Wolters Kluwer’s (WK) product IntelliConnect is one in which they are really wanting to have a second chance to give you a good first impression. When the product was initially launched in the Fall of 2009, many law librarians and legal researchers gave it negative reviews and found a number of problems with the interface. Because of the initial launch didn’t go the way WK had hoped, they asked a few law library bloggers to come up to New York to view the interface, look at some of the advances that have been made since the launch, and to give feedback, suggestions, criticisms, etc. to a group of WK trainers, marketers, developers and executives. To my FTC friends out there, WK flew me to NYC, put me up in a hotel room (see the bathtub in the window blog), bought me lunch (and some breakfast bagels), and I got a per diem for taxi ride (which, by the way fell about $20 short of the actual cost!!) So, with that bit of legality out of the way, let me tell you about my experience with WK’s IntelliConnect.

Best Thing About IntelliConnect – The People Behind It
Before I launch into the product itself, let me tell you about what impressed me the most about my visit wasn’t the product, but rather the people behind the product. All of them were very excited to have us up there, proud of the product itself, but willing to have an actual conversation about it, and accept the critical views we gave them without becoming defensive or deflecting the problem back at us. It is not easy sitting in a room where people are pointing to your past errors, current problems, and where we think they need to put their future efforts. But, take it they did, and in return they pointed out things they had fixed; things they are working on, and; reasons why IntelliConnect was designed the way it was. It was a great roundtable type discussion where everyone walked away a feeling like we were all moving in the right direction.

Other Reviews to Look At
My fellow law librarian blogger, Jason Eiseman, gives a pretty good description and review of IntelliConnect over at his The Content Librarian blog, and WK actually has an informative and kind of entertaining overview video of the product. I agree with a lot of the points that Jason makes, and rather than rehash what he’s already covered, let me point out a few additional observations. You may want to read Jason’s Eiseman’s post before continuing… go ahead, I’ll still be here when you get back.

Built for the Needs of the Power-User
The consistant phrase I kept hearing throughout the day was “this is what our `POWER-USERS` asked us to do.” So, for all of you that complained when WestlawNext launched its product and you said that they were “dumbing down” or “Googlizing” legal research, then you’ll love the fact that IntelliConnect falls on the other end of that spectrum by creating a product that is designed for “experienced” or “power-users”. I, on the other hand, feel that developing your product based on what the power-users demand may not be the best approach. I’d rather have something that is initially designed for simple searching and navigation, with the option to go to an advanced version if I so choose. But for those of you that like having powerful search and navigation features built into your research tools, then you’ll like the lay out of IntelliConnect.

Problems with Frames
To me, however, the look brought back memories of CD-ROM products, especially with the use of webpage frames where the search bar, navigation, and results page are in their individual frames. Frames have too many problems associated with them, and although the power-users that WK worked with on setting up the design said they like the frames, it may also be one of the primary reasons for some of the biggest complaints from some of these same users. When you have frames, the webpage URL’s aren’t dynamic, and can be a headache when the user hits refresh and gets sent back to the start page. My dislike of frames was not universally held by the bloggers, however. Jason Eiseman thought that the frames were fine and had no problem with how it looked.

Some “Problems” Fixed
Before I went up to NYC, I asked some of my law librarian cohorts to give me a list of questions, or problems they were having with IntelliConnect and I would relay those while I was there to see if I could get an answer. As I started going through the list with the WK people, I noticed that some of these problems were corrected but there seemed to be a disconnect between WK and the users. WK needs to have a simple place to go to that details any known problems, and when it was fixed, or an ETA on when the fix is going to be rolled out. The other problem is that some users got a bad first impression of the product, and just assume that the problems still exists. For this, the user needs to do two things… 1) try it again, see if it works now, and 2) contact your WK rep and let them know this is important to you. Although they probably won’t be able to fix it on the spot, they did tell me that they take user input very seriously, and would make sure that those making changes, corrections or updates to IntelliConnect would get that message and would see what they could do to fix it.

The Future For WK/CCH/ASPEN/LOISLAW is IntelliConnect
IntelliConnect is here to stay. Wolters Kluwer is moving away from its concept of simply being a holding company and letting its subsidiaries operating in their own little silos. The impression I got leaving the meeting at WK was that IntelliConnect is the platform they are banking on to consolidate all of their products. This will be a long, long process, and one filled with a lot of obstacles trying to get unrelated databases to work together. I’m excited about the fact that it looks like they are eventually going to integrate LoisLaw’s information into IntelliConnect and finally leverage all that primary law information against the wealth of information from all their other products. I was told that LoisLaw will continue as a stand alone product in order to compete with some of the low-cost research tools out there. So, my “total guess” is that if they integrate the primary law data, it will go in under a new brand. The LoisLaw integration will also reduce the large amount of duplication that WK companies are doing, and should streamline the overall process.

IntelliConnect Needs a Second Chance to Make a First Impression
I again point back to my previous statement that I believe that those in charge of IntelliConnect want it to be a great product. It has a way to go, but you get a feeling that they are willing to listen and adjust to what their users want. One of the best comments I got from a fellow librarian about WK and IntelliConnect was this:

CCH’s [WK’s] content and reputation are their greatest assets. They should create a database that capitalizes on those while making it more intuitive and simpler to search and organize results.

I think that WK is trying to do this. So, I suggest that if you’re using IntelliConnect that you start relaying what you want IntelliConnect to become. Wolters Kluwer says they are willing to listen, so now’s the time to start the conversation.

Seems that the Spokane County Law Library (SCLL) has found itself in a bit of financial difficulties in paying its Westlaw (Thomson Reuters Legal) bills on time. According to an article by John Craig of the Spokesman-Review, SCLL “has $75,129 in past-due bills on a contract for legal research materials that officials say is too expensive and unpredictable – and can’t be canceled.” Craig reports that the library has a Westlaw annual bill of approximately $144,000.00, which accounts for its overall budget of $220,000.00. So, SCLL spends nearly 2/3rd’s of its annual budget with Thomson Reuters Legal, leaving them $76,000.00 total to pay for all other materials, building costs, and salaries. To make matters worse, the Westlaw bill is expected to go up by over $25,000.00 as an annual increase in the contract.

Reading this article makes me wonder who the heck signed this contract in the first place? Back in my previous position, I managed 75 of Oklahoma’s 77 county law libraries, and one of the good and bad things about county law library budgets that are tied to filing fees (like SCLL is), is that there usually isn’t a huge swing up or down in the budget each year. So, signing a contract that puts in an annual increase of 17% smacks of insanity both on the part of Thomson Reuters and SCLL. Did anyone think that court filings were going to increase 17% a year?? Of course, I’m basing this on only reading Craig’s article, so perhaps there are additional circumstances involved in this situation that justify a 17% increase, but I’m really scratching my head on what that could be.

SCLL Librarian Cynthia Lucas is scrambling to explain to the county commissioners that the library needs to renegotiate the law library contract with Thomson Reuters, and that she claims that SCLL is paying three times the price that Piece County (Tacoma area) in 2007 for the same exact services. If this is true, then someone at Thomson Reuters Legal needs to step up immediately and make this right. If it is a matter that SCLL simply acted carelessly and bought too much product and now can’t pay, then someone at Thomson Reuters needs to get in there right now and renegotiate by trimming down the subscriptions and getting the payments back to a reasonable amount. Lucas said that she fears that Thomson Reuters might not negotiate a debt-payment plan without SCLL signing a new contract. I hate to be blunt here, but SCLL needs to negotiate a new contract!!!! The one you have is horrible!! Get someone from Thomson Reuters on the phone today and start working out a deal to get your payments under control.

I hope that the Washington Association of  County Law Libraries, WestPAC and AALL are ready to step in to help Lucas get control of this situation. Whatever happened to get SCLL to this extremely bad situation (and contract) needs to be resolved in a way that both Thomson Reuters and SCLL share the pain, but get a better contract that gets costs to a more reasonable amount for SCLL to pay.

The team at LexisNexis was kind enough to give me a preview of what’s coming. As one might expect, they have been working on their response to WestLawNext. Response is not actually the right word, since they have obviously been working on this for some time.

The service is yet to be branded, so for now I’ll refer to it as The New Lexis (Lexis 2.0 sounded too cliche).
Impressions
The new interface has some similarities to WestLawNext. I attribute that to Google though, not West. Lexis did the right thing and 1) Asked the customer what their pain is, and then 2) Listened. The result is a simple search box, with a few easily understandable search options below it (think ‘Advanced Search’ on Google). Below the search box is “My Workspace” with a box for saved info (currently in a folder view) and a box for search history. Both of these functions have a persistent presence in the upper right hand mini-navigation, just like … you guessed it – Google. Once you get into search results, they have taken a KM approach to presenting information. Being a KM guy, this makes sense to me. The filtering and tabbed browsing options make navigating intuitive.
The Real Differences
This product will come out in a phased roll-out starting in the Fall. The product will be rolled out by market segment and each iteration will be slightly different to meet the needs of that market segment. This obviously recognizes the fact that a 30 year old solo practitioner will have different practice needs than a BigLaw partner. Score one for Lexis.
The BIG question is always pricing. Although they couldn’t give me numbers yet (understandable) they did say ‘predictability’ will be the theme. The team actual read Greg’s Open Letter posted here on 3 Geeks. Just like law firm clients, lawyers don’t like surprises when it comes to a bill. So their service will be priced on a subscription basis instead of per search.
My 2 Big Questions
  1. Are you guys going to finally integrate all the cool stuff you own so the cool new functionality in Patent Semantic Search (future blog post) will be in The New Lexis? Good thing I was sitting down for the demo. They have already experimented with that tool and it’s on the road map. Say What? So much for stumping them on that one.
  2. When are you going to get your marketing $#!+ together? I pointed out that I found the Patent Semantic Search and iPhone apps by accident. Their reply: Why do you think we’re showing this stuff to you? Ouch. Another point for Lexis.
I see strong potential in the direction Lexis is taking here. The New Lexis and the eye towards integrating their various services makes a lot of sense to me. Time will tell, but at this point I’m seeing definite progress.

Watching Greg present to HALSM and participating in the lively and thoughtful dialogue, I came up with THE answer to lowering legal fees.
First some back ground – Greg was presenting on how “Efficiency” is finally becoming vogue in the legal market. He then went on to showcase how that trend can be and is being applied in the e-discovery realm. This lead to an engaging dialogue on the subject of lowering the costs of e-discovery. Greg pointed out the relatively recent article from Craig Ball on how e-discovery costs are 5 times higher than they should be. This discrepancy exists for a number of reasons, but a big one is the fact that selling the restructuring of legal processes for efficiency and lower costs has been falling on deaf ears. Not that in-house and outside counsel don’t care about costs. It’s just that the fix for this problem means doing things differently (a.k.a. outside the paradigm of precedence), and not just a getting bigger discount on rates.
So – here comes THE answer. There is a group inside the company that is very focused on lowering costs. This department is called purchasing or procurement. The problem this group has been having is a lack of understanding of how legal services are consumed. As they try to unitize legal costs they invariable go to hours and rates, which is doing things the same way and not currently working well for lowering costs. However, if purchasing actually understood the problem and knew about the fix, they would force the issue and get the in-house counsel department to drive the change.
That’s THE answer. Go to purchasing with effective legal cost savings ideas. If this group actually figures this problem out, then change will quickly ripple through the system. In-house lawyers will be pushed to change, which will in turn drive the same with outside counsel.
It’s not that these lawyers don’t want to lower costs – the problem is that they don’t know how. This e-discovery case study is just an example. Imagine if purchasing realized they could deconstruct numerous legal service approaches and restructure them for cost savings. We would quickly find ourselves in Enlightenment 2.0.
I’m just sayin …

I’ve always said that the law firm world is one of “Monkey See… Monkey Do.” Turns out that the big legal publisher world follows that same mantra. If you look at a cached list of Lexis Librarian Relations Consultants, you’ll see the list has six names on it that don’t appear today. Seems that Lexis is following Westlaw (AKA Thomson Reuters Legal) in cutting the number of staff they have that work as library liaisons between the clients and the company. We reported on the cuts in the Westlaw Library Relations team back in January of this year.

Alright… this sort of cut doesn’t really surprise anyone (other than it took Lexis five additional months to pull the trigger trimming the group.) Times are hard… subscriptions are being cut… overhead is being reduced as needed… since these folks are considered overhead, it was probably inevitable that they would be given the ax just like their counterparts at West did a few months back.

I’ve got an email out to some of the remaining Consultants to see if they can put out a statement about the apparent layoffs.  One other little thing that caught my eye was the fact that on the “old” list of Consultants, Lexis didn’t list the Team Leads, but do on the “new” list. Perhaps to offset the length of the list as to not make it look so drastic?

UPDATE: Here is the response I received from Lexis on the re-alignment of Librarian Relations Consultants:

Carol Lyons Weber, Vice President of Customer Consultants at LexisNexis:

“As part of an overall re-alignment of resources to meet the changing needs of customers, LexisNexis has streamlined its team of Librarian Relations Consultants. 

The company remains committed to law librarians, and has expanded its diverse set of tools and resources to provide product training, continuing education and on-going customer support. We recently introduced a new Librarian Innovation Team, comprised of law librarians to provide feedback on development of new products and services for librarians, and the LexisNexis InfoPro online site offering educational programs which conveniently update, inform and interact with law librarians on an ongoing basis.

We are supporting affected employees as they pursue new opportunities – both inside and outside the company. Customers who will work with a new LRC will hear from our team within the next week.” 

Thanks to a tip from Jim Hassett, I had the opportunity to see a demo of the new beta version of Onit Project Manager. This system fits nicely with Jim’s “low hanging fruit” approach to Legal Project Management (LPM). Eric Elfman, a founder of the company, was nice enough to come by our offices and show us this new application.
First impressions: Simple and easy to use. Per my low hanging fruit comment, this is not your overkill project management software system. Instead it’s designed to fit within the existing work-day of a lawyer. As such, it has good potential to provide the first step into LPM for a lawyer or firm.
As a SaaS application, it also has a low threshold for adoption. As a free application, it’s something even Greg would use. So if you are looking for an easy, obvious first step into LPM, take a look at Onit.
Going forward, Onit will introduce an enterprise version with more administrative capabilities. Onit will also introduce a spend management system to complement the LPM offering.
Eric, as a founder of Datacert, understands this market and appreciates the needs of lawyers, firms and corporate legal departments. The application has some room to grow, so I will definitely keep an eye on it. Per Paul Easton, Onit is also looking for input from users, if you want to dive in even deeper.

As ageing Baby Boomer law firm library directors retire, there seems to be a growing trend to eliminate the Library Director position and either run the department by committee, or move responsibility for the law library to the Chief Information Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, or to existing Directors of other departments such as Knowledge Management. So far, I’ve seen very little reaction from the associations that represent law librarians (whether it is AALL, SLA, or local associations) in protest of these moves. I now know of at least three AmLaw 100 firms that no longer have a Library Director, and have no plans to rehire those positions because they do not see the value that this position brings to their firms. So, are law firm Library Directors passé? If we don’t start doing something about this trend right now they sure as hell soon will be.

How many law schools are out there that do not have a law librarian as director (usually with an Associate Dean title) running the library? Zero! One!! Why?? Because the ABA guidelines specifically say there must be a director, and even goes further to suggest that the Director hold a law degree and a library degree. Here are the standards for Law Library Director that the ABA places on all law schools:

Standard 603. DIRECTOR OF THE LAW LIBRARY

(a) A law library shall be administered by a full-time director whose principal responsibility is the management of the law library.
(b) The selection and retention of the director of the law library shall be determined by the law school.
(c) A director of a law library should have a law degree and a degree in library or information science and shall have a sound knowledge of and experience in library administration.
(d) Except in extraordinary circumstances, a law library director shall hold a law faculty appointment with security of faculty position.
Interpretation 603-1
The director of the law library is responsible for all aspects of the management of the law library including budgeting, staff, collections, services and facilities.
Interpretation 603-2
The dean and faculty of the law school shall select the director of the law library.
Interpretation 603-3
The granting of faculty appointment to the director of the law library under this Standard normally is a tenure or tenure-track appointment. If a director is granted tenure, this tenure is not in the administrative position of director.
Interpretation 603-4
It is not a violation of Standard 603(a) for the director of the law library also to have other administrative or teaching responsibilities, provided suf cient resources and staff support are available to ensure effective management of library operations.

For law firms, even those in the AmLaw 100, 200 or NLJ 250, there is no such requirement or suggested qualifications for someone managing the firm’s law library. Therefore, law firms have absolutely no pressure put on them to place qualified professionals in charge of their libraries. The only thing that law librarians seem to have is the American Lawyer’s annual Law Librarian Survey, but that has no effect upon any of the AmLaw 100 or AmLaw 200 rankings.

The simple fact is that even large AmLaw 100 firms have absolutely no requirement to have a law library director position. And as far as I know, there is no movement within the ABA, AALL, SLA, American Lawyer, National Law Journal, or any other organization to set a requirement similar to Standard 603 for law firms. Is it time to push for such a standard for large law firms? Or did law librarians miss the opportunity to solidify their roles within law firms and are now watching as the top library positions disappear forever?

When I’m asked what I do all day, I usually answer that I monitor changes in information and relay those changes to the appropriate people, at the appropriate time. Perhaps I could put an anagram on this process and call it JITI (Just In Time Information). The key to JITI is a combination of human knowledge and creativity combined with automated resources designed to capture, filter and format the information in a way that makes clean-up, organization and dissemination easier. One of the newest resource I’ve discovered is the webpage bookmarking tool called Diphur.

For years now, I’ve been using WatchThatPage.com (WTP) as my go-to resource for monitoring changes in websites. In fact, WTP is still my favorite resource because of its simplicity, and how I can get great results compiled in a single email. However, WTP does not have the ability to set up RSS feeds of those results, and as far as I can tell, has no plans to do so in the immediate future. When I came across Diphur last week, I thought I’d give it a go to see how well it compares to WTP for monitoring changes in webpages. So far… it looks pretty promising.

Diphur allows you to bookmark webpages, and ‘tag’ those webpages with bookmarks that you define. For example, I monitor changes in AmLaw 100 firms’ client alerts and news pages, so I find the page I want, enter the URL into Diphur, and then tag it with Law Firm>>News, and now I have an ability to upload these tagged pages into an RSS feeder, or get email alerts that monitor the changes. When there is a change in one of the webpages that Diphur is monitoring, I can see those changes in one place. This morning, for example, there was a change in one of the Dechert law firm pages, and I received an update that looked like this:

Something changed on the website your bookmark is monitoring, please see the changes below.

> 7% change via dechert.com for the day Mon, May 17, 2010 

Nice and clean looking update, with the changes in the webpage clearly displayed for easy reading and dissemination. Although Diphur doesn’t compile all of the pages I’m monitoring into one update like WTP does, the RSS feed option can kind of work as a one-stop place to monitor the changes.
Diphur allows you to set the percentage of change that needs to occur. This prevents a lot of the minor changes (changes in dates, etc.) from being sent to you every day. Depending upon the page you’re monitoring, you can adjust the percentage of change that needs to occur before an update is sent to you. It will probably take some tweaking to get the page results just right, but tools like these sure make monitoring hundreds (or thousands) of webpages a whole lot easier to do.

Diphur is a brand new resource (launched on April 5, 2010), and is still working out some of the kinks. They have blog that discusses some of the issues (read: bugs) that they are dealing with, as well as following up on their ongoing philosophy “to listen to users and implement what they want”. You got to like a philosophy like that!

So, if you have to monitor changes in webpages, go give Diphur a try. Let us know what you think about it, and how it compares to resources that you may already be using.

It seems that I’m finding out lately that “the more I know… the more I know I don’t know”. Yesterday was a prime example of how I learned about two things that I probably should have know about well before yesterday.

New PACER “Look & Feel”


First up… PACER is launching a new “look and feel” for its website. You already knew this?? Well, I sure missed the memo on this change. I rechecked my RSS feeds, and sure enough… turns out that my buddy Joe Hodnicki over at the Law Librarian Blog tried to clue me in way back on April 30th! (That’s like a year in “Internet Time”). One of the things that didn’t make me feel too bad about missing this piece of information was the fact that almost everyone I talked to seemed to have missed it too. So, in case you also missed that little piece of information, you can go today and look at the preview of the new PACER site (http://pcl.uscourts.gov). You HAVE to go today to see the preview, because the new site launches tomorrow!!

Well have a review of the new PACER site early next week, but in the meantime, here’s a brief overview of some of the new changes that come with the new “Look & Feel”:

The Case Locator replaces the U.S. Party/Case Index and provides enhanced search and display capabilities including the ability to:
  – request lists of cases for a specified date range by court type;
  – conduct searches based on chapter, discharge date and dismissal date for bankruptcy cases;
  – access case information for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation;
  -choose result formats, including HTML, delimited text, and XML which can be easily imported to other programs for analysis;
  – change the sort order of the results displayed; and
  -conduct refined searches within the results of a previous search.

CourtCall – The “Not Quite Virtual” Telephonic Court Appearance Resource

I kind of convinced myself that missing the PACER changes was forgivable… but, this next item seems to point to my being completely ignorant of a resource that has been around for over 15 years. I had someone call me asking if we had access to a product called “CourtCall“. I responded quickly with “What the Heck is CourtCall??”  Which was my not-so-intelligent way of saying “I don’t think we subscribe to that service.” Well, I had to listen for five minutes while the person on the other end of the line raved about how this service allows you to schedule a telephone appearance with a court rather than having to drive or fly to make the appearance. This sounded eerily like a low-tech version of Lisa’s virtual courts post from a couple of weeks ago. I jumped out on the web and started doing some quick research on the service and then immediately started kicking myself for not knowing about this years ago.

Here’s a brief overview of the product from CourtCall’s website:

CourtCall created the turn-key telephonic court appearance system that has become the industry standard. Our mission is to educate Judges, court staff, lawyers, and clients about the time and money saving advantages of CourtCall Appearances and provide such services with innovation, diligence, and courtesy.
The CourtCall Telephonic Appearance Program is an organized and voluntary way for lawyers to telephonically make routine civil, criminal, probate, bankruptcy and other appearances from their offices, homes or other convenient locations at no cost to the Court. Unlike common practices, neither Court staff nor lawyers are required to coordinate the time or logistics of the call. Instead, by simply paying a reasonable fixed fee and filing with CourtCall the Request for CourtCall Appearance form in advance, a lawyer may make a CourtCall Appearance.

I haven’t used this before, but the amount of coverage that CourtCall has looks to be amazing! Here’s a PDF list of the courts and judges that participate. I did do a quick check of some other blogs to see what the reviews are, and most were positive, with one posted yesterday by Cheryl Meril being a little more hesitant on giving a stamp of approval to CourtCall, but mostly on the idea that the calls are impersonal, and could cause issues of missing important visual clues that only come from actually being in the courtroom. I also found it a little interesting that CourtCall has a revenue sharing program (PDF of press release) with the courts. Perhaps I’m being a little oversensitive, but courts, private business and revenue sharing tend to raise red flags (even if everything is on the up-and-up.)

If you’ve ever used CourtCall, give me some comments of what you think about it. I’m wondering how long it could be before Lisa’s virtual courtroom could become a reality. If courts are willing to do telephone appearances, then it seems logical that with access to video communication over VoIP lines should be the next step in CourtCall’s future.

So there’s the two things I learned yesterday. I’m sure there are a bazillion other things I should know about, so I’ll keep my ears open, my RSS feed flowing, my Twitter account active, and my listserv reading up-to-date in order to learn more of what I should have already known.

We all to think we are ‘special’ and bring high value to our jobs. However, the past two years have made pretty much everyone (except maybe the Chinese) nervous about their prospects. Even lawyers are thinking about the possibility that they are not as ‘special’ as they once thought. In the words of one colleague, “The Guild has been broken.”
A recent NY Times article on this issue helped bring my thoughts into focus on this topic, especially since my dang economics background keeps creeping into my brain. The article uses an admin worker in Florida to demonstrate how some US jobs are now obsolete. In a recent conversation with Greg, I had made a an eerily similar comment about how the Great Reset has accelerated the globalization trend of moving US jobs to cheaper labor sources, be they computers or foreign laborers.
The subject of the article states: “I know I’m good at this. So how the hell did I end up here?” This is one counter example, where “good enough” is no longer good enough or more specifically, no longer cost effective. Although this worker “can anticipate people’s needs” technology has allowed people to anticipate their own needs – and do it better, faster, cheaper.
Adding 2 and 2 together – the legal profession is sailing in to the perfect storm of obsolescence. At the same time of accelerating change and a powerful recession – the guild has been broken. With the profession’s tendency to lean on precedence for decision making, we are in for one seriously rough ride.
My advice: The people who figure out to make themselves obsolete will be the winners. Think on that one for a while.