12/7/09

Google Scholar & Legal Research - Focus Remains on "Scholar"

Last Friday I had a chance to talk with Google Scholar Chief Engineer Anurag Acharya. The 90 minute talk (recast available via The Law Librarian TalkBlogRadio) answered a lot of technical questions about Google Scholar Legal and Online Journals (SLOJ), but it was some of the unanswered questions that I found interesting. First of all, let me address the questions that I'm sure a lot of you have been asking:
"Can Google Scholar Legal and Online Journal replace my Westlaw or Lexis content?"
My answer: "Absolutely Not!"
In fact, the people at Google would tell you the same thing. It is just not what they are planning to do with this product. Now that I got that out of the way, let me explain what I learned in the interview and you'll see why I'm not confident in SLOJ competing with Westlaw, Lexis, or even the upcoming Bloomberg Law (which I'll call "Wexisberg").
Not Enough People on Project
First of all, Google Scholar has three people. Not just on the legal portion of Google Scholar, there are three people total on the entire project. Maybe you're saying to yourself that since Google is a search engine, maybe three people are sufficient on a project like this. In my opinion, three of the smartest legal database people in the world, combined with the power of Google might make a great resource tool for legal research, but not a competitor to the existing Wexisberg products.
No Legal Research Experience
This brings me to the second reason that this project won't compete with Wexisberg. None of the three people that Google Scholar has on this project have a legal research background, and at most are only familiar with some of the basic principles of how legal research is conducted. They are super-smart, highly educated folks with out of this world mad skills on creating great ways of searching and retrieving vasts amounts of information using the simplest of searches. But, they are not legal researchers, nor do they claim to be legal researchers. This project is focused on the way "Scholarly" research is conducted, not how "Legal" research is conducted. Again, Google SLOJ is not claiming they are... but, I know a lot of people who wish they would!!
Focus is on Improving Search Not on expanding Content
Throughout almost the entire interview, Anurag Acharya talks about how they are focused on making the search results better. The content found in Google SLOJ was either purchased or leased from third party vendors. Google specifically said that they would not disclose who they got the cases from, but Anurag did say that this vendor would also update the cases as new decisions were released. However, there are no immediate plans to expand into areas such as statutes or regulations because of the dynamic nature of such publications. Google SLOJ is sticking to the cases, and the legal scholarly work (law journals, etc.) only because these are viewed as static documents that do not change once they are published.
No API Will Be Offered
The fact that Google does not have an API to interface with Google SLOJ, nor does it plan to develop an API, is not surprising. My guess (and that's all it is... a guess), is that the agreements between Google and the third-party providers prohibit Google from using an API to distribute any of the documents it indexes. Now, if some ingenious Geek somewhere were to develop a pseudo-API that would allow you to tap into Google SLOJ through another product.... well, that's another story for another time....
Google SLOJ - Enjoy It for what It Is
We've all become used to using Google to do 'quick and dirty' research. Google SLOJ is another piece of the total Google search universe. It is there to get you something quick... something free... and sometimes will be exactly what you need to answer a research question. However, it is not a Westlaw or Lexis replacement. If you try to view it as such, you're going to be sorely disappointed. That doesn't mean that it can't get better. In fact, one of the best things I came away from the interview with was an email contact that librarians can used to submit suggestions on how to make Google Scholar better. If you see something that needs work, or have a comment or suggestion on how something could be better, shoot an email to scholar-library@google.com. Maybe, if your suggestions are good enough, you could be that fourth person on the Google Scholar team!!

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Posted by Greg Lambert at 12:00 PM 6 comments Links to this post
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12/3/09

Fishing the Social Media Ocean

Yesterday, the 3 Geeks all got together for a Twitter-style interview hosted by MH Connected's Alin Wagner-Lahmy. Although it is hard to get a serious answer out of Toby, Lisa or me, there was something that Alin asked that made me think of how I monitor the enormous amount of information that comes in via "social media" sites. Alin wondered how we find the time to monitor all of the information coming at us via social media sites. My response was that I simply stand beside the river of information with the hopes of catching something good as it swims past. Although, I specifically called it the "river of Twitter" it could actually stand for anything that is Social Media related.
I'm actually pretty lucky in that as a law librarian, my job is to "fish" the river of information at my disposal and pluck the right piece out of that river and turn it over to the appropriate person at the right time. Sometimes, through the addition of analysis, I get to clean and fry the information I caught and serve it as a meal. This isn't anything new for librarians or research analysts. We've been doing this for a long, long time now. The thing that is new is the format of the information, and the vast quantities of raw information that is available.
At one time, the information was limited to the stream in our back yard -- books we owned in our library. We would stock this stream ourselves with a few select breeds based on what we absolutely needed to feed ourselves. Occasionally, we'd fish in our neighbors' streams when we desired something that we hadn't stocked in our own.
When the information went "electronic", we decided that the stream in our back yard just wasn't enough. We needed to fish in the big lake that was stocked by others and we'd buy the rights to pull certain types of information as much as we wanted. We'd also be able to fish for other types of information, but we'd pay a substantial price for it. While we were still stocking our local stream, over time we began reducing the diversity of the information, relying more and more on what we could pull from the big lakes we paid to fish in. It was expensive to fish for information this way, but it was stable, dependable, and we understood where we needed to fish in order to get certain breeds.
Lately, there is an ocean of social media information that we've started fishing in. That ocean is stocked for free by millions and millions of people, and very little of it is something we need to catch. However, there are isolated areas in that ocean that contain some of the information we truly desire. Tasty bits of exotic information that you'd pay a premium for in the lake, or even types of information that aren't even available to stock in those lakes and streams you've been fishing for years. The problem is finding the tasty pieces of information in an ocean that is mostly stocked with the inedible type. This is where your experienced information fisherman are most valuable.
Just as you would hire a local guide when you travel to an unfamiliar river, pulling information out of the social media ocean takes experience, patience, and the ability to know what can and what cannot be pulled from that ocean. One of the key things to remember is that this ocean is not a replacement for your local stream or lake. Instead, it is just another place to fish for information. An experienced information fisherman will understand when to fish in the local stream versus going out to the ocean; when it is better to pay a fee at the lake to quickly find the right type of information versus gambling on catching fresh or exotic information that may be found for free in that ocean.
The information stocked in the ocean of social media is diverse and plentiful. But, that doesn't mean that everything is edible... actually, far from it. So, be wary of those standing beside the ocean that say everything you want is found in the ocean, because it's not. Also, beware the salesman beside the lake that say he can stock whatever you need in the lake, because he cannot. Nor should you attempt to live only on what you've stocked in your local stream. You'll find that catching the same breed of information over and over again can become stagnating.
There is value in each of these fishing locations, none of which completely replaces the other. The key is in expanding your information resources without forgetting what is stocked in each.

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Posted by Greg Lambert at 8:15 AM 3 comments Links to this post
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12/1/09

AFAs: Inputs vs Outcomes

I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Levy’s ITLA web seminar this Monday on Legal Project Management. Of course the subject of Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) came up and the inter-connection between them and legal project management was discussed. A noteworthy point from Steve was the need to focus on outcomes. He highly recommends that any legal project developed a thoughtful ‘done’ statement which clearly describes what it means for the project to be … done. By doing this you focus your resources (inputs) on getting things ‘done.’ To illustrate the point Steve shared a classic economics story about how the Soviet Union measured success by the amount of inputs being used and not by the outcomes. Factories were rewarded for using materials (inputs) instead of supplying needed products (outcomes). His point is that trying to change outcomes by tinkering with inputs is not a good approach. If you want a different outcome, start by re-defining that, not by fiddling with the inputs. To their misfortune, law firms reward inputs. And you get what you reward – in this case billable hours. Although clients are rightly upset with this situation, they are equally culpable as they focus their attention primarily on hourly discounts and lower billing rates as a means for changing the outcomes. If clients truly want to change this situation, they should follow Steve’s advice and shift their attention to outcomes. Tinkering with rates and hours may save a little money in the short run. But if they truly want to change things, lower their costs and drive value, clients will need to sit down with law firms and redefine their outcomes. Happily there are some exceptions and good examples for clients who get this. But the vast majority are currently content to ask for discounts and rate freezes. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Clients and law firms would do well to heed the advice of Steve Levy to focus on outcomes and in the process avoid the insanity described by Mr. Einstein.

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Posted by Toby Brown at 6:48 PM 0 comments Links to this post
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