The update on Bloomberg Law products centered on (1) improvements in findability and accessibility of materials on Bloomberg; (2) enhancements to docket information and the discoverability of information about dockets and the documents in them; (3) additions to practical guidance resources; and (iv) an increased presence on the part of Bloomberg Law in trending issues important to the legal community. Highlights from Bloomberg Law follow.

Improvements in Findability/Accessibility

  • Users can now search by phrase within a document, rather than having to sift through appearances of the individual words that make up the phrase
  • Sorting options have improved
  • Recommendations based on past use are suggested

Docket and Litigation Enhancements

  • New courts added (additional state and local courts; Puerto Rico Court of First Instance) and some progress on lifting access restrictions in other courts
  • New filtering options for search results (e.g., resolution, settlement noted, class action, county court)
  • Patent Trial and Appeal Board cases can now be filtered by inter partes review, covered business method, post-grant review
  • Improved docket search functionality from the initial search option
  • New fields for filtering within docket search results: case outcome, case settlement, potential class action, case status, case length in days
  • Causes of Action field and complaint summaries added to Docket Alerts for federal district court cases

Practical Guidance Improvements

  • Labor & Employment
    • New customized chart-builder functionality for local paid leave and local minimum wage information
    • Enhanced practical guidance on pay equity
    • Updated 8th edition of ABA-jointly published The Developing Labor Law: The Board, the Courts, and the National Labor Relations Act
    • Additions to resources on employee immigration issues, including docket tracking and updated practical guidance on employee hiring
  • Transactional Drafting Tools
    • Additions of different types of agreements to the Draft Analyzer
    • Additions to sample contract clauses to cover trending issues related to, among other things, supply-chain challenges
  • Environmental, Social, and Governance Issues
    • New toolkit for the health industry, including specific information focused on drug retailers, health care delivery and manager care
    • New toolkit for the manufacturing industry, including specialized guidance for companies engaging in mining, oil and gas activities, electronics-related activities, and technology
  • Privacy and Data Security
    • Updated home page and enhanced alert features
    • Enhancements to functionality for building state bill proposal searches for biometric and consumer privacy initiatives
    • Enhanced access to information on Edgar filings and transactional precedents, dockets and court opinions, state privacy resources, international materials, and federal statutes, regulations, and agency materials
    • Enhanced client alerts related to the General Data Protection Regulation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  • Banking and Finance
    • New practice pages on fintech compliance and the UCC
    • Updated practice center features including new state banking and finance regulation and federal banking and finance regulation trackers, each with alerting and filtering functionality
    • Improvements to state and federal securities coverage and enhancements to the functionality of the Rule 506 Form D Filings Chart Builder
  • Emerging Issues
    • Three new In Focus features
      • One that enables discovery of A.I.-related information and documents across practice areas, including an interactive state map linking to a comparison table of A.I.-related legislation and regulations
      • A second focusing on federal and state developments in abortion law arising out of the Dobbs decision
      • And another on pay transparency at state and local levels

Engagement in Current Issues

Bloomberg continues its support of both:

  • The Law School Innovation Program which identifies and honors law schools and faculty that implement programming designed to advance new methodologies in teaching
  • The DEI Framework which recognizes law firms that meet standardized and transparent criteria in measuring diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Requests for Assistance

Since the last liaison call, CRIV had received only one request for assistance involving Bloomberg products. That request related to the sometimes unavailability of downloads from particular dockets; users would receive an error message to the effect that the particular document required courier retrieval (which was inaccurate – the document was available for download on PACER). Bloomberg had acknowledged the problem but had shared no timetable for resolution. Similar concerns had been voiced on the law library directors listserv. Mike Bernier was contacted, investigated the problem, and quickly got back in touch with both the CRIV liaison and the librarian who had submitted the request. The problem, which had to do with multi-part pleadings in particular courts, was identified and largely fixed. The requestor described Mike’s responsiveness and help as “fantastic.”

Questions from CRIV

The call concluded with questions raised by the CRIV liaison. First, with respect to print materials, Bloomberg continues to publish only tax materials in print. There are no current plans to change that approach. As to the availability of stand-alone access to the ABA/Bloomberg Law Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct, Bloomberg representatives believed that such access is available and intend to follow up with additional information. Some concerns were raised about the difficulty of accessing Bloomberg News / Bloomberg Terminal articles in the Bloomberg Law platform. Lauren and Ross acknowledged that this was a known issue, that improvements were underway, and that, in the meantime, there were work-arounds. Finally, the Bloomberg representatives were asked about the reception to the changes in access and pricing for Pacer materials for academic customers that were instituted some time ago in order to curb some unexpectedly high use. Lauren and Ross suggested that those changes seem to now be fairly well-accepted among the academic user community.

Filed Under: CRIV General, updates, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , ,

CRIV / Thomson Reuters Semiannual Call

February 23, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Elizabeth Outler
eResources Librarian
LAC Group

Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Participants: Elizabeth Outler (CRIV Liaison to Thomson Reuters), Mark Baker (Director of Product Management, Thomson Reuters), Blythe McCoy (Thomson Reuters Information Management Consultant), Michelle Hook Dewey (AALL Executive Board Liaison to CRIV)

Thomson Reuters provided an overview of their new platform, Westlaw Precision.

  • Thomson Reuters developed Westlaw Precision because legal research still takes a lot of time and lawyers are often worried they’ve missed something important.
    • Searches inevitably miss relevant documents due to language variation because courts use different terms than your search to refer to the same concept.
    • How to improve research outcomes and time spent for researchers?
    • Addition of new Precision Attributes to improve case law research in Westlaw Precision: legal issues and outcomes, facts, motions and outcomes, causes of action, party types.
    • New and intuitive classification systems to use these attributes for searching, browsing results, and filtering.
  • Added 250 attorneys to editorial staff and trained them to capture the Precision Attributes from cases (in selected topics for the first phase rollout of Westlaw Precision).
    • Machines still can’t do it at the level of quality and reliability needed.
    • Attorney-editor tagging followed by extensive quality control process.
  • New Browse Boxes in search result display help researchers quickly and confidently determine whether to read each case – Browse Box includes legal issue and outcome, material facts from the decision, causes of action and motion types (with outcome) from the decision.
  • Build a Precision Search by selecting issues and facts in the Precision Search template (on the home page), or run a search in the main search box and then use the new Precision filters to limit your result to cases with your issue, facts, and outcome.
    • Can also use Precision filters to assist with issue-spotting (helpful for law students or more junior attorneys).
  • Launched with 8 topics (Antitrust, Commercial Law, Employment Law, Federal Civil Procedure, Federal Class Actions, Federal Discovery and Evidence, Federal Remedies, and Securities Law); post-launch released 3 more: Insurance, Arbitration and Real Estate. State Civil Procedure coming soon.
  • Back to 2010 for all published cases in each topic, plus older leading cases (frequently cited).
  • Results from a large test involving over 100 attorneys showed that Westlaw Precision users were twice as fast at finding relevant cases compared to Westlaw Edge.
  • Significant quality improvements – 90% of participants said Westlaw Precision helped them find cases they might not have found otherwise.
  • Rollout to law schools in January.
  • Developers are very interested in feedback from users.

Additional features available in Westlaw Precision rollout:

  • KeyCite Cited With – what other cases are cited alongside my case?
    • Adjust how closely together the cases are cited.
    • Citing relationship filter – allows you to filter out cases that don’t cite your case or are cited by your case.
  • KeyCite Overruled in Part – attempts to solve the “red flag problem,” where a red flag makes a case look like bad law just because one point was overruled.
    • Helps navigate directly to that point of law and highlights the operative language so you don’t have to hunt for it.
  • Graphical view of research history
    • Helps navigate research history so you can reconstruct your steps.
    • Highlights documents where you spent a lot of time or returned multiple times.
  • Keep list
    • Each item in search result you can bookmark to add to your list (up to 50).
    • Remains across research sessions – move to folders if you want to organize or retain.
  • Hide details
    • Click and it will minimize the info displayed in search results so that you can tell you already looked at the case.
  • Outline builder
    • Create a research outline in Westlaw and drag language from a case or other document into it.
    • Can submit it to Quick Check and find related case law.
    • Can export to Word.
Filed Under: CRIV General, Legal vendors, updates, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , ,

CRIV/LexisNexis® Semiannual Call

January 9, 2023 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Legal vendors Tagged With: ,

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

Filed Under: Legal vendors, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , ,

CRIV/LexisNexis® Semiannual Call

July 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Legal vendors, updates Tagged With: , , ,

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

December 20, 2021 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: updates, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , , ,

CRIV-Thomson Reuters Bi-Annual Liaison Call

October 4, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Conference call took place on Tuesday June 22, 2021 at 11:00 AM ET.

Participants:

  • Deborah Heller – CRIV Thomson Reuters Liaison
  • Vani Ungapen – AALL Executive Director
  • Karen Selden – AALL CRIV Board Liaison
  • Kim Hurley – Information Management Advisor at Thomson Reuters
  • Rachel Torgerson – Customer Success Strategist at Thomson Reuters
  • Rachel Beithon, Product Developer, Litigation Analytics
  • Zane Wright – Sr. Product Developer
  • Zena Applebaum – Director Professional & Corporate Segments
  • Gia Norris, Director, Product Portfolio Management

Agenda

  • Westlaw Edge Litigation Analytics Enhancements – Damages  
    • Added in November 2020
    • As of March 2021, Damages has been added as an option on litigation analytics
      • Can view monetary damages and attorney fees and costs
      • Monetary Damages include: Compensatory Damages, Interest, Liquidated Damages, Punitive Damages, Settlement & Statutory Damages
      • Attorney Fees & Costs include Litigation Costs & Expenses
    • Analytics added in a new delivery method around the end of February that allows you to get all the tabs together in a customized report.
  • Quick Check Enhancements
    • Improved option to analyze opponent’s work
      • Contrary authority identification
        • Helps researchers quickly find weaknesses in an opponent’s arguments by clearly identifying new cases that are contrary to their arguments
        • Locates cases that may be helpful in arguing against the opponent’s filing and prioritizes them in the results. Within Quick Check, researchers can easily compare procedural information about the analyzed document with details of the recommended cases, and quickly review tags indicating when a recommended case originated from the same type of motion or contains contrary authority.
        • Provides cases that are contrary to what the other party has cited.
      • New citation tags that highlight negative aspects of the opposition case
      • New depth of discussion indicators on what the opponent has focused on in the document
    • Submit to Quick Check
      • When you find a relevant case you can access the filings of the case.
      • Includes case recommendations for each segment of the motion
      • Can filter by headings in a document
      • Added to appellate briefs in Dec. 2020 and now added to trial motions.
  • Reuters News
    • Debuted: Reuters Legal News beta.
      • Previously, Legal news was nested within Business on reuters.com
      • Includes the top legal news stories that are editorially curated at the top of the screen
      • Showcases three Reuters’ legal columnists: Alison Frankel, Jenna Greene and Hassan Kanu
      • Legal Video includes both video and audio materials
      • Latest stories by reference to section pages.
        • Legal Industry is the business of law news page
        • Industry Insight is legal analysis from TR legal focusing on the business of news
      • Includes a section on the Supreme Court
      • Will have special reports
      • All stories are tagged with practice areas and industry
      • “The Daily Docket” newsletter is the Industry Buzz
      • The attorney analysis module focuses on reaching out to the broader legal community
      • Will include links to related documents mentioned in news stories
        • Links to Westlaw will not route you back through OnePass, you will stay on the platform
      • Will allow users to choose the types of materials they see through My View.
  • Customer to Cash updates
    • Continuing the redesign of invoices
      • New West Information Charges Invoice will debut in July 2021
        • Hyperlinks throughout the document
        • Customers with 2+ locations will receive 2 additional summary level reports and a single location report for each location.
        • Details in-plan and out-of-plan charges
        • Clearly shows the total due at the top of the invoice and in other places.
        • Any account suspension would be clearly displayed
        • New payer reports
          • Product summaries for all locations
          • Account totals by location
        • Add in subscription service periods above each product
        • Usage reports have new client level reports with 2 sorting options
          • Client/reference by user by day
          • User by client/reference by day
        • CSV reporting now available
          • Invoice information report
          • Usage report
          • These are optional and the customer must sign-up for these
            • Also only though electronic billing so a customer must be signed-up for that
      • Past due invoices coming in July
        • Simpler format
        • Easier pay now button
        • Enhanced hyperlinks
          • Inform TR that a payment has been sent
          • Set-up autopay
          • Installment plans
        • Attached to notices via PDF
      • When you mail checks, there can be a 10 day delay in updating your account information
Filed Under: Legal vendors, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , ,

What is CRIV?

September 23, 2021 by Leave a Comment

When I was preparing to write my first CRIV blog post for the semester, it occurred to me that there may be some in our profession who are unfamiliar with CRIV and the work that we do (and others who might not mind a refresher!). So for this post, allow me to (re)introduce you to CRIV.

CRIV is AALL’s Committee on Relations with Information Vendors. You can read our formal Purpose and Charge on the committee’s page on AALLnet, but in a nutshell, our mission through CRIV is to foster and maintain positive, open communication between members of AALL and information vendors. We work toward this in two primary ways: First, we monitor AALL chatter for any complaints related to information vendors, whether those complaints have to do with billing practices (not pricing), resource functionality, or general communication issues. Then, in most cases, we will reach out to a contact within that information vendor’s organization to see whether and how that complaint can be addressed and resolved. We have four formal vendor liaison relationships with Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer. Four of our committee members are designated each year as the CRIV vendor liaison to each of these vendors. You can find this year’s vendor liaisons here. Throughout the year, the liaisons will take any complaints or questions received about these vendors to our designated contacts within their organization for resolution or clarification; and twice a year, the liaisons have a conference call with the vendor to discuss any outstanding issues and learn the latest updates to the vendors’ products and services. As you may have seen, the minutes from these calls are then published here on the CRIV blog and in the next issue of The CRIV Sheet.

Does this mean CRIV only takes questions or complaints regarding those four vendors? No — we are happy to assist in communication with other vendors as well, and certainly have in the past. The best way to seek help from CRIV is by using our Request for Assistance page on AALLnet. This helps us keep a record of inquiries. While you are asked to provide contact information when you submit a RFA (so we can reach you to follow up), when we take your complaint or question to the vendor, we keep it anonymous. If the vendor responds that they need more details, we would only provide them with your permission. Our ultimate goal is to serve as an advocate for AALL members in establishing positive working relationships with information vendors, and as such, keeping your confidence as we share your concerns with the vendor is a priority.

While vendor relations is at the heart (and in the name) of CRIV, another significant service we provide is education, including programming, like our Vendor Roundtable at the AALL Annual Meeting each July; this year’s recording can be viewed here (recording will be available through July 2022). In addition, through the CRIV blog and our thrice-annual newsletter, The CRIV Sheet, we endeavor to keep the membership informed about the latest developments and trends from information vendors. If you have an article idea and would like to write for us, e-mail Andrew Christensen, this year’s CRIV Sheet editor. And if you have an idea for a blog post, reach out to Christy Smith, this year’s blog coordinator.

CRIV is always looking for ways to better serve AALL members. Be on the lookout later this year for a survey from CRIV on this very topic, but in the meantime, if you have questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out! As CRIV’s current chair, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Ashley Ahlbrand, CRIV Chair, aaahlbra@indiana.edu

Filed Under: CRIV General Tagged With: , , , , ,

CRIV/LexisNexis Semiannual Call

June 28, 2021 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Legal vendors, updates, Vendor Relations Tagged With: , , ,

Wolters Kluwer/CRIV Vendor Liaison Call Notes from 11/27/2017

February 16, 2018 by Leave a Comment

CRIV/ Wolters Kluwer Semi-Annual Vendor Liaison Call
Monday November 27th, 2017
2pm Central
Participants: C.J. Pipins capipinsii@law.umaryland.edu, Kate Hagan khagan@aall.org, and Chris Pamboukes chris.pamboukes@wolterskluwer.com

Agenda
I. Welcome

II. Outstanding Requests for Advocacy – NONE

III. AALL Programs, Activities, or Business of Interest to WK
a. Getting ready for the AALL Annual Meeting in Baltimore next July. The annual meeting program committee met and selected programs for 2018. Kate will be in contact with marketing folks at WK to disucss their activities at the meeting, in late November
b. There will be a CRIV roundtable at the annual meeting in Baltimore. More details are forthcoming.
c. AALL is working on a survey to determine the State of the Profession. A group of AALL members from diverse library types is developing a survey to look at trends, challenges, and benchmarking that will be of value to our members when assessing their libraries and what they should be looking at to move their libraries forward. The hope is that it will be completed by next fall.
d. Wolters Kluwer should continue to send anything newsworthy to the AALL daily news message Know It All for distribution to AALL members. Product releases, etc. WK would like any current awareness sources from AALL.

IV. WK Programs, Activities, or Business of Interest to CRIV and/or AALL
a. WK is sun setting Intelliconnect. The Tax and Accounting platform, which looks similar to Intelliconnect, will NOT be sun setting. They will retain their tax content on that platform and that info will be mirrored on cheetah.
b. Recently WK extended the Standard Federal Tax Reporter historical content. Wolters Kluwer partnered with Hein to provide archives of materials from 1917-1985. Content includes the Internal Revenue Code, IRS publications, and the tax regulations.
c. The research folders from Intelliconnect have been renamed “worklists” for the cheetah platform. Thanks to a recent enhancement, users who do not access Cheetah through an IP range can now share and transfer ownership of worklists to others on the same account. Also, any user can go in and change their password; they no longer have to contact their account representative to get it changed.
d. WK is doing lots of academic training right now, and getting good feedback about cheetah. They are still migrating a lot of premium accounts.
Training and support Site for Cheetah
e. WK has also started focusing on more outreach to law students in addition to librarians. There are many ways to deliver law student training. Schools interested in exploring the training options should contact Chris or their Wolters Kluwer account representative.
f. ID manager 2.0 – For accounts that do not access Cheetah through an IP range, ID Manager 2.0 is a free service from WK where a librarian who is the site contact can manage their account’s user IDs. The site contact can also and go into individual’s accounts in their organization to customize that individual’s cheetah experience. This is really a back end tool to customize someone’s homepage on cheetah to highlight certain content for that person. ID manager also allows the site contact to create user IDs for individuals. To access it click ID Manager 2.0.
g. WK has cheetah widgets that provide functionality that was not previously available. You can search in a cheetah widget on your platform and you can embed the widget on a SharePoint page. That allows you to get access to the WK publications from right there. The widget is free and does not require the user to login. Widgets can help surface content for which users don’t normally search or don’t know exists. Anyone with a username and password can make a widget. Check it out here
Cheetah Widgets
h. For a while now there have been quick start cards to help users quickly see and understand the features available with a WK product. Now there are content specific quick start cards available on the training and support website. Users can also access training videos there as well. Also on this page under specialized training there is a legal pro virtual training option that specializes in one on one training with a person. Users can get a single WK-trainer who will spend 30 minutes to an hour with you. This feature is called Legal Pro Virtual Training. There are lots of options for choosing date/time, and don’t worry. Legal Pro Virtual Training does not count against your contracted hours of training and support time.
Legal Pro Virtual Training.

Filed Under: Legal vendors, Vendor Relations Tagged With: ,

Vendor Liaison Goals

January 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Happy New Year!  The January issue of the Vendor Liaison Update is now available on AALLNET.

I’d like to begin the year by thanking all the people who contributed to a successful vendor relations program in 2012, including the members of the Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV), the Price Index for Legal Publications Committee, the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers Revisions Task Force, the Library Procurement Process Improvements Task Force, and the Consumer Advocacy Caucus, and, most especially, the individual AALL members who took the time to write, call, or comment about vendor relations issues.

As we begin 2013, I’d like to share this summary of program goals for the new year.

Goals for 2013:

  • Present a final draft of the Vendor Relations Policy for adoption at the spring 2013 Executive Board meeting.*
  • Assist the AALL president in forming an implementation plan for furthering the goals of the Colloquium Action Plan.
  • Continue to support the work of the Library Procurement Process Improvements Task Force; assist the task force with submitting its final report and work products to the board for the spring 2013 meeting; and participate in planning the Fishbowl Fun licensing program for the 2013 Annual Meeting.
  • Provide support for marketing the new edition of the Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers.
  • Work with our current vendor partners to secure their commitment to support the principles outlined in the Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers; request their comments on the vendor relations policy draft; and advocate for transparent and library-friendly policies and pricing structures for e-books.
  • Identify other legal publishers with whom AALL should establish a relationship regarding vendor relations issues.
  • Work with CRIV and staff on reorganizing the vendor relations pages on AALLNET.
  • Continue to work with CRIV, the Price Index for Legal Publications Committee, and other AALL entities as appropriate.
  • Continue outreach to chapters and special interest sections.

*AALL members should watch their email in February for a call for comments on the final draft.

I appreciate the collaborative spirit that helps us move these issues forward and look forward to another successful year. I encourage AALL members to contact me at any time with comments or questions.

Filed Under: Legal vendors Tagged With:

Antitrust program report

September 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The September issue of the Vendor Liaison Update is now available on AALLNET. Learn more about antitrust and the need for an association antitrust policy.

In 2011, the AALL Executive Board carefully considered a draft of an antitrust policy for the Association but ultimately did not adopt that draft, feeling the need for a broader knowledge base and ongoing discussion. The board subsequently approved the AALL and Antitrust Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in June to address questions regarding the need for a policy and to set the framework for some of the issues that such a policy might address.

AALL consulted with Stephen Armstrong, an antitrust lawyer, to develop this document.  Armstrong was also the main speaker for the CRIV-sponsored program on Antitrust Considerations and the Association at the Annual Meeting in Boston, providing a basic introduction to antitrust law and responding to a set of fact scenarios with possible antitrust implications. Following is a brief summary of his remarks.

Antitrust Basics

The Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits collective action by any company or association in consideration of restraint of trade or anticompetitive behavior, that is, action not benefitting consumers.

Plainly unlawful (per se) anticompetitive activities include price fixing, the agreement to limit production or capacity, allocation of customers or markets, and group boycotts or joint refusal to deal. Potentially unlawful activities depend on the facts and whether the actual impact results in harm to competition.

Possible anticompetitive issues for associations include membership issues (must have objective criteria); access to services; information collection and dissemination (e.g., pricing surveys and wage surveys that attempt to influence or direct future activities); joint purchasing; joint research activities; joint marketing or advertising; standards setting; certification; guides for business practices; and government affairs or lobbying. 

Associations may be liable and required to pay damages for acts of members misusing association structure and authority in the industry to exclude a competitor or restrict competition in the industry (e.g., standards setting to exclude competitors under a structure condoned by the association). 

Scenarios 

Q1: Many law libraries participate in consortial arrangements such as NELLCO; why does this not give rise to antitrust concerns (or should it)? 

A: Consortia are not considered to be unlawful or in violation of antitrust if they do not effectively control or dictate prices of the seller. As long as the agreements are not industry-wide, are open to partners, and are not intended to exclude specific vendors, they should not present a problem. 

Q2: What if librarians from three state university law libraries in the same region, facing large budget cuts, decide to approach a database vendor as a group to renegotiate a database access agreement for all the libraries? Would this raise any antitrust concerns? 

A: This is not all that different from the previous question. As long as the volume of impact in the marketplace is limited to a fairly small number of buyers, it is considered localized and not anticompetitive. In this scenario, the libraries are a small part of the marketplace, and they have geographic proximity and probably common interests with respect to the local budgeting environment, funding sources, etc. This provides a way for buyers to develop information on a joint basis and go to sellers or a group of sellers to negotiate a better deal. Joint purchasing arrangements are common in many industries and are generally considered pro-competitive. 

Q3: On the CRIV Blog a CRIV committee member provides examples of how vendor Y’s practices violate the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers. The blogger then lists several alternative information sources available from other vendors and questions why libraries continue to do business with vendor Y when similar information is available from vendors who comply with the Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers. What antitrust concern does this raise? 

A: There are several elements here. The forum is set up to share information broadly. If an individual decides to post to the forum, as long as it is an individual posting and there is not a response that proposes collective action, it is independent, unilateral conduct and merely provides information. If people then act independently, you don’t have joint action. The question also raises the role of the Guide to Fair Business Practices. If AALL didn’t already have a history of working with fair business practices, then the development or marketing of a guide might be considered problematic. But there is a history, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) itself recognized the consumer protection aspect of fair business practices when it established the (now defunct) Guides for the Law Book Industry. The FTC’s stance seems to indicate support for the exchange of information between buyers and sellers and the development of guides to educate buyers and sellers. 

Q4: During an AALL Annual Meeting, several academic law library directors gather for an informal unplanned dinner at a nearby restaurant. They share information about how much they each pay to access a database from vendor X in order to determine if their individual libraries are getting a good deal from the vendor.  Does this raise antitrust concerns for the Association? For the library directors individually? For their institutions? 

A: This is a classic description of a scenario that makes antitrust lawyers uncomfortable because it can lead to an anticompetitive market. As long as the individuals are merely engaged in sharing information and it is only “several” academic law library directors, this is not a large enough group to raise a problem. If they were all board members of an association, then you have to be concerned about perception. Generally speaking, though, until there is an agreement to take action in restraint of trade, this situation should not raise antitrust concerns. But individuals should be careful not to commit their employers to anything that would lead to problems. As written in this scenario, the fact of sharing information is not in itself a problem as long as it doesn’t lead to collective action. 

Q5: AALL has vendor members as well as library members. How does vendor participation in committees and other organizational activity affect the antitrust analysis?

A: Having active vendor participation and involvement should result in a situation where you have a dialog. It might involve some tensions, but with everyone in the same room, it should be a healthier situation. It also allows better information flow for both buyers and sellers. 

Q6: At a vendor roundtable discussion at the AALL Annual Meeting, an AALL member who is not a part of any committee or other organizational unit of AALL comes to an open microphone and states that libraries should refuse to purchase from vendor X if it does not provide more transparent pricing information for its products. If the librarian includes a disclaimer that he or she is not speaking on behalf of AALL or his or her institutional employer, would this remove antitrust concerns for AALL? For the employer? For the librarian? 

A: This scenario blends information exchange with a call to action. It’s a paradigm that antitrust lawyers deal with – individual statements can lead to group action even if such action is not explicitly proposed. This is such a real scenario, and you can envision this happening. But as long as it is an arm’s length discussion and the responses are individual decisions and you don’t have a boycott, you don’t have a problem. If the speaker makes a disclaimer, it at least recognizes on the speaker’s part that there is a possibility of the comment being misconstrued, but it is far better in an open forum not to invite everybody to gang up. When you start inviting people to joint action, an antitrust lawyer is going to suggest that you go off and make your own decision. It is inevitable that people are going to share their concerns, but as long as you have an open and dynamic exchange of information, it is probably not going to cause any headaches. 

The recorded program and the handouts from the program are available on AALL2Go. The recording includes Armstrong’s presentation slides, and the handouts include a timeline of activity related to the FTC’s Guides for the Law Book Industry and the antitrust FAQ. I encourage all members to learn more about antitrust and the association by listening to the program.

 

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Vendor Liaison news

July 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The July issue of the Vendor Liaison Update is now available on AALLNET.

This month all roads lead to Boston and the 105th AALL Annual Meeting! 

Make sure to mark your calendars for the following events:

For those who are not able to attend the Annual Meeting, watch for further information and reports on The CRIV Blog and in the August issue of the Vendor Liaison Update.

I hope to see many of you in Boston!

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CRIV Activities at AALL 2012

June 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

CRIV will be participating in several Annual Meeting activities.  See below to find out where and when CRIV will be present.  For more information on all Annual Meeting activities, please refer to the AALL Conference Planner.

Saturday July 21

Tabling, CONELL Marketplace, 10:30am – 11:40am Sheraton-Ballroom A

Business Meeting, 4:00pm – 5:00pm Sheraton-Berkeley B

Monday July 23

Roundtable, e-Books in the Legal Profession, 12:00pm – 1:00pm HCC-Room 204

Program, G4: Antitrust Considerations and the Association, 2:45pm – 4:00pm HCC-Room 306

Tuesday July 24

Coffee Talks, Licensing Electronic Content: From Fair Use to Escape Clauses and Everything in Between, 7:30am – 8:15am HCC-Boylston Street Hallway (level 3)

  • Hosted by Vendor Liaison, Margaret K. Maes and Tracy L. Thompson-Przylucki

Ongoing

Tabling, Exhibit Hall

  • To speak with a member of CRIV, stop by our table during an Exhibit Hall break.
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