It’s one of those often overlooked economic rules: If you start a company and become successful, others will notice. Especially others with capital. In this case Practical Law Company (PLC) introduced a product/service a few years back and has been doing quite well with it. So much that apparently LexisNexis saw an opportunity and has just announced their own Lexis Practice Advisor offering. They were kind enough to provide a preview demo for Geek #1 (a.k.a. Greg) and me.

The Basics
It is generally understood that most electronic legal content is of more use to litigators, so Lexis wanted to address the needs of the other side of the market. Lexis interviewed (in some fashion) over 600 lawyers on their practice needs in the transactional space. What they learned from these lawyers was A) they have definite needs for content automation and quick access to relevant content, and B) there aren’t many alternatives in the market.
Today Lexis rolls out the first phase of this the product, dubbed “Business Law,” and will add more content options over the coming months. We suggest you check it out to get an idea of what content is included in the Business Law portion along with what’s on the horizon.
Having only seen a demo, the product looks easy-to-use and has a good amount of content around each document offering. This allows the user to quickly understand what’s needed for a given transaction along with options for digging deeper as required. The screen shot shows the clean interface and content options.

Differentiators
When I asked the Lexis team what sets their offering apart, they gave me three factors. First – the step-by-step nature of the product makes it very easy for lawyers to use. Greg and I always joke about how technology needs to be very very very easy to use to be successful with lawyers. This product is. Second – The content links into the deep legal content of Lexis, making relevant statues, regulations and cases very easy to locate. Third – The type of content is unique. I gave Lexis a Fourth factor – broader appeal. Whereas PLC may appeal to the higher end of the market, Practice Advisor is a more do-it-yourself offering that most any segment of the market would use. The pricing approach reflects that with a reasonable price per lawyer per month.
If you have a transactional practice, Practice Advisor should be on your list of products to check out. It will be interesting to see how this offering competes in the market, especially as the content grows.