From today’s Financial Times (p. 16), “Thomson Reuters raises revenue outlook”
“The professional division . . . saw strong subscription revenues in its large legal business, WestLaw, but further declines in its high-margin print products, dragging operating profits in legal down 6 per cent.
The new WestLawNext product . . . had been sold to more than 9,000 customers, double its initial expectations,” according to Tom Glocer, chief executive of the financial and professional information group.
We used WestlawNext for the 1L first Legal Research and Writing research assignment this fall. It is the same exercise that was used last year, so all six instructors knew exactly what the good cases are. The problem involves a delinquent child and whether she should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult. Since our legal research mantra is “secondary first” we started by looking at legal encyclopedias and found a nice summary at 27A Cal. Jur. 3d, Section 215, ” . . . At a fitness hearing, the minor who is presumed to be unfit under the juvenile court law has the burden of rebutting the presumption by a preponderance of the evidence . . . “
So we just cut ‘n’ pasted that sentence into the WestlawNext search box, limited our results to California, and pressed search. Some WestlawNext magic then occurred.
The results screen presented one statute, Cal. Welfare & Inst. 707. And that is the statute the instructors want the students to find. Bingo!
The search also brought back 44 cases, which is a really nice number for a 1L assignment — not too many to sift through and not too few to get started. And not only was the quantity of cases ideal, all of the instructors said, “ooh, those are really good cases” when we demonstrated the system for them. Everyone was suitably impressed with WestlawNext’s ability to ferret out the very best cases for the assignment.
Those are the two home runs.
The system appears to break down at the administrative level. There is a regulation the instructors want the students to find, but it did not appear on the first page of the results list. Instead all sorts of extremely unrelated regulations appeared, such as:
Section 1593. Aircraft and Aircraft Parts.
18 CCR Section 1593 Title 18. Public Revenues
We didn’t look through all the regulations since none of the first ten presented appeared to have anything at all to do with juvenile law.
We did play around with several searches using different words and phrases, but in no instance did relevant regulations appear, at least not high on the results list.
So while the students were very impressed with WestlawNext’s ease and ability to hone in on highly relevant statutes and cases, the administrative law limitation does help with librarians’ job security.
From our great friend Carl Malamud:
Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce the Law.Gov Report contest. A series of 15 workshops were conducted that resulted in a strong consensus on 10 core principles. Those workshops also produced a huge amount of material to work with including presentations by many of the leading lights in the field.
We’ve put a great deal of thought into how to do the report on this process that has been requested by members of Congress, the Courts, and the Administration and have concluded that we should take a page from the playbook of the founding fathers, which is to get a consensus on some high-level concepts (in their case the Constitution, in our case the Law.Gov principles) and then allow many people to all explain what those concepts mean (in their case, The Federalist Papers, in our case this contest being announced today).
The Law.Gov Report is a contest. We will accept submissions as a written essay or as a video essay. The topic is really quite simple: What Does Law.Gov mean? You can write about one of the principles, or all of the principles, or any other take on the topic.
For the video essays, there is a tremendous amount of high-resolution footage available you can draw with talks by luminaries such as Vint Cerf, Larry Lessig, John Podesta, and many others. We have released final mixes of the first 27 talks and the remaining high-res footage will be available by mid-November.
If you submit an essay, please keep a couple of points in mind. First, you must attach a liberal license to your work or we will not accept it. That means at a minimum a Creative Commons license that allows derivative works with attribution, and we’d prefer if you simply used CC-Zero or Public Domain. You must also submit your work in a form that we can use for republication. In the case of a written essay, you can submit in PDF, but we’d also like revisable form text such as HTML or a word processing format. For your video, this needs to be high-resolution (you should shoot for at least NTSC size and at least several megabits per second on the encoding) and a relatively open codec (H.264/MP4, MP2, WebM).
The winning written essay will receive a prize of $5,000. The winning video essay will also receive a prize of $5,000. Submissions are due before Memorial Day (May 31). Winners will be announced the day after Labor Day at a prize ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The Memorial Day deadline was set so that students can consider making this a class project. We hope that professors in law schools, i-schools, journalism schools, and any other discipline will let their students know about this contest and offer them credit in their classes for preparing a submission.
Public.Resource.Org has put $10,000 into the Law.Gov Report Prize Fund. If others wish to contribute prizes such as books, conference tickets, lunch with a justice, or other items of educational value, please contact us.
If you have questions about the contest, please ask them on this list or contact Carl Malamud at Public.Resource.Org. (You can find his email address on the about page.)
Here are a few resources for you to work with:
1. The Law.Gov videos on YouTube
Here’s the press release:
Leading Executives in the Legal Research Industry Join Bloomberg Law
Lou Andreozzi and Larry D. Thompson to Lead Expansion of Bloomberg’s Web-Based Legal Platform
New York, October 18, 2010 - Bloomberg today announced that Lou Andreozzi has joined the Company as chairman of Bloomberg Law and Larry D. Thompson, PhD, has joined as chief operating officer. Andreozzi and Thompson will play key leadership roles in the growth of Bloomberg Law, the innovative real-time legal research system from the world leader in data and information services.
In his new role, Andreozzi will provide strategic leadership for Bloomberg Law aimed at driving the platform’s expansion in the legal research industry. He is widely recognized as a leader in the field of legal research, most recently serving as CEO of IQNavigator, Inc., and is a former CEO of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets.
Thompson will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Bloomberg Law including go-to-market, sales, content, data and relationships. He most recently was Senior Partner with The Sterling Group 925 LLC, and formerly served as Senior Vice President at LexisNexis.
“Lou Andreozzi and Larry Thompson are among the top executives in the field of legal research and together they bring extraordinary strategic expertise and deep market knowledge to Bloomberg Law,” said Beth Mazzeo, head of Data Products for Bloomberg. “With the recent completion of our successful pilot phase, we are excited to move forward with Lou and Larry at the helm. It is a pleasure to welcome them to Bloomberg Law.”
“Bloomberg Law is breaking new ground in the world of legal research by bringing to lawyers, through the Web, the same innovative technology and analytics that set Bloomberg apart in the financial world,” said Andreozzi. “I am delighted to be part of the team that will take Bloomberg Law to the next level.”
“Bloomberg Law is a formidable product, and I am confident it will change the legal research playing field with its expertise in data, technology and its extraordinary financial news and business analysis,” said Thompson. “Bloomberg Law has the flexibility of a stand-alone product with access to Bloomberg’s world-class resources and delivered to the legal profession in an intuitive interface.”
Constantin Cotzias, who oversaw the successful launch of Bloomberg Law, is returning to London to be part of the senior leadership team in Bloomberg Europe, where he will head Government and Regulatory Affairs and government business development and strategy in Europe. Cotzias played a critical role in shaping Bloomberg Law’s development and the introduction of the platform to over 90 percent of the top 100 U.S. law firms.
In the newly created role, Cotzias will take advantage of Bloomberg�s presence in Europe to expand Bloomberg’s Government Affairs division. He will help coordinate the Company’s government affairs efforts around the globe, and will help broaden Bloomberg’s product offerings for government. Cotzias’ team will monitor government initiatives and public policy development globally, assisting the business team and Bloomberg customers in assessing impact.
Andreozzi spent over 10 years at LexisNexis. As CEO of North American Legal Markets, his portfolio included some of the most prominent legal products and brands including the Lexis online service, Shepard’s, Matthew Bender, Martindale-Hubbell and lawyers.com. Prior to becoming CEO, Andreozzi was General Counsel of LexisNexis.
Most recently, Andreozzi has been serving as president and chief executive officer of IQNavigator, Inc., a leading provider of services spend management software and managed services, and will continue to play a leadership role in the company. He also served as CEO of Inference Data, a leading software-as-a-service provider of solutions for legal data analysis and review. He has been a strategic advisor for ValueAct Capital, The Carlyle Group and Bain Capital on large media and technology deals. Andreozzi is a graduate of Rutgers University and received his JD from the Seton Hall School of Law.
Thompson has more than 25 years of experience as an executive in the legal publishing field, 12 of them with LexisNexis where he rose to the position of Senior Vice President, Business Development, Strategy & Marketing and Global Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to that, Thompson was Vice President for Sales and Marketing at Shepard’s/McGraw-Hill. Most recently, Thompson was Senior Partner with The Sterling Group 925 LLC, a boutique consulting firm that works within legal and professional markets assisting with strategy, sales, marketing, and business development efforts. He received a PhD in Mass Media and an MA in Telecommunications from Michigan State University and a BA from Montana State University.
Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg Law is the first real-time legal research system that integrates innovative search technology, comprehensive legal content, company and client information, and proprietary news all in one place. This collaborative workspace also includes a suite of new tools for more effective legal analysis and more productive client development. Bloomberg Law provides:
� Fast, accurate search results
� Seamless integration of news, legal content and business information
� Proprietary legal analysis that interprets key issues
� Analytical tools that provide greater context to research
� Unlimited searching, sharing and collaboration
� Unique information for client development
About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is the world�s most trusted source of information for financial professionals and businesses. Bloomberg combines innovative technology with unmatched analytic, data, news, display and distribution capabilities, to deliver critical information via the Bloomberg Professional service and multimedia platforms. Bloomberg’s media properties span television, radio, digital and print, making up one of the world�s largest news organizations with more than 2,300 news and multimedia professionals at 146 bureaus in 72 countries.
IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis has posted a guide to militant groups in Pakistan, which includes a brief list of sources. The guide provides the name, base of support, areas of operation, and targets for each group.
Pakistan: A Guide to Main Militant Groups
Oct 13, 2010
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=90760
New report from the Center for Global Development and the Brookings Institution
Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA)
Nancy Birdsall and Homi Kharas
http://www.cgdev.org/section/topics/aid_effectiveness/quoda
Abstract:
QuODA is an assessment of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by 23 donor countries and more than 150 aid agencies. Aid quality is assessed using 30 indicators grouped in four dimensions that reflect the international consensus of what constitutes high-quality aid:
- Maximizing Efficiency
- Fostering Institutions
- Reducing Burden
- Transparency and Learning
Rankings can be viewed in separate indices and in the Quality of Aid Diamond, which makes it possible to quickly compare countries and agencies across all four dimensions. The authors hope that QuODA will be a catalyst for lively debates and, more importantly, for substantial improvements in how aid is provided.
Jakob Kellenberger, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has published a new book on the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.
Humanitären Völkerrechts (International Humanitarian Law)
Jakob Kellenberger
Frauenfled: Huber, 2010
13-978-3-71931444-6
http://www.buecher.de/shop/menschenrechte/ueber-humanitaeres-voelkerrecht/kellenberger-jakob/products_products/detail/prod_id/22914024/
A new book by Michael D. Bayer has been published by the U.S. National Defense Intelligence College:
The Blue Planet: Informal International Police Networks and National Intelligence
The Executive Summary to the book states that it addresses:
the question of how the United States can engage international partners more effectively to address worldwide manifestations of destabilizing violence often indiscriminately labeled “terrorism.” This work advocates solely for the legal and legitimate exercise of the rule of law through international police cooperation, whether through formal channels or through the much more powerful and effective informal networking.
I was flipping through legal newspapers to gather some to show to our advanced legal research class, when I came upon a truly alarming letter to the editor in the San Francisco Daily Journal by Judge Terence L. Bruiniers. In his letter, “Protecting Personal Data From Online Access,” Judge Bruiniers writes:
. . .
As a trial judge I was shocked to see how often attorneys would routinely and cavalierly attach documents as exhibits to their pleadings containing not only social security numbers and financial account numbers but credit card numbers and the like — and not just of opposing parties, but frequently of their own clients. Family law practitioners seemed to be among the worse offenders, attaching documents like tax returns to their public pleadings.
. . .
Terence L. Bruiniers
Associate Justice
1st District Court of Appeal
San Francisco Daily Journal, Tuesday, September 28, 2010, p. 7
