October 26, 2004
Factiva Content to Migrate to Lexis
Some people firmly believe that LexisNexis has the best news coverage of the two major online legal vendors. But Westlaw could always tout the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones content, very high value stuff not available on LexisNexis. Not for long....by March 2005, LexisNexis will be the exclusive provider of Factiva content to the legal market.
Is this bad news for West? Hard to say. That depends upon how well their new source for news, Dialog, holds up to the competition, though it's hard to see how the loss of the Wall Street Journal could be a good thing. Though Westlaw has announced the addition of the New York Times, previously only available on Lexis.
And to top it all off, a recent Newsbreak on the topic indicates that legal customers currently subscribing to Factiva will be required to migrate to Lexis for that content. Factiva direct will no longer be an option for them. It's unclear to me whether this would also apply to the Wall Street Journal Online.
How the Factiva content will be offered via Lexis/Nexis. Will it be a gateway? Integrated with their other news content? I've got more questions than answers. My more immediate concern is that all my Westlaw Intraclips keep on working!
By the way, Genie Tyburski, in her story on this topic, refers to a web site that was new to me, Outsell Now. Very interesting...I quicky added it to my list of RSS feeds!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)July 22, 2004
AALL Exhibit Tidbits: Findlaw's Thomson Legal Record
The West Legal Directory has always suffered a bit of an identity crisis. Martindale-Hubbell is the gold standard for attorney directories, and it was always a challenge to convince firms that they should pay for another listing in WLD after shelling out the thousands of dollars for MH. When West's purchased Findlaw, the WLD, historically available free of charge, was incorporated into the other free Findlaw resources.
Thomson is hoping to provide an incentive for law firms to purchase enhanced profiles with their newly named Thomson Legal Record. They've enhanced the profile information provided by the firm, to include an attorney's "litigation history", incorporating links cases in which the attorney was involved, with the full-text easily retrievable for anyone with a Westlaw password.
According to the brochure (sorry, I tried to find it on the web, but wasn't successful), the Thomson Legal Record will soon include docket information, jury verdicts, law review articles, and transaction information drawn from Thomson Financial Records.
By the way, those who are responsible for compiling the lawyer profile information for their firm will be pleased to know that the profile data can be scraped from the firm's own web site.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)May 25, 2004
West KM/Lexis TotalSearch or Enterprise Search Engine?
According to PC Magazine, "search has become one of the hottest technologies in the computer industry." From products designed to search data on a single PC, to those aimed at small, medium or large companies, there is an ever growing number of vendors promoting full-text search products for document management systems(DMS), litigation support, databases, email, intranets, and some that try to do it all, high-end, enterprise search engines such as Autonomy, Verity and Recommind, just to name a few.
Where does WestKM and the Lexis Total Search products fit into the mix? Lisa Kellar, Practice Automation Manager at Hunton & Williams, explains the difference between these KM products and the enterprise search engines.
"West KM or Lexis Total Search don't meet the same needs as an enterprise search. West and Lexis offer tools, probably most useful to litigators, that allow you to conduct legal research while at the same time "discovering" internal work product that cite the same cases. They offer automatic updating or flagging of citations as well. They let researchers continue to use an environment they are familiar with and will need to continue to use anyway. They can also use either West or Lexis syntax to just search the internal portion of the knowledgebase. Firms are including a subset of their documents for inclusion in these systems and they are limited to documents stored in your DMS (which could include email).
Enterprise search not only would include everything in your DMS (not a subset) it would also search many other repositories within the firm. They offer conceptual searching and other fuzzy logic, but don't have the research orientation that West and Lexis offer. They might also require learning a different search syntax, although most offer natural language searching these days.
I don't think one is better than the other or one is a replacement for the other. I'm impressed with both solutions, but they meet different needs. Enterprise search is probably useful to a much larger audience than something like WestKM but the utility of WestKM might be higher for its users, than enteprise search. The difficulty comes in deciding whether or not its worth the money to have both types of solutions."
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)May 04, 2004
Westlaw Delivers RSS!
Westlaw Intraclips can now be delivered via RSS!
I've been wondering, okay, sometimes whining, occasionally outright complaining about the lack of RSS from either of the "big two" legal online vendors. So I was very excited to see the RSS option appear on the revamped Intraclips administrative interface.
RSS is not the only enhancement, but rather part of a fairly significant Intraclips overhaul. Another item on my wish list, wire services, is also now available for the first time via Intraclips for those who want REALLY current news.
Intraclips are free to set up and can be used to track new content from a variety of sources including newspapers, business magazines, and recent state and federal cases. You select the database and create the search, then you can choose to display the current search results on your Intranet (html or xml), and/or receive a list of results via email. A charge of $2.75 per document is incurred when you click through to the full-text of an item listed on the clip. Intraclips are very similar to Westclips, but offer the additional Intranet, and now RSS options.
To create an Intraclip visit West's Integration Solutions. You will, of course, need a Westlaw user id. I use the Internet interface. After creating your search, select RSS under "Format". Once you've completed the setup, you'll see the little orange RSS box next to the name of the clip in your clip directory.
If you'd like to see a sample RSS Intraclip, take a look at my public feeds on Bloglines. Just click on West Intraclip - KM. This Intraclip is set up to require a user id and client-matter number for full-text articles. There are other options including transparent authentication, in other words, a password is not required for users within your network. Check with your Westlaw rep for more info.
Is there a huge demand for RSS? Probably not right now, but the demand is growing quickly. It makes sense to anticipate the need sooner rather than later. Email is becoming problematic as a delivery mechanism, and RSS is an exciting alternative.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)April 06, 2004
Lexis and Westlaw Software or Dot Com?
Lexis and Westlaw introduced the web versions of their popular research services in 1998. The eventual phase out of the classic software was predicted and discussed on lawlib that same year. Since then law students have been trained exclusively on the web. But will we have to wait for a full generation before discarding the software? It's beginning to seem so! The results of a recent LawLibTech poll shows that 67% of law firms still offer the classic software of one or both vendors.
My guess is that 20-30% of researchers still use the proprietary software. Do you suppose Lexis and Westlaw anticipated the continued loyalty that their proprietary software seems to inspire in long time users? Considering the advances in functionality of Lexis and Westlaw dot com, why should firms continue to support the software?
In a word, speed. Power users including attorneys and librarians who learned Lexis/Westlaw pre-web are adamant in their opinions that the software is faster. Even though Internet connection speeds have improved and "dot commands" and short cuts are now available via the web, it's hard to dispute. And for those opting for hourly pricing, speed can translate into cost savings.
Political issues also play a part. Many long-time software users are high-billing partners. Could they learn to love the web? Maybe, but at their billable rate, it's an expensive proposition to wean them from their research tool of choice.
So what are the downsides to keeping the software? There are several.
The main concern from the IT standpoint is software maintenance. Since new versions of the classic software are no longer being released, updates are a thing of the past. But new installations, troubleshooting and migrating the old software to new platforms still requires valuable IT time.
Enhancements introduced in the last couple of years are only available on the web so those using the software are missing out on many valuable new features. They may not even know what they're missing. For example, Westlaw's Resultsplus is not available via the software. Certainly any firm using West KM or Lexis TotalSearch would want to migrate ALL users to the web versions, as these services would be completely missing from the software. Those are just two examples; there are many more features only offered on the web.
Librarians who choose to use the software exclusively may not be familiar with the web versions. In that case, not only will they be unable to help researchers using the web, they may also be seen as "behind the times" by incoming associates who have to turn elsewhere for assistance.
How will this play out? Eventually there may be a "killer" feature added to the web versions that will convince even the most die-hard software users of the advantages of the web. Or perhaps it will be an accumulation of important enhancements that will motivate software users to make the switch. Or all those partners will reach retirement age, whichever comes first.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)March 28, 2004
Westcheck.com
I was pretty darn excited to see that Westlaw has announced WestCheck.com, due out April 2004.
Just think, no longer will we have to evaluate and install Westcheck upgrades. We'll be able to do EVERYTHING on the web. If there's an update, it will automatically be made in one place, Eagan. Technology departments all over the country will be jumping for joy. Or at least, they should be!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)November 22, 2003
Amazon Can Do It. So Can Westlaw
Last week I was bemoaning the fact that secondary sources in legal research are getting short shrift. I suggested that the online services should push the appropriate treatise, ALR, etc. resources to the user based on the user's search terms.
So perhaps it wasn't an original thought. It turns out that Westlaw is doing just that with their new product, ResultsPlus.
I think this is revolutionary. ResultsPlus will get researchers back to the treatises, encyclopedias and practice materials that we know can be extremely useful. The researcher doesn't even have to know they exist.
It's been quite a month. Between Amazon's Search Inside the Book, the announcement that Google will include OCLC Records, and ResultsPlus, it's fair to say that books are coming out of the closet. And none too soon.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
