An excellent resource for large law firm practitioners, the Practice Innovations Newsletter has just published the October edition.
The feature article highlights a case study on the role of the Alternative Fee Manager, discussing existing and emerging roles for the AFA Manager and how AFAs aid in fee conversations with clients.
Also in this issue is information on how women today are influencing leadership values, and an article on how to improve associate morale through career coaching.
This great resource is available four times a year. Subscribe to the Practice Innovations Newsletter to receive an email when each new edition is posted.
Posted by Anne Ellis in:
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As we approach the end of the school year for many in the U.S., its hard to believe WestlawNext is already four months old! Over the last few months, we’ve been busy talking with our law librarian partners about rolling out WestlawNext in their organizations or academic institutions. We’ve conducted three “Inside Look” focus group meetings on-site in Eagan, Minn., to get direct input on the product and our rollout process. I’ve enjoyed these conversations tremendously.
As someone with deep roots in the law librarian field, and given that WestlawNext creation was led by a former law librarian, Mike Dahn, we recognize that rolling out new technology into law schools can be a complex process. I’m happy to say that Thomson Reuters has heard your feedback as well, and we are committed to partnering with law schools to determine the best way to roll out and integrate WestlawNext into your programs.
On Friday, May 14, ABA-accredited law schools received an email from Chris Parton, vice president of our Academic Segment, detailing the WestawNext launch to law shools and the opportunity to participate in a “pre-release” this fall. Here is a copy of his message: (more…)
Posted by Anne Ellis in:
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In conversations with customers since the launch of WestlawNext, we’ve been energized by their reaction to the new service. In many cases, it’s a shared pride – more than 3,000 legal professionals touched the new service or the research around it at some point during the development process.
We set out with the mission of making the law more transparent and accessible – something that I know we share with law librarians. So it’s especially important to me to acknowledge the ways the librarian community helped in developing WestlawNext: (more…)
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Editor’s note: To follow up on several interesting online threads regarding the launch of WestlawNext, Anne Ellis also sent this text out as an e-mail to law librarian customers of West:
There has been a lot of conversation around WestlawNext these past couple weeks. Overall, we are pleased with the attention that WestlawNext has generated. When we went down this path, five years ago, we began with the question, “how can we make doing legal research and practicing law easier for our customers?” That is still our goal, and I’m happy that our work toward this end is something that you also find interesting.
Recent commentary from the librarian community has been mostly very thoughtful, as I would expect, and related to product strategy, rather than the posts of the past couple weeks that spoke mostly to features and functionality.
There are three points I’d like to address, where it seems speculation has been incorrect and has understandably caused concern:
*Rolling out WestlawNext to law firms
Our sales team will make trials of WestlawNext available to customers based on customer needs and priorities. Customers can learn more about WestlawNext by visiting westlawnext.com.
*Rolling out WestlawNext to law schools
In a previous note, I said that we would begin showing WestlawNext to law schools in a phased rollout of trial passwords, beginning with librarians and faculty this spring, and that we were making plans for launching WestlawNext to law students, with possible introduction as early as the Fall 2010 semester. It appears that it was understood by some that this meant that WestlawNext would be in all law schools by the fall of this year. To be clear, we are still determining timing for our rollout to law schools, and will work closely with law schools and the legal profession overall with the goal of helping them make better potential lawyers as we have always done.
*Questions relating to inexperienced researchers informing the search results
This is a really interesting discussion. I talked to the technology team behind WestlawNext, and student research was never to be part of the algorithm to inform search results. It was a very good question though, and I wish we had spoken to it in our original discussion about the artificial intelligence technology.
WestlawNext is an entirely new platform, and we worked hard in the days around launch to provide the right information to the right individuals. I think we all understand now that there will be questions popping up for awhile as people ask smart questions and as strategy and planning unfold.
We will continue to scan the blogs and listservs for comments that reveal gaps in the discussion, and I will try to speak to those points on a regular basis here on Legal Current. I invite your questions and comments and I appreciate being part of the discussion.
Anne Ellis
Senior Director, Librarian Relations
Thomson Reuters, Legal
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What’s in a word? The Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th edition from Thomson Reuters can provide both definition and pronunciation through a new Android App. When the word of the day isn’t a word you know, Black’s mobile applications is ready to find that content on your Android.
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