Informationoverlord

Last weekend many of my fellow Legal Library and Information friends (and legal publishers/vendors) took over Brighton for the annual BIALL conference. I couldn’t make it, but I believe a good time was had. But it did get me thinking.

Each year several awards are handed out including those for Law librarian of the Year (congratulations Jules Winterton, Associate Director and Librarian, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for winning this one this year), Best Legal Information Service, Supplier of the Year Award, and Legal Journals Award.

The latter two are always interesting – won this year by Wildy & Sons Ltd and Common Market Law Review respectively, but for me the more interesting award would be for Worst Supplier of the Year Award, and/or Worst Legal Journals Award – or maybe a Legal Information ‘Villain’ award. Yes, we should recognise excellence but we should also as an association be turning the spotlight on those who consistently demonstrate poor customer service, excessively hike prices without justification and who – in the buzz word of our new government – are anything but ‘transparent’ in their subscription costs.

So, what say you BIALL. How about next year we have a new category for those who should be doing better.

In the meantime, your nominees for worst legal supplier/publisher of the year – feel free to be anonymous - are more than welcomed.

All the talk in the legal information world over the past couple of days has been around an unfortunate marketing email from West (Westlaw to us in the UK) advertising the usefulness of desktop access to their legal research products. The email asked the question:

“ARE YOU ON A FIRST NAME BASIS WITH THE LIBRARIAN?”

I guess that means that they will then go on to say how this is a good thing; as this Librarian or Information Officer will be able help this lawyer get the best out of his or her legal research and help them identify the best products and resources to answer any legal research questions they might have?

No, wait, that’s not it. It goes on.

“If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time in the library.”

Oh … ok. The key to getting the best legal research, at your finger tips, is to make sure you avoid finding out the librarians first name at all costs, and even if you do find out , don’t EVER use it. Just call them, MR, MRS or Ms Librarian – they’ll like that. If you must, you’d probably be safe using their surname, but you know how one thing can lead to another and once you start down that slippery slope, next thing you know you’ll be having an affair and naming your illegitimate offspring Chitty.

Anyway, what should you do if you are spending too much time in the Library?

“What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West”

Phew, thank West for that.

Anne Ellis, Senior Director, Librarian Relations at Thomson Reuters (owners of West) responded calling the email ‘unfortunate’. adding “It’s important that you understand that this does not reflect in any way how West feels about and values librarians….I’ve talked to the people behind the e-mail and can assure you that they meant no harm. They now understand that the marketing piece was in poor taste and I have been assured that this will not happen again.”

To be fair to West, this response was a good one, and was also relatively quick. However, it did raise the question as to who at West actually signs off on such marketing emails.
And this is where the problems begin. Most of the big legal information providers, West, Lexis, PLC etc have people working for them that like, understand and value the role and the importance Librarians and information workers play in ensuring that lawyers get the best use of their products. Indeed they regularly reach out to get our feedback and input on new products and services or revamps to current products and services. However, there are a small number who have less understanding of the wider scheme of things and who just want to sell as much ‘product’ as possible.

That’s what sales people do. That’s what you pay them to do and incentivise them to do. The problem can be that sometimes when those selling the products or services just see the sale and don’t see or understand the thing they’re selling. Some might argue that they don’t need to, the bottom line is if they sell it or not.

The current economic climate has meant that most firms have looked to tighten their belts and make cuts in resources – both in headcount and in subscriptions to legal resources. West, Lexis etc know this. This is why products will now often be pitched directly to lawyers and in a way that implies that the cost of whatever product or services will be a saving because it might mean you don’t need, or no longer need a Librarian, a Professional Support Lawyer, a Paralegal, etc.

This email is an example of that. West say it was “in poor taste” and “will not happen again.” Time will tell whether or not actions match the words.

West and others should realise that antagonising and insulting a body of people who are usually the ones that know your services and products best, and who are – in these times – actually the ones who will be fighting to justify continuing subscribing to your products and services when managing partners – who may just see the bottom line cost - are looking for cuts in spending, and looking for reasons why something shouldn’t be cancelled. Yes, it is us that know the value of your services and who can guarantee that lawyers are aware of that value. Ignore or insult us at your peril.

Some other comments from the Blogs:
http://www.librarystuff.net/2009/08/24/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-lexis-thomson-reuterswest-desperation/
http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2009/08/thomson-west-epic-pr-fail.html
http://jennielaw.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-insult-your-users.html
http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/archives/law-lib/law-lib.log0908/0199.html
http://theliskid.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/apparently-the-library-wastes-time/

I was just reading the results of an interesting survey of library services in UK professional bodies by Cathy Linacre, Head of Library and Information Services at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

According to Cathy, most of the research that has been done to date on the effects of the move to online delivery of content and information within the library sector has tended to focus on how this has affected public, academic and corporate libraries. I’d agree.

She decide to visited 15 library services at professional bodies such as: British Medical Association , Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and the Law Society and interviewed their head of service or service manager, and find out what the services are like now – and how they are resourced – and where they either expect to be, or see their services in 5 years time.

The survey looked at:

1) The Place of library service within the institutional structure.
2) Library as physical space.
3) Resourcing – people, budgets.
4) Software.
5) Catalogues.
6) Services – loans, photocopies, Inquiries, current awareness.
7) Stock – hardcopy and electronic.
8 ) Marketing.
9) Vision.
10) Internal and External Pressures .
11) The future.

This is a nice piece of research, that contains some interesting figures and insight that I would say would be of interest to most in the library/information field – as many of the constraints and challenges are the same. It is also useful as a benchmark piece, especially on things such as physical visits, budgets – averaging around £5 per head of membership in the survey sample -, use of web2.0 tools, use of electronic resources (and problems with licencing/copyright) I particularly liked the ‘what is a typical library like’ bit at the start, which is a good way – for those not in this sector – to get a grasp of what one of these library’s would ‘look like’.

Interestingly, one professional body - not included in the survey - didn’t feel the report/survey was positive enough, which, for me, says more about the body in question than the quality of the research to be found in the report, which is presented without spin.

If you would like to read the report, Cathy would be more than glad to hear from you and can be reached at: clinacre(at)rics.org

Mike Semple Piggot  - aka CharonQC – has created at very useful resource on Contract Law at his Insitelaw site. The project includes a text - based on textbook written by which he developed for teaching law students at BPP Law School – which he founded. [The first seven chapters are now available subject to updating work due to completed by 10th August] – linked to cases from Bailli, Wikipedia, a new Contract Law blog and a news feed.  According to Mike ” The textbook will be supplemented by a series of recorded lectures, and I plan to monitor the net for other free legal resources on Contract Law in England & Wales (Although I will include references to Us, Scotland and Common Law jurisdictions where it is helpful to do so) - law reports, news items, article abstracts and the like… this is, inevitably, a work in progress. I will be setting up a blog for analysis, articles, news - very shortly.” So, if you’re a student of law, or someone who works in the law – be it a trainee, lawyer or information professional, you should make sure you have this site bookmarked somewhere.  

Mike’s project also fits in well with the Free Legal Web project

Greg Lambert at the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has a short review of a lawfirm publications aggregator called myCorporateResource.com. About a year ago I wrote a comparison article of three other aggregators: Lexology, Mondaq and Linex Legal for Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 entitled Mining the Value of Law Firm Publications [Note to self: Add to link my articles tab]. I must confess I would not have thought there was a need or indeed room in the market for another similar site, but at first look, myCorporateResource.com looks like a useful and welcome addition to the club.

All law firms write client memoranda and articles. These publications are primarily written for the benefit of in-house counsel/lawyers in organisations, and function – when done properly – as an excellent source of free know-how that can be used as excellent primer material on a given topic, especially if a firm has been brave to enough to actually take a position on a particular subject, rather than just sit on the fence (still the usual approach).

Companies such as Lexology, Mondaq and Linex Legal now do the hard job of aggregating the content for you: allowing you to search by firm, legal topic/sector, jurisdiction and keyword, and saving you the trouble of monitoring each firms’ website individually to find new material.

My Corporate Resource can now be added to these three as an additional source of aggregating and disseminating these useful publications and updates.

The site splits itself into nine main areas:

Corporate Team: This is an interesting idea. The site tries to identify which updates would best appeal/be of most use to different people within a Corporate Team : Directors, Senior Executives, Legal team, Finance Team, Accounting Team, HR Team, Compliance Team, Company Secretaries. Each of their groups get their own separate “portal” on this site with the latest in legal alerts, regulatory press releases, rules announcements and industry insider blogs
Client Memoranda: Browse and search by Industry, Corporate Role, Area of Law & Geography.
RSS Feeds: The site offers 70 feeds broke down by Industry, Professional Role, Area of law, and Geography
24 (Memo)rable Hours: An overview of the latest updates
Lex Pop: The most read/popular content on the site
Hot Topics: Exactly what it sounds like, articles and updates covering the latest ‘big’ thing.
The SEC: A page dedicated to the SEC and covering their press releases, a calendar, blogs, and rules releases
Standout Material: This doesn’t seem to link anywhere yet, but offers a brief reason behind their review process.
Memo of the Week: What the editors of the site think is the most interesting memo of the week.

………………………………..

Source Material

Like Linex Legal, the approach they have taken is to link out to the source material as hosted in the individual law firms’ sites, rather than hosting copies of the material themselves – the approach taken by Lexology, and Mondaq. Law firms tend to like this approach, as it feels less like someone is trying to take their content to build a business.

Reviews

What they do, which make them unique is that they review a selection of the updates that come through, offering commentary on the commentary. I quite like this, although as there is no information on the site about just who the people are that are doing this ‘reviewing’ , it is hard to place any weight on these reviews.

Coverage

Whilst it does have some non US content, the coverage is distinctly American, which is where it falls down when compared to the wider international coverage of the three other services, and which will make it a less useful research tool for lawyers, PSLs, and Library and Information staff in UK/EU law firms. It would be nice to see the international side of things developed a bit more, and maybe the addition of some non US blogs too.

Connected to this content issue, the site lacks information on how many firms (and who they are) it covers, outside of a general ref to covering the AM Top 100.

Other issues

There is also some inconsistency on the site:

Labelling of Articles: when covering items written by Freshfields, sometimes the site refers to the shortened name and sometime to the full Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
Use of Descriptors: Whilst using the term ‘Corporate Role’ in its Client Memoranda pages, it then uses ‘Professional role’ to describe the same subset on its RSS page.

Conclusion

I think there is a lot of potential for this site, especially if you’re a US based lawyer or legal information worker. If you’re in Europe and /or rest of the world, then you are still going to be better served by Lexology (my current number one choice), Mondaq and Linex Legal.

Also part of the service offered by these three is around selling Law Firms data on the number of hits their articles get via the site, emails and rss; who is reading them, where they are from; who they work for, and other statistics. So far I cannot see evidence of my Corporate Resource doing this.

What I will say is that if my Corporate Resource decide to take the rest of the world and publications / updates from smaller firms more seriously, then all three will need to watch out. This is already a good resource and one you should certainly add to your list of sites for finding and accessing law firm content.

Nick Holmes over at Binary Law has an interesting piece of the impending doom that is print media - or at least traditional ‘hard copy’ print as we know it today.

In particular, he raises the question of the future of the future of legal publications such as Law journals (particularly the more scholarly ones) and asks if the move away from traditional hard copy print runs has them set for an early grave - at least in that format.

Now, I love print - there, I have said it. Yes, in some ways I am a ‘web geek’ and I love new technologies - I think I’d be lost without my iPhone (or similar) - but, in part, the love of the feel of books - their physicality, their smell, their magic is what drove me into the profession I choose for myself.

That said, Nick’s article got my brain thinking in a different way, and less focussed on the death of print and more about its rebirth in a legal context. I believe that the ‘end of print’ is a long way away, if it indeed ever happens; but the opportunities for exploiting a move into electronic delivery are still in their infancy, and if I was a legal publisher, then I would be seeing a big light at the end of the tunnel. Why?

The eBook Reader:

Yes, Amazon’s Kindle, Iliad, Sony PRS-505 and the rest. I think the scope for the success of eBook Readers within the law is vast. It is a technology that - it seems to me - is just made for the legal environment.

On a personal user level, whilst being impressed with Sony’s eBook Reader, for example, and loving how it works, I can never image wanting to carry around several hundred/thousand books around with me. A handful, yes, but not my entire library, and not certainly not in the same way that I’d want to carry a similar amount of music albums or films.

However, if I were a lawyer, who could have all the legal journals I wanted and all the legal texts I wanted - displayed as they would be in a ‘traditional’ print run - all on one device that I could keep in my desk or take with me to client meetings etc, then I would be a very happy bunny. Yes, some of these legal texts are already available electronically on Westlaw and Lexis, but they do not LOOK like books, they don’t let you engage with them as books, and as a result will never replace the book/loose-leaf. Keep them as a ‘book’ and THEN digitise them, keeping what makes books work and useable - good indexes etc - whilst adding the functionality of the modern technological world - search, highlight and note taking (post it note functionality) etc - and I think you would have gold.

Of course, the main legal publishers will probably follow the usual route of making their own devices with incompatible file formats so that you’ll always need more than one reader in the same way that Apple and Co did with digital music and Amazon and Sony etc are already doing with eReaders.

Do you think I am right? Is the eBook the future for legal publishing? Is legal (and most likley educational publishing in general) the one thing that could turn eBooks and eBook readers into serious business? Let me know.

They may be coming late to the party, but at long last the legal publishers are starting to add RSS delivery options to their content. The last few months has seen Westlaw UK, Lawtel, PLC and Justis all add feeds.

This is good news, and great news if you sign on through individual passwords. It can be more of an issue if you’re using single sign-on/IP recognition etc, where in some instances you may not be able to set up individual saved searches etc.

It should also be noted that a subscription to the individual services is required to access the content.

Lawtel

Lawtel UK daily update http://www.lawtel.com/rss/ukdailyupdate.xml

Data Sets
Case Law - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/caselaw.xml
Legislation - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/legislation.xml
Articles - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/articles.xml
News and Press - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/newspress.xml
Busy Solicitors Digest - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/bsd.xml

Subject Feeds
Human Rights - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/humanrights.xml
Personal Injury - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/personalinjury.xml
Civil Procedure - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/civilprocedure.xml
Employment - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/employment.xml
European Union - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/europeanunion.xml
Local Government - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/localgovernment.xml
Property - http://www.lawtel.com/rss/property.xml

You can also create RSS feeds from search results / saved searches.

Westlaw UK

You can create RSS feeds from search results / saved searches, or set up feeds from a full text journal or case report series. Westlaw allows you to enter a Client ID against alerts, and also add IP authentication to an RSS Feed by entering your sponsor code.

PLC
Practical Law Company (PLC) have recently started rolling out RSS feeds for some of their content/practice areas (listed below), but as yet do not - at least for me - seem to have rolled out the option to create RSS feeds from search results / saved searches. Their current feeds are as follows:

PLC Corporate: - http://corporate.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC Employment: - http://employment.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC Finance: - http://finance.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC Financial Services: - http://fs.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC IPIT & Communications: - http://ipandit.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives: - http://incentives.practicallaw.com/rss.do
PLC Tax: - http://tax.practicallaw.com/rss.do

Justis

They provide some example feeds such as:

Latest cases from The Weekly Law Reports: - http://www.justis.com/titles/justis-wlr.xml

You can also create RSS feeds from search results / saved searches

In the case of Justis - as least with regards to RSS feeds from search results / saved searches - the output is not very good, as it displays only by relevance and not by date. So, for example, I ran a search on ‘broadcasting’. Now whilst you can sort the search results by relevance/date etc; when saving the RSS it only saves the output as a relevance feed. Whilst this may be of use to some people, it is of little use to me, as part of the reason for saving a search is to get alerted to NEW material - My example feed is full of items from the Radio Authority - long since replaced by Ofcom.

I contacted Justis about this, and they confirmed that their developers were aware of the issue and wanted to change it to offer date relevance, but that the way their data is currently structured made this difficult at the current time.

Infolaw have now issued their New Legal Web ebooks for 2008/2009.

Book one is Topics of Modern Legal Practice

Book Two is Law 2.0 in Progress

Not only are the books full of interesting articles by Nick Holmes and Delia Venables “and many other leading experts in their fields” (including myself) but if you’re a lawyer type you can bag some CPD points just by reading them and answering a few questions (5 hours CPD for either the Bar Standards Board or the Solicitors Regulation Authority, for each book).

Prices and further details are here

Nick Holmes over at Binary Law must be getting the summer blues. With nothing to do with his spare time, he has decided that it’s time to create the Free Legal Web, and pull together - cross referencing, connecting, mashing - all the good free legal information currently available: statutes, law firm commentary, blog commentary etc. It is a great idea. It is also mad, which is why he needs your help!

A free barcamp: 18 October (Adelphi Room, Royal Society of Arts) is the planned first stage to address core issues such as:

Who’s who and what can they contribute?
Data access issues — What resources are available and what are the barriers to their re-use?
Publishing/tech issues — How can we best leverage those resources and add value?
Editorial/UGC issues — For whom/by whom? Accuracy and authenticity? An “acceptable bargain”?
Organisational issues — Infrastructure, funding

This will be a huge undertaking, and as such is something that could fall flat on its face before it even gets off the ground. BUT: this is a great opportunity to truly provide a viable free alternative to the likes of Lexis and Westlaw. If you are not busy on the 18th October, I urge you to come along and see if there is anyway you could contribute your expertise/time to help build the project.

I just got a 2 question survey from Lexis:

1. How likely are you to recommend LexisNexis News & Business* (Inc Nexis, LexisNexis Professional, LexisNexis Executive, KYC) to a friend or colleague? ( to be answered on a number scale).
2. What is the single most important thing that we could do to make you more likely to recommend us? (and a box for comments).

Seriously, where do you start to point out what is wrong here? Surely the answer to question one will depend on a number of variables that Lexis has decided do not exist, or has just ignored.

Would/Could I recommend Lexis? Of course, but it would depend very much on what the information requirements were of the person asking me, their budget, and a host of other things. It would be the same for recommending Westlaw or any other legal database (although outside of Thomson and Lexis finding ones they don’t own is a challenge).

Cost will obviously big a big consideration is deciding to recommed or not ( a close friend in a Arts related business had to say no when the cost offered was too prohibative). There are now many excellent free sources of legislation and case law out there (Bailli, Statutory Law Database, Precydent etc) that mean - for a lot of people and organisations - you do not need to have Lexis and Westlaw. Yes, Lexis and Westlaw do add value, but is that value worth the additional cost? (and I realise that there is a ‘cost’ in the time it takes finding information on free services/databases, that can sometimes make the most cost effective solution the ‘pay’ option).

I use Lexis, but not as much as I did. I use their news search even less - hard to believe but I miss having Factiva, which gave better results. Of course, as a result of a deal between Lexis and Factiva a few years back Law Firms suddenly found out they could no longer subscribe to Factiva directly. Progress? Competition?

I do applaud Lexis for wanting to ask questions and improve their services - I’ve meet many nice people from lexis over the years - but maybe they should make things more interactive and do a wiki or something similar. We know from their Company Law Forum experiment that they can be forward thinking, so why not a Lexis Services Forum site??