Law Librarian Blog

Is BigLaw Heading for a Crash Landing?

From the Bloomberg Law video's description:

Paul Barrett, assistant managing editor and senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek tells Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia that Big Law is currently experiencing "a very difficult crash landing that is taking place now and will persist for at least another several more years." While acknowledging that the 2008 recession was partially to blame for the slowdown, Barrett sees the current situation compounded by the bursting of a bubble among large law firms that hired too many lawyers and entered into ill-advised mergers. We are seeing the reckoning from overkill that built up over many years, he says.

[JH]

Bringing Sanity to Digital Licensing of Commercially Published Newsletters

Well, at least for law firm marketing purposes when a firm's lawyer writes the newsletter article.

For those of us who toil at the intersection of copyright and human behavior, any publisher who keeps making it easier to legitimize the natural impulse of lawyers to embrace every venue for highlighting their accomplishments and share news and insights with their clients gets my endorsement.

Quoting from Jean O'Grady's News You Can Use! Wolters Kluwer Continues to Bring Sanity to Digital Licensing and Oh Yes Releases Two New Daily Newsletters (Banking & Finance and Products Liability). [JH]

The Best Damn Post on the Legal Services Industry Ever

It is going to be very hard if not downright impossible to top Ryan McClead's interview with Lena Dewey and Daniel Cheatom, owner-operators of The Legal Duck restaurant. I'm certainly not even going to try. Check out McClead's The Legal Duck - A 3 Geeks Interview with Legal Restaurateurs. [JH]

Harper's The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis

“Imagine that the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy were put on trial for their alleged negligence and failed stewardship. Imagine further that the State had at its disposal one of the nation’s most tenacious trial lawyers to doggedly build a complete factual record and then argue the case. The result would be The Lawyer Bubble. If I were counsel to the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy, I would advise my clients to settle the case.” — William D. Henderson, Director of the Center on the Global Legal Profession and Professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis
Steven J. Harper
Basic Books (April 2, 2013)

From the blurb:

In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment to flawed U.S. News & World Report rankings criteria in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits to enhance American Lawyer rankings and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions—being honest about the legal job market, revisiting the financial incentives currently driving bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more—can take the profession to a better place.

A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal profession, this insider account is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the profession can right itself once again.

Steven J. Harper is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Law School. After a 30-year career as a litigator, he recently retired from Kirkland & Ellis LLP. [JH]

The Latest From The LSAC

Here are the latest law school application figures from the Law School Admissions Council:

As of 02/01/13, there are 244,784 Fall 2013 applications submitted by 34,618 applicants. Applicants are down 20.4% and applications are down 22.7% from 2012.

Last year at this time, we had 64% of the preliminary final applicant count.

Cue the stories on the death of law schools.  While we're on the subject, TR News & Insight reports that law firm hiring in 2012 was flat.  In the meantime, Business Insider reports that law firm profits jump a "whopping" 4.3% last year, though that might not be sustainable as a trend.  I don't know.  Cutting people costs while sustaining the same level of operation may contribute to a healthier firm bottom line.  Is that a sustainable trend?  [MG]

Short Takes On The News: Admission Misinformation, Windows 8, Big Law, and Google

It seems that misreporting of admissions data is not exclusive to law schools.  Inside Higher Ed reports that four universities and have misreported undergraduate test scores to U.S. News.  The latest is Bucknell, which misreported SAT and ACT scores for a six year period.  One MBA program reported incorrect admissions information as well. U.S. News seems to think this is not a trend, though the article seems to question that conclusion. 

Anyone interested in purchasing cheap copies of Windows 8 upgrades are advised to do so by Thursday.  Microsoft’s promotional pricing of $39.99 for downloads ends on January 31.  Upgrades to Windows 8 Pro are available at that price for Windows 7, Vista, and XP.  The price goes to $119.99 for the regular edition and $199.99 for the Pro edition.  I saw the Windows 8 Pro disc set on sale at Costco for $66.99 and at Wal-Mart for $199.99.  Microsoft’s download page is here.  CNET has more pricing details here. 

All the job troubles with Big Law suggested a retrenchment of what services and costs clients were and were not willing to pay.  At least that was the narrative over the last several years.  The Wall Street Journal reports in a very short article that the survey by the Wells Fargo Specialty Group shows law firms had good numbers in 2012.  The figures aren’t reported, though the conclusion is.  I doubt that this will lead to more hiring.  My guess is a firm that could produce good financial results will not want to increase its overhead unless absolutely necessary. 

Finally, CNET reports on a documentary from the recent Sundance Film Festival called Google And The World Brain.  It examines the failed book settlement and questions whether placing the world’s knowledge in the hands of a corporation.  Google, can after all, change its mind about levels of access to its scanning project without much oversight.  CNET’s review notes that the problem is bigger than Google, with implications for all when major corporations gather intimate information about its customers.  Implications aside, that’s what you get in a commerce driven world.  [MG]

More Shed West Era Book Art

This time from Perkins Coie LLP. Repurposing print volumes for the firm's new reference desk in the main library here. [JH]

Overhead or Not Overhead: Size Matters in Law Firms Eating Legal Research Costs According to BLaw Survey Findings

For details, see Bloomberg Law's recent survey, which found that 43 percent of law firm survey respondents absorb more of their legal research costs today than in 2010. Due note, however, that the size of a law firm is a factor in being able to charge back legal research costs with the clients of Big Law firms being more likely to pay for what in the 21st century is clearly law firm overhead costs for doing business.

Until the trend to push back research costs by clients of Big Law escalates substantially, it is unlikely that WEXIS will have to change its pricing and database selection licensing model. Since BLaw's major food group is Big Law, the survey findings also indicates that BLaw's "predicable" pricing for its entire eContent inventory will require increased Big Law client pushback to gain more traction. At the same time, the survey confirms that for mid-sized and small law firms, flat rate pricing for in-plan only WEXIS licenses are substantially more cost competitive than BLaw in those private sector market sub-segments. [JH]

The No Sacred Cow Models: Sole Provider, Primary Provider, or Multiple Narrow-Focused Providers for Online Legal Search in the Private Sector

On 3 Geeks, Greg Lambert reported that BigLaw Foley & Lardner has gone the sole legal search provider route (Lexis) recently.

For many of us in the law library world, we've been waiting for a BigLaw firm (Foley falls in at #45 in the AmLaw100 revenue rankings) to pull the trigger and go to a single legal research provider. Now we have someone to use as an example. Now that the seal is off that bottle, it will be interesting to see how many other BigLaw firms finally start looking seriously at dropping the two-vendor legal research model and start going as a Westlaw, Lexis, or even Bloomberg Law only shop.

I have no idea if Foley is the first AmLaw 100 firm to go the sole provider route. Certainly many mid-size law firms have gone sole provider since the 2008 recession because there are no sacred cows anymore. WEXIS no more; Lexis or Westlaw but not both. Do we add "or BLaw"? Not yet. With only two uber BigLaw firms on board for US-firmwide access and no public information that either have taken BLaw as a sole provider, about all one can say is that BLaw may be either one of two or three search providers or the primary provider offered to users at those firms.

The provider model is evolving from both Lexis and Westlaw to

• Sole Provider: Lexis or Westlaw but not both.
• Primary Provider: a more comprehensive plan for Lexis or Westlaw or BLaw with smaller plans as secondary provider(s) with or with limiting the number of user accounts at the firm level.

When the dust settles, I think there will also be a third model. Multiple narrow-focused licenses for Lexis Advance, WestlawNext and BLaw for select groups of institutional users based on a selection of in-plan only access to secondary sources that each practice group user population requires. Add into the institutional buyer decision matrix (1) any appropriate productivity "solutions" that tie into search needed by specific user populations of institutional buyers and (2) the eventual licensing of enhanced eBooks with their own tie-ins to the vendor's search service which will certainly cannibalize database inclusions in future search licenses.

Given that all three vendors provide essentially the same primary legal sources and that none of their next gen current gen metadata-enhanced search engines are convincingly better than any other despite marketing claims, my hunch is that eventually the dominate model in the private sector, particularly in the BigLaw sector, may end up becoming licensing multiple narrow-focused search plans from Lexis, TR Legal and  BLaw which are limited to targeted user populations based on the spectific secondary sources and tools needed online,

Of course, this is where the editorial quality of secondary legal sources becomes a competitive advantage in the context of the current WEXIS model of content commodization (think BLaw-BNA offerings) but also intelligent professional grade workflow solutions (think forthcoming WK offerings for some legal practice group specialities). [JH]

Will Washington State Become An Underserved Legal Market?

There is so much bad news on the job market for law graduates that it takes more than the basic premise that it’s hard to find a good job to be newsworthy.  Check out this story from the Puget Sound Business Journal via KOMOnews.com (Seattle’s ABC news outlet).  It describes the crisis in Washington State where older lawyers are leaving the profession at a rate faster than they can be replaced.  The number of attorneys admitted to the bar between 2007 and 2011 fell by 13% to a figure of 1,148. 

In addition, a survey by the Washington State Bar Association found that 7,200 members, about a quarter, are thinking of retiring in the next five years.  The article quotes additional figures suggesting other losses to the number of attorneys practicing in Washington State over time.  Some of this is driven by Boomers leaving the profession and the lower number of students applying for law school.

I wouldn’t exactly call this good news for recent graduates.  On the other hand, dismal job prospects may not last forever.  Still, one has to follow the jobs where they are located rather than where desired.  Anyone considering Seattle shouldn’t worry about the rain.  The city gets less rain on the average (36.2 inches annually) than New York City (40.3 inches annually).  [MG]

Law Prof as Innovator of Online Legal Transactional Skills Training Platform

Drexel Law prof Karl Okamoto's LawMeet teaches lawyering skills by having students post videos advising "clients" on hypothetical transactional scenarios. The students then receive feedback on their performances through a voting system. The top-rated performances are reviewed by experienced transactional lawyers in a competitive setting.

It has been reported that several law firms are using the online training platform with junior associates and faculty at 48 law schools expressed interest in testing LawMeet exercises after Okamoto demonstrated LawMeets at AALS this year. Hopefully interest in this platform will expanding legal skills offerings for law school courses and in-house law firm training with additional topical competitions for transactional lawyering. Perhaps someday LawMeet execises will offer law school course credit and CLE credit hours as standalone transaction-based legal skills offerings.

LawMeets was launched by two-year old start-up ApprenNet. Okamoto's venture recently received a $500,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation to expand LawMeet. For more see Drexel Law Prof to Use $500K Grant to Expand LawMeets, an Online Lawyering Skills Platform and Philadelphia Inquirer Features Professor Karl Okamoto's Online Experiential Learning Platform. [JH]

Beyond Doom and Gloom: Reimagining Legal Services and just as important Legal Education for the 21st Century (with a little self-interested help from the commercial vendor community)

In Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century (ABA, 2012), the transitioning law firm is the literary motif of Mitch Kowalski's fictional account of a law firm trying to adapt to and remain competitive in the changing landscape for legal services by implementing new internal practices. From the blurb:

The past few years have seen incredible innovation and growth in the way legal services can be delivered--yet most law firms around the world continue to practice law the way it's been practiced for centuries, namely, as a labor-intensive endeavor carried out by high-priced lawyers billing by the hour.

Directly inspired by Richard Susskind's ground-breaking The End of Lawyers (Oxford Univ. Press 2008), Toronto lawyer Mitchell Kowalski now provides a vivid, believable account of everything a law firm could be.

In the book, you'll see how a typical big law firm fails to deliver real value to the client, resulting in dissatisfied clients and burned-out and stressed lawyers in the process. You'll discover the ways the firm can be redefined as a service corporation that is structured and managed in ways that truly deliver value to the client, profitability to the firm and career satisfaction to the lawyers. Then, by the book's end, you will know how to apply these ideas to your own situation and enjoy the benefits.

Slaw's Omar Ha-Redeye writes an excellent and sometimes critical review of the work in The Kowalski Bible on Lawyer Conservation.

A Capstone Course on Preparing "Practice Ready" Law School Grads? If ever the legal academy was to require a capstone course on how to practice law and manage a law practice, Kowalski's Avoiding Extinction should be required reading. Of course to be a skill-based capstone course, many additional courses would have to be offered. In this case, profs would have to come up to speed first, particularly in many real world IT solutions. That's not really being promoted in law school in no small part our major professional legal services vendors are not exposing law profs and, more importantly, law students to most of their commercial solutions.

Why that is the case, is beyond me. If indoctrination to individual vendor online legal search services is the objective of providing them to law students at wholesale prices for three years, why not do exactly the same for solutions? Take for just one example, moot court competitions and law school clinics. By adding productivity and practice management solutions, those regular offerings could be situated in a more realistic setting. Even the editorial processing of law review submissions could be enhanced by productivity-driven work production and workflow solutions tied to online legal search services.

Two related components are clearly missing in reimagining legal services: (1) reimagining skills-based legal education by the legal academy and (2) reimagining the provision of solution suites to law students by commercial vendors. Imagine, for example, "Best Practices" law school competitions judged by practitioners and their law office IT administrators in terms of quality of addressing client needs and efficiency of work production in transactional and litigation settings. [JH]

Where's the "New Law Prof" Infographic?

Legal education reformer Bill Henderson writes that the "New Lawyer" infographic he republishes here is "a really compelling way to convey a lot of important information" about the legal services industry. When as in if there ever exists data about the "New Law Prof", an infographic on the transformed legal academy might be created by Bill and published on The Legal Whiteboard.

There's plenty of data if anyone is interested in creating an "Old Law Prof" infographic about the legal academy. To create one, see What is an Infographic, an infographic about infographics that highlights best practices. For using infographics to drive traffic to your web destination after all that work, see the below video. [JH]

Dueling Twitter Titans DLA Piper and Fulbright & Jaworski Square Off in the Battle for the BigLaw King of 140 Characters Crown

Hat tip to AttorneyFee for this infographic and to ATL's Christopher Danzig for his deconstruction of it at Infographic of the Day: Commence the Biglaw Twitter Wars. [JH]

Boston Firm Advertises Full Time Associate Position At $10,000 Compensation

So it’s come to this.  There is a story in the Boston Business Journal of a job posting on the Boston College career site for an associate position with a salary of $10,000.  The story notes that this figure is below minimum wage.  It’s not a fixed salary.  The ad states the compensation is based on a percentage of worked billed and collected with the expectation it will be $10,000 in the first year.  The Gilbert & O’Bryan LLP firm said it received 32 applications.  The trade-off for the low pay is the valuable experience gained by the successful applicant.

Boston College defends the ad as serious whether it’s attractive or not.  The position does offer benefits such as malpractice insurance, health insurance, employer paid clothing allowance, and a MBTA pass (the Boston area mass transit system).  This is better than nothing for some graduates, I guess, but really.  Will this be the beginning of a trend?  [MG]

Bankruptcy Trumps NDAs in Vendor Contracts: Dewey owes about $4.3 million to Thomson Reuters, Lexis and Wolters Kluwers

According to Dewey & LeBouef's bankruptcy petition the firm owes approximately $351 million to more than 3,000 creditors. For legal research, the WSJ's Joe Palazzolo reports that Dewey owes Thomson Reuters more than $2.3 million, Lexis about $1.4 million and Wolters Kluwers $653,059, all unsecuded debt of course. 3 Geekster Greg Lambert tries to mine a little competitive intelligence data based on Dewey's legal resources debt at Westlaw, Lexis, CCH Feels the Pain of a Dewey Bankruptcy.

Endnote. In Dewey's Stack of Bills, Palazzolo also reports that the firm owns $673,310 for dining services. [JH]

Browsing On A Sunday: The Wisconsin Supreme Court is an Unhappy Place, Trading Google for Bing, and the Downfall of Big Law

Things are getting ugly at the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  The Wisconsin Judicial Commission found probable cause awhile back that Justice David T. Prosser violated sections of the Judicial Code of Conduct and recommended a hearing on the matter.  Bloomberg Business Week is reporting that the Court declined to reappoint John R. Dawson, the head of the Commission, to a new term.  Such reappointments have been routine in the past. 

The Court’s administrative decision did not come without a bit of public sniping by its members.  Gannett’s The Northwestern goes into a bit more detail, describing “threats” from Justice Shirley Abrahamson to make conservatives justices pay if they didn’t reappoint Dawson.  She disclosed a letter she sent to Dawson, signed by two other justices, which said the decision was over their objections.  She further stated "The court's long-standing practice has been to retain appointees for the entire period for which they are eligible if they have served the public well.  In your case, the court is deviating from its practice." Ouch.

The nominating committee for the Commission had asked that Dawson be reappointed.  Justice Prosser is quoted in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as saying the nominating committee "tended to be very receptive to more liberal appointees."  I’m sure Justice Prosser would tell you that decisions by the Court are based on the law rather than driven by a political interpretation of the law.  I’m sure anyone listening would believe him as well, especially after reading the rest of his comments on the “lefty bias” of the nominating committee in the Journal-Sentinel report.  I’m sure. 

Farhad Manjoo describes his week with Bing in a Slate article.  Manjoo is a self-proclaimed Googler who thought he’d try out the competition.  He likes Bing for the simpler look on the results page, sort of like how Google appeared before integrating Google+ items into its results.  Oh yeah?  Just wait until Bing throws up everything Facebook has to offer and see how clean the display will look.  His bottom line is that he’s switching back because Google found relevant results that Bing missed.  More pointedly, by switching to Bing he realized how dependent he was on Gmail, YouTube, Scholar, and other Google services.  To each their own. 

Finally, the Washington Post has a short analysis on the downfall of big law, epitomized by the collapse of firms Howrey and Dewey & Le Boeuf.  The fact that both firms went on massive expansions was not the cause alone.  It was that they expanded so fast without regard to the sustainability of that expansion in light of the recession where legal work dried up.  According to the article, employees have been told that the firm will shut down imminently.  I wonder how many of the affected attorneys still have outstanding student loans?  [MG]

NLJ's Top 50 Feeder Law Schools to BigLaw

"Most law schools sent smaller percentages of their 2011 classes into first-year associate jobs at the nation's largest 250 law firms than they did in 2010. Among the 50 schools most popular with hiring firms, 22 percent of 2011 graduates landed associate jobs — down from 27 percent in 2010," reports Karen Sloan in It's tough out there, the lead-in to the National Law Journal's annual ranking at The Go-To Law Schools. 

NLJ also reports that the 2010-11 academic year represented a milestone because annual tuition at seven schools topped $50,000.

With no end in sight to tuition increases, The National Law Journal looked at which schools offer the biggest bang for their tuition buck when it comes to landing a job at a large law firm. We identified the schools sending the highest percentage of their class of 2011 to associate jobs at NLJ 250 firms for the lowest tuition price.

See the interactive chart at The Go-To Law Schools: Biggest bang for the buck? [JH]

Lawyer Copyrights Briefs, Sues West And Lexis for Distributing Them

Two lawyers have opened a can of copyright worms by filing a class action suit against West and Lexis for using briefs in the brief banks sold by their respective companies.  They allege that these documents are copyrighted by attorneys and seek damages, the amounts depending on whether the works are registered or not registered.  I acquired a copy of the complaint via Bloomberg Law, so I’m wondering when they will be joined to the suit.  Aside from the allegations, the attached exhibits are copyright registration certificates that show original works called “Plaintiffs' Requested Voir Dire” among others.  I don’t plan on seeing this on Amazon any time soon.

I don’t question the authorship, though some questions come immediately to mind.  The first is who actually owns the work.  I understand the registration, but lawyers being lawyers and the smell of money enticing, will there be clients intervening claiming the document was a work for hire?  I mean, who writes a requested voir dire for the fun of it?  Clients usually pay for this kind of stuff as part of the representation, and production of the document Is certainly charged against billable hours.  I generalize how this process works, but the client has a plausible argument that the document belongs to him or her. 

My next question is whether the Administrative Office of the Courts can be a defendant.  After all, what’s the price these days to download a document from PACER?  Ten cents per page?  Isn’t that a sale?  And what if another lawyer writes a substantially similar Plaintiffs' Requested Voir Dire?  Would that attorney be liable for copyright infringement?  Your honor, my esteemed colleague copied my work and merely changed a few names.  Where is my money?  And how about all the briefs and other filings that populate Scribd and other document sites?  Copyright infringement doesn’t require financial gain as an element of suit.  Shall we see DMCA takedown notices served to these sites?  How would fair use play into this?

The biggest problem I see with this case is not whether the plaintiffs win, but what happens to the legal profession if the plaintiffs win.  It would be piranhas to a meal.  I’ll be watching this one for the entertainment value if nothing else.  Find the case on your own.  I don’t want to be liable for illegal distribution of a copyrighted work.  The case is Edward White and Kenneth Elan v. West Publishing and Reed Elsevier, Southern District of New York, 12-CV-1340, filed on February 22, 2012.  Here is a report on the case from Thompson Reuters News & Insight. [MG]

Advantage Bloomberg? Part 3: BLaw will not become a viable primary provider until it offers “solutions”

On 3 Geeks, Greg Lambert posed several questions at Bloomberg Law Snags DLA Piper's US Business (some answered by Jean O'Grady's post, some not.)

“Who lost DLA Piper's US business?? (I'd find it very hard to believe that a firm, even of DLA Piper's size, would want to carry Westlaw, Lexis AND Bloomberg on their annual budgets.)”

According to comments to Greg's post, the consensus is that Lexis probably lost or will be getting much less of DLA Piper's business. While O'Grady gave WLN a less than stellar endorsement during an AALL panel at Philly 2011 -- "it is what it is" if my faulty memory isn't play tricks on me -- I very seriously doubt DLA Piper dumped its “preferred” customer status with TR Legal.

What about any WEXIS solution "upsells" DLA Piper may have? Take that into consideration when thinking about another question Greg poses.

"If DLA Piper did dump one of the other vendors, what resources does DLA Piper lose in the change? ..."

I would add two related questions assuming DLA Piper and any other BigLaw firm did/has/will dump one of its major vendors when adopting BLaw:

1. Did BigLaw also dump vendor “solutions” in addition to dumping a vendor search service?; and
2. What forthcoming WEXIS resources and services has BigLaw lost at this time by doing so?

BLaw is not yet a serious contender to be the primary or even sole provider for BigLaw.  Except for a small set of BNA solutions (e.g.  BNA Auditor and Global Auditor, web-based  environment, health and safety compliance auditing tools) BLaw frankly is not really a player in the integrated professional legal services "solutions" market that is dominated by WEXIS. For this reason, it is premature to talk about BLaw really being competitive with WEXIS. It's just not about Search and the databased resources provided anymore.

User Experience: Search+Solution (or Search as one among many solutions being offered). Today, online legal search really needs to be viewed as one among many offered Solutions. Some WEXIS solutions integrate Search from within their applications, some do not. However, all WEXIS solutions are upsell opportunities because WEXIS has boots on the ground to sell them.

There is no doubt in my mind that our major professional legal services vendors will “dashboard” all of their sold solutions (including search) at the institutional level by way of user account management  for an integrated user interface. When that happens, it will be the most transformative change in the legal profession since the acceptance of very expensive online legal search. My hunch is the Dashboard user experience will garner wide acceptance in the private sector -- large, small, even solo law plus corporate law departments -- within 10 years. After that, the government and academic legal markets will follow.

But for now, the options remain (1) WEXIS in the generalist market for professional grade "search plus solutions" and (2) BLaw BNA and Wolters Kluwer in the specialist market for higher editorial quality analytical content with "search sans solutions".

BLaw BNA is becoming a high quality secondary source content rich environment. BLaw already licenses, for example, PLI business and law treatises for its online service. The Company will eventually integrate BNA secondary sources into BLaw online. Do note, the recent launch of BNA's Bankruptcy Law Resource Center is, I believe, unprecedented in BNA's resource centers content mix since it includes licensed secondary treatises to compensate for BNA not having any bankrupty treatises of note. This indicates to me that BLaw is quite willing to reach into the Company's deep pockets to provide high quality secondary sources published by industry specific and legal practice area specific professional associations to fill out its online secondary source literature offerings.

Deep Pockets Means BLaw Solutions Are Coming. I seriously doubt Bloomberg will rest on just Search, which of course also includes primary and secondary legal content. It's just a matter of time before BLaw offers Solutions that are created in-house or licensed or both to compete in the market with WEXIS.

More about BLaw competing in the current WEXIS market for primary provider status in tomorrow's post. [JH]