Competitive Intelligence Marketplace

1.8 Million Pages of Federal Case Law Available Online

Public.Resource.Org announced that 1.8 million pages of US federal case law are being made available at no cost online.  From the release:

WASHINGTON, D.C. / SEBASTOPOL, CA—November 14, 2007—Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.

“The U.S. judiciary has allowed their entire work product to be locked up behind a cash register,” said Carl Malamud, CEO of Public.Resource.Org. “Law is the operating system of our society and today's agreement means anybody can read the source for a substantial amount of case law that was previously unavailable.”

Fastcase, the leading developer of next-generation American legal research, has agreed to provide Public.Resource.Org with 1.8 million pages of federal case law. This is a marked departure for the online legal research industry, which traditionally has charged expensive subscription fees to access this information.

“For eight years, Fastcase has been ahead of the market curve, working to democratize access to the law,” said Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase, Inc. “At the same time, we have been advancing the science of search, combining the precision of traditional legal research with the simplicity of Web-based searches.”

Fastcase has reversed the traditional subscription model for lawyers, contracting directly with 11 state bar associations to make the national law library free for lawyers in their states. “Through this agreement with Public.Resource.Org, we are proud to expand our efforts beyond lawyers, and to make more of the law available to the general public at no cost,” Walters said...

Public.Resource.Org intends to perform an initial transformation on the federal case law archive obtained from Fastcase using open source “star” mapping software, which will allow the insertion of markers that will approximate page breaks based on user-furnished parameters such as page size, margins, and fonts. “Wiki” technology will be used to allow the public to move around these “star” markers, as well as add summaries, classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation purposes, and ratings or “diggs” on opinions.

CI a Tough Sell in Law Firms

According to this article CI is becoming a much more common practice in law firms, but it's still a tough sell internally for many of the firms' CI practitioners.

Law Librarians Value Competitive Intelligence

Law.com has an article highlighting results from a survey of law librarians that reveals some interesting findings as related to competitive intelligence:

Judging from the numbers alone, competitive intelligence work made only a small advance in 2007, taking up 9 percent of the library staff's time, compared with 7 percent in 2006. But in a dozen interviews with law firm librarians, each of whom took part in the survey, it was, by far, the topic that generated the most enthusiasm. It isn't so much the work itself but the effect it's having on the library's prominence -- and influence.

A growing number of firms now have at least one staffer whose sole job is to develop business intelligence -- to generate analyses of industries that might be ripe for legal representation, the litigation histories of prospective clients and even profiles of in-house counsel -- anything that could be helpful to an attorney making a pitch. "We'll look for a connection we may have; a law school, maybe," says Thompson Coburn's Jung.

The survey also shows that law librarians are not happy with their online tools:

But librarians clearly have their pet peeve: the online content providers, particularly the big two, Reed Elsevier Plc's LexisNexis and Thomson Corp.'s Westlaw. There was a time when electronic services were supposed to replace books and lower costs. They've done neither. Instead, fees continue to rise each year -- well beyond the rate of inflation, say librarians (licensing fees are typically covered by confidentiality agreements).

In response to the librarians' concerns, LexisNexis told LawFirmInc. in a statement that they "regularly have formal, structured discussions with accounts using vehicles such as customer councils and focus groups. ... [And] to help ensure that our customers pay for only the services they requested, we have an extensive process for alerting customers of charges not included in their service plan."...

Yet for all their bargaining strategies, librarians remain relatively disappointed customers. On a scale of 1 (very good) to 5 (very bad), LexisNexis scored just a 2.43 for overall satisfaction, marginally better than Westlaw at 2.51. And those numbers are down from last year (when the services scored 2.37 and 2.42, respectively).

And finally there's this about developments in knowledge management:

For most of the last 10 years, knowledge management was overhyped and underdeveloped, but projects are finally gaining momentum, and librarians are playing a key role: Eighty-four percent of those surveyed say that they are actively involved in their firm's KM efforts. The work, they say, can't simply be handed over to the IT department. "It's not enough to understand the [technology]; you have to understand the content," says Alirio Gomez, director of library and information services at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York.

KM portals let lawyers research anytime, from anywhere -- but on the firm's terms. The "wrong tool" problem is eliminated because there is no wrong tool to choose. "We provide [lawyers] with a vetted collection of best-of-breed electronic resources," says Steve Lastres, director of library and knowledge management at New York's Debevoise & Plimpton.

While their focus may have shifted from reporters to portals, from card catalogs to competitive intelligence, make no mistake: The core of what law firm librarians do remains the same. "We're connecting users to the information they need to make decisions," says Mark Estes, director of library services at Holme Roberts & Owen in Denver. "And that's what we've always been about."

One More Reason to Keep it Clean

There are a lot of reasons for companies to remember their ethics, but one of the best is that if a company gets caught with its pants down they can be haunted by it for years.  Case in point is the P&G scandal from almost 10 years ago.  Thanks to evolution of blogs and other "personal" media the case seems to come up on a regular basis, which means that just when the folks at P&G think they've finally gotten past the incident it bites them in the rear end again.  Here's a case in point.

Free Competitive Intelligence Resources - Legal

Justia, the "Legal SEO Blog" has a list they call "60 Essential Free Competitive Intelligence Resources for Your Legal Desktop" of 60 competitive intelligence resources for law firms.  You can find it here.