in the beginning, there were two
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IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO | 1lac-group.com
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IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWONegotiating the crowded landscape of legal and business information resources
By Robyn RebolloVP, Spend Management Services
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO | 2lac-group.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2019 Update
Electronic information trends
Growth in artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics technology
Evolving selling and buying patterns
Rethinking and innovating electronic information and research
From trend to new norm
More complex array of information resources
Law firms increasingly run like businesses
Finer assessment and scrutiny of research and information resources
Focus on sales, marketing and business development
Information vendor landscape
Bloomberg
LexisNexis
Thomson Reuters
Other vendor news and updates
Managing electronic information resources
Appendix A
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IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO | 3lac-group.com
2019 UPDATE
In the beginning, law firms and corporations mainly relied on two services for gaining access to electronic, fee-based information including case law, statutes, administrative codes, news and media coverage and other resources: LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Today, the options for electronic information have greatly expanded and the tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Considerable dollars are being spent on a diverse field of practice-focused publishers and unique services for competitive intelligence, business information, finance and investor services, debt-related intelligence, web analysis and more. A snapshot of popular resources is included in Appendix A at the end of this document.
As law firms are heavy users of these platforms, this report will frequently refer to the legal industry, but many of the same dynamics apply to other sectors and user groups.
We’ve been covering electronic information resources since 2016 and are pleased to offer the 2019 update of this report. We reassess the universe, giving you both a research and spend management view.
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWONegotiating the crowded landscape of legal
and business information resources
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO | 4lac-group.com
ELECTRONIC INFORMATION TRENDSGrowth in artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics technology
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ANALYTICS
AI is gathering momentum. In the legal industry and other sectors, it’s increasingly recognized that without AI, large firms and corporations will likely suffer a competitive disadvantage.
AI technology investments are increasing as the options become more accessible and affordable, encompassing functionality like machine learning, natural language processing and bots. For example, law firms are turning to AI to help with due diligence reviews in transactions.
Organizations of all kinds are using AI for everything from improving customer service to detecting fraud. In the realm of research, newer players in the legal industry like ROSS Intelligence and Casetext are making inroads, while established players like Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and Bloomberg are placing greater emphasis on these technologies.
Analytics, which we view as working with large volumes of data, offers a more complete picture looking at both external and internal data.
For external data, established publishers and start-ups alike continue to release new products that tap into vast stores of available information. For example, law firms can now choose from multiple, new-generation citation products, like SmartCite, the new citator from Casetext. Additionally, Westlaw Edge’s Overruling Risk uses analytic enhancements when warning users about a case that may be implicitly affected by its reliance on an overruled or otherwise invalid point of law.
For internal data, organizations continue to invest in business intelligence tools to help them analyze and understand their own revenues, experience, expenses, customers and other data pools.
Today, law firms and corporations are taking a more critical look at their overall information spend and resource portfolios, which are now procured by several departments—library, marketing, HR, IT and conflicts, to name a few. For example, they’re interested in seeing if they can realize greater savings through exclusive alignments with a limited number of suppliers and downscaling products from other suppliers.
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Evolving selling and buying patterns
On the selling side, established players are competing vigorously with each other and with new competitors. Demand for business and market information is outstripping demand for legal information. New products are being introduced, existing products are being updated and merger and acquisition activity is robust.
Vendor pricing is the next trend worth watching. Newer entrants like ROSS and Casetext have chosen a transparent model, with pricing openly stated on their websites, as they attempt to attract solo attorneys and small firms. However, all the cards are on the table when negotiating larger subscription models, and typically mid-to-large sized firms are not candidates for simple pricing.
They’re taking a cue from the SaaS (software as a service) subscription model: two or three price points depending on variables like monthly versus annual billing, feature sets and number of users.
Bloomberg Law is also making some inroads toward a predictable, inclusive pricing model. Bloomberg Law operates more like a utility which is kept open and used as needed, without variations like cost per search or printing charges, relics from the days of cost recovery practices.
While pricing transparency simplifies budgeting and accounting, one downside (especially for medium-large organizations) is that it’s easier for different users and departments to make independent purchasing decisions, resulting in duplication and overspending. As our clients complete their transition from print to digital collections and electronic resources, we’re finding a growing concern about redundant information resources and greater interest in resource-sharing.
Yet some things never change as the biggest players (Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and Bloomberg) continue to closely guard their pricing. As for length of contracts, economic uncertainty is making many firms and companies cautious about long-term commitments, unless they get guarantees that their pricing will remain the same or have low increases.
ROSS’ pricing website page as of September 2019.
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Rethinking and innovating electronic information and research
More and more businesses are focused on innovation, including the legal industry, which is commonly acknowledged as a lagging industry. They increasingly have staff and budgets dedicated to innovation, rethinking workflows and reviewing performance and outcomes for ways to improve. They’re interested in tools to leverage internal data and resources, like knowledge management systems and prior work product, as proprietary information and past experiences can reveal unique insights and value to strengthen customer relationships and differentiate themselves in their markets. According to Altman Weil’s 2018 Law Firms In Transition survey, only half of the firms responding believe they have “a distinct, compelling value that differentiates them from competitors.” When it comes to innovation and winning in competitive markets, the ability to select and leverage the right mix of information resources will play a vital role.
FROM TREND TO NEW NORMIn addition to the above trends, we continue to see the following characteristics that we described in the 2016 edition of this report, especially as they pertain to medium-large law firms.
More complex array of information resources
As this report communicates, law firms and other enterprises that rely on accurate and timely information sources now have many more options than two. Many new and specialized offerings are available, as listed in Appendix A, while the largest providers continue to build, acquire and explore other ways to enhance their offerings and maintain their market leadership.
Law firms increasingly run like businesses
Large law firms are run more like corporations and less like partnerships, with finance, marketing and other areas managed by professionals with domain expertise and experience in other sectors, bringing a new level of scrutiny and fresh perspectives.
Finer assessment and scrutiny of research and information resources
By aggressively eliminating underutilized or redundant products and implementing long-term strategies, buyers have been able to accrue real savings or re-allocate budgets to new, innovative subscriptions.
Focus on sales, marketing and business development
Confirmed by the 2018 joint Legal Marketing Association and Bloomberg Law survey:
62% of respondents said their firm is increasing its focus on marketing and business development.
Process improvement
Pricing Competitive intelligence
49% 51% 57%
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INFORMATION VENDOR LANDSCAPEOur view of the vendor landscape begins with the original two, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters (Westlaw), along with Bloomberg. (Note we are presenting them in alphabetical order.)
Three major vendors:
Bloomberg has been diligent about integrating its BNA content (from acquisition of The Bureau of National Affairs in 2011) into an integrated platform for law and other industry groups. On September 3, 2019, Bloomberg BNA announced that its new name is Bloomberg Industry Group, to reflect the markets where it operates, including Bloomberg Law.
Docket Key: Dockets search and alert capabilities include extensive dockets coverage. It uses machine learning to identify and classify entries on docket sheets to locate materials that are sought by litigators when preparing their own legal arguments.
Brief Analyzer: Powered by AI, it streamlines and simplifies the legal research process, allowing attorneys to upload their briefs or opposing counsel briefs to check for missing authorities or arguments.
Precedent Database: Includes more than 1.5 million legal documents filed on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database, classified using multiple criteria to quickly locate a precedent by searching by document type, clause title, keyword, date, transaction type, governing law, industry, party, law firm, attorney and other criteria.
Litigation Analytics: Enables users to search millions of legal data points by company, law firm, judge or attorney to visualize trends and predict outcomes.
Points of Law: Speeds up case law research, applying machine learning to a database of millions of court opinions, highlighting language critical to a court’s reasoning so attorneys can find the best language to support their own legal arguments.
Draft Analyzer: Bloomberg Law’s proprietary machine learning technology allows users to benchmark their drafts against similar language in millions of other publicly available agreements, using an algorithm to show the developing consensus based on analysis of documents filed as exhibits on EDGAR.
Smart Code: Identifies court opinions that reference federal and state codes and rules, indicating the strength of a discussion to identify the most useful cases. It includes customizable filters to select relevant jurisdictions and topics.
In addition to the legal industry, Bloomberg is a major provider of professional services for the financial industry, including Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg Tradebook.
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One of the two leaders from the beginning of electronic legal research, LexisNexis claims the largest collection of case law, statutes and regulations (as of February 2019); strengths in legal analytics, artificial intelligence and visualization technologies; and the advantage of integrated Shepard’s Citations Service. In 2020, the company plans to update BriefCheck, its web-based briefing checking service, to compete with Westlaw’s Quick Check solution.
Lexis Advance: Legal research platform with Lexis® Answers, an AI-enabled function based on machine-learning technology and natural language processing, and Shepard’s Citations service.
CourtLink: Online authority for U.S. federal and state courts, with access to a detailed collection of court dockets and documents. CourtLink was recently integrated with Lexis Advance for faster, easier docket searches.
News: A renewed tactical partnership with ALM (American Lawyer Media) gives Lexis exclusive aggregation rights for most of ALM’s legal news and information. And the popular daily legal news service Law360 is also part of LexisNexis.
Newsdesk: Dynamic content aggregation platform for media monitoring and analytics has completely replaced Lexis Publisher.
Financial information and analytics: LexisNexis has acquired a number of start-up companies in the last several years to quickly and strategically build out its own offerings. Knowledge Mosaic was acquired in 2013 and renamed Securities Mosaic. It includes SEC filings, legal and regulatory information, private placements, news and alerts and Canadian SEDAR filings.
Intelligize: Securities Mosaic has lost popularity with corporate and securities attorneys due to the company’s acquisition of Intelligize in 2016, which expanded the LexisNexis securities and M&A offering. Intelligize enables users to efficiently mine data and insights from SEC filings, M&A contracts, transactional agreements and corporate governance documents.
Legal analytics: LexisNexis’ 2015 acquisition of legal analytics platform Lex Machina enabled the company to position itself as a provider of analytic decision tools for legal professionals, allowing them to mine data about judges, lawyers, parties and patents to inform litigation strategies.
Patent Advisor, Total Patent and PatentOptimizer: This suite of LexisNexis patent products is used by intellectual property (IP) litigators and corporate practices for both patent protection and new licensing opportunities.
Contract analytics: LexisNexis customers will gain new contract analytics functionality thanks to an agreement to form a joint venture with Knowable, a leader in enterprise contract intelligence.
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Westlaw was the other legal research pioneer, along with LexisNexis, that launched in the 1970s as a dial-up service. Acquired by Thomson in 1996, Westlaw Classic has evolved into Westlaw Edge, combining artificial intelligence technology with knowledge from over 500 attorney-editor experts. In July 2019, the company added Quick Check, a web-based review tool for Westlaw Edge subscribers that uses AI to find highly relevant lawyer work product.
Westlaw Edge: This leading legacy resource (more than a century of serving the legal industry) has added the knowledge of expert attorney-editors and AI with content and editorial enhancements for research support.
Case Notebook: Centrally accessible and searchable litigation case management software that helps firms organize, analyze and share essential case information.
Checkpoint: Information, guidance, current awareness, tools and learning for tax, audit, international trade and corporate finance practices.
CLEAR: An easier way to search proprietary and public records in one platform for fraud detection and other investigations.
Drafting Assistant: The Litigation version provides preformatted legal document templates while the Transaction version scans legal documents to check for inaccuracies, errors and missing information.
eDiscovery Point: Comprehensive ediscovery software, services and document review.
HighQ: Thomson Reuters adds this cloud-based platform for business collaboration, workflow automation and client engagement to its portfolio. HighQ was founded in 2001 for the professional services sector.
Monitor Suite: Thomson Reuters’ legal business intelligence platform aggregates business information, real-time filtering, docket coverage and other features into one platform with a visual dashboard.
Panoramic: Connects the business of law with the practice of law, to plan and manage workflow for more effective use of time and financial resources.
Practical Law: Facilitates greater practice efficiency, especially popular among lawyers specializing in transactional work, with features for practice notes, checklists, toolkits and more.
Refinitiv: In 2018, Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk business, providing global financial information and tools, formed a strategic partnership with Blackstone private equity funds and renamed the business unit Refinitiv. In August 2019, London Stock Exchange Group announced its acquisition of Refinitiv to create a UK-based, global financial market infrastructure (FMI) provider. Refinitiv products include Eikon and World-Check, along with other financial and investment tools.
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO | 10lac-group.com
OTHER VENDOR NEWS AND UPDATES
Following are updates to the list of companies and resources in Appendix A:
• Acuris is up for sale by its private equity owner BC Partners, with Moody’s as the leading contender as of April, 2019. Acuris brands include Debtwire, MergerMarket, Perfect Information and PaRR.
• BoardEx was acquired by Euromoney Institutional Investor in December, 2018, along with The Deal to create more comprehensive services for investors, banks and professional services firms.
• Cheetah (from Wolters Kluwer) now has a library of more than 42,000 labor arbitration awards on its Labor & Employment Law platform, including more than 9,500 awards from the American Arbitration Association.
• Covenant Review, part of Fulcrum Financial Data, was sold to Fitch Group in May, 2018. Fitch is one of the major credit rating agencies behind Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.
• Elsevier is adding to its science and health offerings by acquiring Parity Computing, a California-based business that employs artificial intelligence for science, technology and medicine content and research applications.
• Facebook won’t be added to our information resource appendix just yet, however, the social media giant has confirmed that it’s working on a news tab to deliver “trustworthy news” set to launch toward the end of 2019.
• Fastcase and ROSS Intelligence have announced a partnership that will deepen the ROSS legal data repository, deliver new features to Fastcase, and enable additional integrations and joint development of new products.
• Kaleidoscope is a new securities research tool from the developers of 10-K Wizard that includes advanced pattern recognition, AI-empowered predictive analytics and data visualization technology.
• Medium is another online platform not included in our appendix, but as a publishing platform for lawyers to publish their own thought leadership content, we note that Medium is shifting to a subscription paywall model.
• OnePlace has been acquired by Intapp, joining forces to deliver a unified, front office solution that spans the entire client lifecycle for marketing and business development activities.
• Preqin Solutions was acquired by Dynamo Software in May, 2019, which serves private equity firms, M&A teams, venture capital groups, institutional investors and other participants in the financial industry.
• ReOrg Research, a provider of news and commentary on distressed debt and leveraged financial markets, was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus in June, 2018.
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MANAGING ELECTRONIC INFORMATION RESOURCES
Confused about the growing universe of information resources? The information management and indirect spend and procurement experts at LAC Group will ensure you’re choosing your best options and making the most of your investments.
LAC Group is a leading provider of information services to medium-large law firms, corporations and government agencies. Our clients engage us for reliable research and intelligence support, for guidance on managing and optimizing their information resources and assets, and for expertise in procurement and spend management techniques.
How can we deliver information support and value to your organization?
Spend managementservices
Research & intelligenceservices
Industry expertise
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APPENDIX A
The following fee-based research platforms are niche providers and top-grossing resources for business, legal and finance information.
1. Acuris: Formerly Mergermarket Group, Acuris provides specialist news, research, commentary and data on financial markets.
2. ALM Intelligence: Legal Compass from ALM Intelligence offers detailed business information and competitive intelligence about the legal industry to top US and international law firms and their clients.
3. Arachnys: Risk and compliance technology used by conflicts departments for deep-dive investigations and due diligence. A comprehensive Customer Risk Intelligent platform includes solutions for know-your-customer (KYC), enhanced due diligence (EDD) and anti-money laundering (AML).
4. BoardEx: Business intelligence service for new business development that includes in-depth profiles of over 770,000 business leaders around the world. Its proprietary software shows the relationships between and among these individuals using an emerging concept called relationship capital management. Now part of Euromoney Institutional Investor.
5. Bureau van Dijk, a Moody’s Analytics Company: Provides access to financial information on 81,000 listed and major unlisted/delisted companies around the world, including banks, insurance firms and non-bank financial institutions.
6. Casemaker: Low-cost legal research option (free to members of many bar associations) with citator, alerts and appellate decision summaries.
7. Casetext: Makers of CARA AI, an artificial intelligence tool that enables users to find cases and other authorities that share the context of a matter, including facts, legal issues and jurisdiction.
8. Courthouse News: Nationwide news service that focuses on civil litigation, from the date of filing through the appellate level. Rather than simply aggregating information, Courthouse News publishes its own original news content.
9. Covenant Review: Complete analysis of offering memorandums, term sheets, and credit agreements, as well as thorough updates on final terms and substantive amendments. Part of Fitch Group.
10. The Deal: Transaction information service created to help top law firms, investment banks, private equity firms, hedge funds and corporations find new business, develop industry relationships and perform due diligence.
11. Deal Point Data: Offers proprietary M&A content directly via its web platform and through a complete line of off-platform tools to help clients integrate Deal Point Data content directly into internal systems and portals.
12. Debtwire: Provides real-time, in-depth coverage on corporate debt situations, including market-critical proprietary intelligence, analysis and data on distressed debt, leveraged finance and asset-backed markets.
13. Dun & Bradstreet (D&B): Provider of information products for finance, sales and marketing, data management, and risk and compliance.
14. Elsevier: Dutch information and analytics company and one of the world’s major providers of scientific, technical, and medical information. Part of the RELX Group.
15. FactSet: Offers risk analytics tools and real time data feeds for institutional investors that can be implemented across the portfolio lifecycle or as standalone components serving different workflows.
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16. FastCase: Leading, next-generation legal research platform that delivers a comprehensive national law library with powerful tools for searching, sorting and data visualization.
17. Financial Times: International business news, analysis, market data and company information with global authority, including FT Specialist brands like Ignites for news about the US mutual fund and exchange-traded fund industry.
18. Fitch Group: Provider of Fitch Ratings, one of the big three credit rating agencies along with Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, as well as information for risk management, debt markets and macro intelligence.
19. Google Scholar: This free option lacks some capabilities of the paid options, but it’s popular with solo and small firms and offers fast, open access.
20. Hoovers: Part of Dun & Bradstreet, Hoovers is a real-time business data and intelligence platform targeted toward sales and marketing professionals.
21. iManage RAVN: An artificial intelligence platform that automatically organizes, discovers and summarizes documents. It automatically understands the structure of documents, can cluster data based on similar search terms, and extract and analyze key information from large volumes of data.
22. InfoNgen: Current awareness and content aggregation for text analytics and monitoring sentiment analysis.
23. InTapp: Intelligence spanning the entire client lifecycle, from strategy through origination and execution, for the marketing and business development function in partner-led firms. Acquired OnePlace in 2019.
24. Kaleidoscope - Data analytics and visualization for comprehensive securities research, from blogs and social media to authoritative financial filings.
25. Manzama: Current awareness and content aggregation for competitive and market intelligence.
26. Meltwater: Current awareness and content aggregation for PR and media monitoring.
27. MergerMarket, an Acuris Company: Business development tool designed specifically for the M&A sector, providing proprietary pre-event intelligence and analysis on corporate strategy.
28. Moody’s: One of the big three credit rating agencies along with Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Group. Specializes in international financial research on bonds.
29. Perfect Information: Provides a set of productivity tools that enable investment banks, corporate lawyers and other professional advisers involved in all aspects of corporate finance to operate efficiently and accurately.
30. Pitchbook: Web-based research and analysis tool that provides information about M&A, private equity and venture capital transactions, public and private companies, investors, funds, firms and people.
31. PaRR, an Acuris Company: Delivers global intelligence, analysis and data on competition law, anti-corruption enforcement, cybersecurity/data privacy, and sector-specific regulatory change.
32. Preqin: Provides financial data and information on the alternative assets market, with data encompassing private capital and hedge funds along with market-wide benchmarks. Now part of Dynamo Software.
33. Refinitiv: Providers of Eikon, Elektron, World-Check and other data and information products for global financial markets. Formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters.
34. RelSci: Relationship mapping tools that give users the ability to run paths between any entities, such as person and place, to get a sense of how they might be connected.
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35. RELX: RELX is a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and
business customers in law, science, medicine and technology. Holdings include LexisNexis.
36. Reorg: Combines reporting with financial and legal analysis to provide a holistic view of topical situations and delivers that view in real time through a proprietary platform. Specializes in covenants, M&A and bankruptcy filings.
37. ROSS Intelligence: A legal research platform that applies artificial intelligence concepts like machine learning and natural language processing.
38. RSRCHXchange: Part of LiquidNet, provides a marketplace for asset management firms, banks, brokers and independent researchers to buy and sell research data.
39. Standard & Poors (S&P Global): One of the big three credit rating agencies along with Moody’s and Fitch Group and provider of other information products and services for investors, issuers and intermediaries.
40. S&P Capital IQ: Part of S&P Global, allows financial professionals to analyze company fundamentals, build financial models, screen for investment ideas and execute other financial research tasks.
41. Vable: Content aggregation for current awareness and media monitoring and analysis.
42. Wall Street Journal: Edited locally in multiple languages and available across mobile devices, WSJ.com delivers breaking news streams from the financial and business worlds.
43. Wolters Kluwer: Providers of legal research platform Cheetah and other resources for health; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory information.
Search our online resources database for the resource you’re currently using to see if we have expertise. Whether you need benchmarking data, business intel, vendor knowledge or product reviews, we bring a wealth of expertise to guide your decision-making process.