I received an interesting email this morning from Bloomberg asking me to participate in their “Bloomberg Law Litigation Survey.”  Seems that Bloomberg is wanting to query its Bloomberg Law customers on their opinions of current litigation issues and see who we think will prevail.  I thought I was super-special, until Toby told me that he got the same survey.
This is a very, very interesting idea.  I’m not sure if there is a place for those not using Bloomberg to sign up for these surveys, but maybe one of the Bloomberg Survey Gurus could let us know.
Here is a sample of one of the survey questions:
Again, I thought this is actually a pretty good use of Bloomberg’s customer base, and a way to basically crowdsource some information from them and determine if the crowd’s answer matches the eventual outcome of the litigation.  However, one of the big failures of this survey is the format.  First of all, you have to open the PDF file and read the survey.  If you want to answer the survey, you have to print it out and fill out the form.  Then, perhaps the biggest problem in my opinion, you have to FAX the survey (two-pages, mind you) back to Bloomberg.  What is this??  1991??  Here’s a snapshot of the “legal” language of the survey where you have to actually take out a pen and check the box, sign your name and date the form:

So, Bloomberg gets an “A” for idea, but a “F” for execution on this one.
Here’s my suggestion to Bloomberg to raise that “F” up to at least a “C”.  Use a web-survey tool! Heck, have Mike go out and buy a web-survey company… he can afford it.  With a survey tool, you make it easy for someone like me to answer your survey in about a minute or two.  The tool should already have my personal information build into its database, so I won’t have to fill out those personal sections of the survey.  Basically, I open up the page, check the box, click submit, and then back to work.  If you make it easier on your users, you’ll definitely get a higher percentage to answer your survey.  Make it look good (and maybe enter me in a chance to win one of those new iPads), then I may even bump that “C” up to an “A-“.