How Much Does Your Online Legal Search Vendor Know or Could Know About You and Your Clients?

Got any clue? Jason Wilson writes:

I sometimes wonder how much these CALR vendors could know about you (lawyer/law firm) and your clients at any given moment. Sure, they might not know names, but they would know if related C/M are facing pharma litigation and, say, Federal Corrupt Practices Act violations. For large law, how hard would it be to match C/M data, account data, and public data to determine who your clients are and the specific problems they are facing? And if they, the CALR vendors, were interested in selling services directly to your clients’ corporate counsel, imagine how much those businesses might already know about your clients’ exposure and vulnerabilities. If you think CALR vendors are on your side, you might want to stop and consider just how much they actually know about what you do, and how they plan to compete with your own data.

(Emphasis added.)

For more, see Jason's What does {choose one: Westlaw, Lexis, Loislaw, Fastcase, Casemaker} know about you?

Also of interest on this topic: Everything You Do Online is Being Tracked -- "Don't Get Over It:" Klinefelter's When to Research is to Reveal. [JH]