Subscription Update for Legal
Jinfo Blog

By Candace Cathey

Abstract

With the continuing need to embrace and manage change in the legal sector, information managers not only rely on global vendor databases for research, but are also looking for innovative ways of retrieving information beyond the traditional spectrum. Candace Cathey highlights recent items of interest to legal professionals from FreePint's Content, Community, and Consulting, including product and mini reviews, and upcoming webinars.

Item

Content (Articles, Reports and Webinars)

Legal and business information managers are looking for new products and sources on the market such as platforms containing tools and features that efficiently retrieve content. In the last quarter there have been a number of items published that will be valuable to users who are interested in learning about new platforms and about services they can put into practice to improve their information skills.

FreePint's recent product reviews in this area includes:

• Chris Porter conducted a Product Review of Manzama. Its primary clientele is mainly law firms who are interested in a product that delivers information in a timely manner. Content coverage includes more than 70,000 news and business sources. The product's interface was designed to have a sleek process and the overall value of Manzama is that it can clearly push details to information managers with little to no effort.

• Pharmaceutical and medical research specialist Robyn Smith provided a Product Review of LexisNexis TotalPatent. The global patent database covers 100 authorities (32 in full-text format); includes other patent-related products such as PatentOptimizer, Patent Advisor Suite and other judicial decisions related to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

• This month Candace Cathey reviewed federated search and knowledge management application Solcara from Thomson Reuters Legal UK and Ireland. The legal search tool allows users to retrieve a variety of external resources while integrating with internal systems to sort, save searches, share collections, and browse documents on one interface.

• Candace also reviewed current awareness management tool Linex Systems for legal, business, and academic users who want to aggregate, research and deliver content to user groups and individuals.  

• In the first of a collection of mini reviews of legal research apps, John DiGilio looked at Lexis Advance HD mobile app. He goes into detail about its interface, search functionality, puts retrieving content to the test, and comments on the overall value of the app.

Webinars have covered subjects from visibility to skills and sources:

The 28th May session "Do You Know Your Skills Objectives?" is available to view and helps to frame clear set of objectives for improvement.

Also ready to view, the webinar "What We Learned about 'Making Information Visible'" provides a useful overview of three months of research into the question of how knowledge workers access the most valuable information at the point of need - and what keeps them from seeing it or being aware of it when they need it? 

"News Strategy in Law Firms - A Perfect Storm of Sources, Technology and Value" is available to view, this session covered the challenges, risks and strategies associated with delivering news content in the legal industry.

Visit the webinar page to keep updated on previous and upcoming sessions; dates are added throughout the year. 

Community

In the Community of Practice teleconference event "Getting Information Skills Development on the Strategic Agenda" we highlight a worrying gap in organisational strategies uncovered by FreePint research. Join us on 9th or 25th June when we will brainstorm around the risks and develop plans for ensuring information skills development is higher up the organisational agenda. 

Consulting

Many technology providers focus on serving the legal market, with tools aimed at pushing the right content to end users in the workflow and on the go. We're starting discussions with several large law firms on making sense of the diverse range of tools, comparing them with internal needs and developing recommendations for the best combination of technology, content and user behaviour to improve end user access to content where and when they need it.

A FreePint Subscription at the Content level gives access to all FreePint articles, reports and webinars, at the Community level gives access to all FreePint Communities of Practice (as well as all FreePint Content), and at the Consulting level adds a credit for up to six hours of annual consulting time. Find out more.

« Blog