Law firms - a bit closer to redundancy?
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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The race to provide ever more innovative legal information services continues unabated. Some solutions are designed for law firms, but others are aimed at self-helpers – an interesting development in the light of recent Financial Times findings highlighting “mutual misunderstandings” between law firms and their clients.

LexisNexis Redwood Analytics is uncompromisingly professional. Its recently launched Business Intelligence 5 financial analysis software is designed specifically for law firms and (the company says) will deliver tailored, easy to understand financial insights to every timekeeper in a firm – supporting the firm’s efforts to “maximise profitability and accelerate collections and cash flow”.

With LexisNexis’s Concordance Evolution, the lines between professional and self-help become perhaps a little more blurred. It’s an enterprise software product designed to help companies reduce their eDiscovery costs and boost their litigation workflow – so it obviously has corporate litigation teams in its sights.

But, as LexisNexis makes clear, this reinvented version of LN’s existing Concordance offering is designed to make previously complex and intricate tasks much more straightforward. Concept searching and clustering, document redaction capabilities without the risk of redacting original files, and a find-and-redact feature for confidential terms, all indicate that the product at the very least lessens the skill required to carry out such tasks.

When it comes to the latest evolution of Bloomberg Law’s web platform, we’re well into territory that the savvy lay person can occupy. Combining legal research with Bloomberg’s established news, company information and analytics, the new version features an even more intuitive interface and enriched searching capabilities.

And finally, Thomson Reuters continues on its acquisition trail (see Nancy Davis Kho for more on this) with the purchase of Australian legal documents specialist Cleardocs. Priding itself on its “plain language” approach, Cleardocs delivers legal documents online at what it claims are significantly lower prices than traditional providers; users order documents through a question-and-answer interface, which also includes help text, guides, legal updates and frequently asked legal questions.

As previous commentators have warned, the continuing commoditisation of legal services poses a threat to traditional law firms. Now a new report from the Financial Times and the Managing Partners Forum, Lessons for Law Firm Management, indicates that law firms frequently just don’t “get” their clients.

They don’t regard fast problem solving as a top priority whereas half their clients do, the report says. They focus excessively on legal expertise, it adds, don’t always understand their client’s industry, lack international expertise and don’t see the need for transparent pricing – and, crucially, they have yet to fully embrace a digital world.

“Sleepwalking” and “wake-up call” are the clichés that spring to mind. If they don’t move decisively, some law firms will increasingly find information providers doing their work for them.

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