Legal Publishing -

Opportunities and Threats

Ron Friedmann
Prism Legal Consulting, Inc.

March 19, 2007

ron@prismlegal.com
703.527.2381
Agenda
 Business context
 Impact of technology
 Content delivery
 Content creation

 Opportunities
Ron’s Background
 Legal technology consultant (4 years)
 CIO, Mintz Levin (1)
 Practice support, Wilmer (8)
 Legal software marketing
 Jnana – interactive legal advisory systems (3)
 iLumin – online signing dot-com (0.5)
 Strategy consulting, Bain & Co (3)
 Econometrician, Data Resources, Inc. (4)
 Education
 JD, NYU (1986)
 BA, Economics, Oberlin College (1979)
Business Context
Publisher Penetration in Law Firms
Content Provider Value Added
 Create
 Primary
• Plain
• Enhanced (e.g., compilations, headnotes)
 Secondary, interpretive, or analytic
• Editors
• External authorities
 Deliver
 Print, search, e-mail, RSS
Moving Beyond Content
 Content market is limited
 Publishers expand penetration via organic
growth, acquisition, partnership
 Thomson
• Elite, Hildebrandt, Expert Ease, Hubbard One,
ProLaw, LiveNote, West KM, Monitor
 Lexis-Nexis
• Applied Discovery, Interface, Time Matters, Datops,
HotDocs, Martindale-Hubbell, Hosting, NetDocs
 Wolters Kluwer
• Summation, TyMetrix
 Publisher Penetration by Task
100% Save

Write
% of Time by Task

Low penetration
Process

Research
High penetration
0 Identify
Law Practice
Source: Concept Overview
Law Business
Information Intensive Aspects Only
(Excludes Operations)
 Matter intake
 Marketing (including web sites)
 Business development
 Competitive intelligence
 Financial accounting
 HR management
 Planning
 Practice group management
 Publisher Penetration by Task
100%

Not Info
% of Time by Task

Intensive
Low penetration

Info
Intensive Some penetration
0
Law Business
Source: Concept Overview
Business Context Conclusions
 Content penetration inherently
limited – hence expansion
 Content publishing must evolve
 Cross-selling and integration?
 Technology
 Business
Content Delivery
Impact of New Technology
Technology Affecting Delivery
 Portals
 Taxonomies
 Search
 RSS
 Mobility
New Delivery Paradigm
 Past: visit many sources for content
 Present: content delivered to users
 In more places
 Via multiple formats

 With greater personalization

Customized Delivery
 Taxonomies give matters and
information meaning
 Portals aggregate multiple sources
 Newsreaders and RSS support an
alternate delivery approach
 Smart search eases finding info
Business Logic Adds Value
 New info delivered to those who
need it
 Infer interests and experience from
taxonomies or user behavior
 Business rules determine who gets
what information, when, and by
what means
Delivery Business Issues
 Who purchases?
 Past: Librarians called all the shots
 Present: CIOS, knowledge managers,
and lawyers are influencers, if not
buyers
 Pricing and licensing
 Placing bets on technology
 Focus on content or on technology?
Best Focus is on Content
 Law firms want delivery
 Via various technologies
 On flexible license terms

 With tagging that adds meaning

 Law firms want

 Content from multiple publishers
 Software from tech companies
Law Firm Quotes
 On Technology
 On Aggregating Publisher Content

 OMITTED IN THIS VERSION

Delivery Tech Wildcards
 Blogs
 Podcasts
 Wikis and collaborative software
 Social tagging / social networking
 XML
Blogs
 Impact is more on content creation
than consumption or delivery
 More on content creation later
 Reading many blogs impractical
 Aggregation via RSS is probably
biggest impact
Podcasts (audio and video)
 Limited traction so far
 More about creation than delivery
 Potential to expand reach of text by
conversion to audio or video
Wikis and Collaboration
 Limited traction to date
 Lawyers wed to e-mail
 But Allen & Overy uses wikis

 Impact of broader use

 Another “content container” populated
manually or automatically
 Potential for content creation
Social Tagging and Networking
 Not yet common in legal
 Only a few lawyers need to tag
content to create new value
 Internal content
 External content

 No “MySpace” for lawyers - yet

XML
 Office 2007 built on XML
 Potential to tag document parts
 Entity extraction engines emerging
 Makes content easier to re-use
 Potential to integrate with clients
 Transactions and legal updates
 Impact on both creation and delivery
Content Creation
Impact of new technology
Threat?
 New tech > new content providers?
 Wither the role of the comprehensive,
integral, and context-rich sources?
 If so, substitution or net growth?
Technology Affecting Creation
 Blogs
 RSS
 Podcasts
 XML
 Lower cost web technologies
Law Firms as Content Creators
 Law firms generate much content
 Print and e-mail updates
 Outlines and treatises

 Implications of blogs and RSS

Large Firm Blogs (Branded)

Firm # Blogs
Sheppard Mullin 9
Womble Carlyle 8
Davis Wright 4
Fox Rothschild 3
Holland & Hart 2
Bracewell Giuliani 1
K&L Gates 1
Porter Wright 1
Sutherland Asbill 1
Total 30
Large Firm RSS Feeds (# feeds)

 Duane Morris (10)

 Fulbright (1)
 Jones Day (30+)
 White & Case (20+)
 WilmerHale (20+)
Example of Feeds
Other Legal Self-Publishing
 Niche web sites
 Food packaging by Keller & Heckman
 AED Risk Insights
 Niche blogs (not firm branded)
 Drug and Device Law (Dechert counsel + Jones Day
partner)
 Silicon Valley Media Law (Wilson Sonsini partner)
 Suits in the Workplace (2 McGuire Woods partners)
 Torys video Podcast center
Primary Sources as Publishers?
 Web makes publishing easy
 Agencies, courts already have sites
 More functionality (e.g., new NASD
manual)
 XML allows adding value
 SEC enhances EDGAR with XBRML
 Tagging
 If content provider use tags and enable
RSS, less need for intermediaries
Other New Content Providers
 Lower cost
 FastCase for case law and statutes
 Innovative
 RealPractice Public Access (to EDGAR)
 Precydent (new search engine for fed cases)
 Expert systems
 Mavent mortgage compliance
 Collaborative
 Blogging and Other Social Media: Technology an
(law book being written via wiki)
 Legal Week Wiki (UK, info about large firms)
Opportunities
 Gain share or sustain pricing via higher
value delivery
 Flexible delivery
 Infer more from individual use-pattern
 Sell smaller chunks but avoid cannibalization
 Become “community” for legal niches
 Co-opt, don’t fight individual producers?
 Aggregate and distribute
 Maximize value of human resources
 More analysis
 “Ask the editor” service