The passing of Bill Rutter, founder of The Rutter Group and BAR/BRI Bar Review and highly respected member of the California legal community, has prompted an outpouring of memorials from literally hundreds of leading practitioners and jurists. Bill was a luminary in legal writing and education, and his Rutter Group Practice Guides have provided essential insights and analysis for generations of law students and practitioners.
Bill’s life will be celebrated in a memorial service on Saturday, Feb. 18 in Los Angeles. To read his tribute book, click here.
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It is with great sadness that we report our former colleague, Bill Rutter, passed away peacefully on Feb. 2, 2012. Bill was the founder of The Rutter Group, a Thomson Reuters business based in California, specializing in state and federal Rutter Group Practice Guides.
In 1979, Bill founded The Rutter Group, where he devoted his career to pioneering legal education. Through his leadership, The Rutter Group became a leading and highly respected publisher of legal education and programs nationwide. Bill wrote and published all of the original Gilbert Law Summaries, based on his own law school notes. He also founded the BAR/BRI Bar Review, which became the largest Bar Review course in the country.
Bill received his juris doctor (J.D.) degree from the University of Southern California School of Law, where he was Associate Editor of the Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. Prior to founding The Rutter Group, he maintained a general civil law practice, specializing in business litigation and appellate work, and admirably served our country during the Korean War.
Bill’s passing was marked by many of his friends and colleagues throughout the legal community. His leadership and his numerous contributions to legal education have left a deeply rooted impression on the legal profession and Thomson Reuters.
“Bill Rutter’s contributions to the legal profession and, through it, to justice and the administration of justice are immeasurable, and indelible,” said Norman L. Epstein, presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal. “He altered the course of legal education forever.”
Bill is survived by his wife Sally and his four children. There will be a public memorial service celebrating his life on Saturday, Feb. 18, at the Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Gifts in honor of Bill can be made to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association-Music Matters. For more information about Bill Rutter, please see his obituary.
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One of the most comprehensive anti-bribery and corruption laws in the world takes effect next month. A new survey by Thomson Reuters Governance, Risk & Compliance says that while most UK firms are on track to meet the implementation deadline for the Bribery Act, many have not adequately prepared their most senior executives and board members for the challenges they face from the new legislation.
The survey involved more than than 400 senior compliance officers, risk managers, internal auditors, lawyers and company secretaries.
The Bribery Act is considered to be tougher legislation than similar regulations in other countries, including the U.S. Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act, The Bribery Act affects not only UK-based companies, but any organization with a UK presence, regardless of where it was formed or incorporated.
A copy of the white paper discussing the survey results can be downloaded here.
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One year ago, the opening day general session at New York LegalTech featured Thomson Reuters, Legal CEO Peter Warwick and Mohammed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former head of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency. This session was a centerpiece of the WestlawNext launch, and their discussion explored the rule of law in supporting democracy and the role technology plays in connecting people, information and actions.
As part of the hour-long discussion, Peter Warwick noted that technology can be a very powerful force for positive change. “Intelligent information can be a tremendously effective tool both in the hands of democratic governments as well as in the hands of citizens,” he said. And Dr. ElBaradei added that social media is serving an increasingly vital role in connecting and coordinating citizens around common causes.
Fast-forward one year and Dr. ElBaradei’s comments are prescient given the events of the past week in Egypt, his homeland. There, tens of thousands of protesters were mobilized via Twitter and Facebook (at least until the government shut down local ISPs), mounted a coordinated protest that has dominated headlines around the world, and may potentially change a political landscape dominated by President Mubarak for decades.
Last year’s rule of law topic springs from the mission that drives Thomson Reuters, Legal: to help the legal system perform better every day, worldwide. This mission is brought to life through our support of law firms and NGOs that work to advance social and political justice issues, and through an innovative partnership with Books for Africa and its Jack Mason Law & Democracy Initiative that is bringing tens of thousands of lawbooks to Africa, where they will fill the shelves of new law libraries.
Last year, Dr. ElBaradei noted, “Now, when an atrocity occurs, a photo can be put on Twitter for all to see.” Today, technologies like Twitter and Facebook are bringing like-minded citizens together and carrying to the world images and stories of a collective movement in Egypt that just may give rise to greater democratic rights.
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I’m delighted to introduce our new managing editor of social media, Jessica Leibrock. Jessica is taking over the role formerly held by Kevin Hunt, who left to take a position with General Mills last December.
Jessica is no stranger to Thomson Reuters, Legal and joins us from the employee communications side where she supported a variety of internal projects and clients. Her professional background also includes experience in video production and public relations.
I’m really pleased that one of our own is able to step into this important role.
For those of you who will be at LegalTech New York next week, keep an eye out for Jessica who will be covering the show for Legal Current. You also can follow her coverage here on our blog or via Twitter @LegalCurrent.
John Shaughnessy
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It’s with mixed emotion – sad for us, but happy for Kevin and the opportunity before him – that we say goodbye to our friend and managing editor of Social Media. He’s taken a position with General Mills as manager of their corporate social media team, starting this week, and I can only imagine he’s already off to a great start.
Kevin will now be associated with a major consumer brand and that should be interesting and fun. On our side, we will miss his wise counsel, entrepreneurship, and his devotion to serving his two clients – the business and the bloggers/media who write for and about the legal space.
Before he left, I sat down with Kevin and we reminisced about what he built here and chatted about what he’s going to miss and what he’s looking forward to with the role in front of him.
The legal bloggers, media and other readers who followed Legal Current were very important to Kevin – you should all know that he held you in the highest regard, and valued your feedback. I would add that Kevin’s was an important voice for us as we learned to navigate the social media landscape. I hope you can find a couple minutes to view his final interview on Legal Current.
John Shaughnessy
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Today, Thomson Reuters, Legal announced it has named Sharon Sayles Belton, former mayor of the city of Minneapolis, as vice president, Community Relations and Government Affairs.
In her new role, Sayles Belton will direct government affairs activities, focusing on key issues that impact the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters as well as its customers and employees. In addition, she will lead the company’s community outreach efforts through Community Relations and sponsorships to ensure greater connectivity between individual programs/activities and the company’s mission, values and goals.
Read the full news release here.
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The launch of WestlawNext is important for all of Thomson Reuters, not just our Legal division.
The work it took to design and build the system is evidence of the entire company’s commitment to listening to customers and what they need in their workflow – and reflects the culture of innovation within the business.
But it’s also a tribute to the talent, development and expertise of our employees, as Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer talks about in this video clip:
For more information about WestlawNext, go to www.westlawnext.com.
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In front of a full room of journalists, legal industry analysts and bloggers at LegalTech New York, Thomson Reuters, Legal CEO Peter Warwick introduced WestlawNext, the business’s new legal research system.
“WestlawNext is the most significant innovation in our history in terms of the time and investment, and I hope the timing of that investment isn’t lost on any one here,” Warwick said Monday. “We created an entirely new research experience from the ground up even while we already had the most preferred legal research service in Westlaw.”
Flanked by Andy Martens, senior vice president of New Product Development for Legal, and Mike Dahn, vice president WestlawNext Product Development, Warwick praised the development and design teams that worked for five years with the vision to make legal research more human.
“We created WestlawNext to work the way our customers do… …to be more human,” Warwick said. “To that end, WestlawNext is elegant, agile, easy to use, more precise, truly intelligent and intuitive. But behind the scenes, it has remarkably complex and powerful technology.”
See a short video from the news briefing featuring comments, in order, from Warwick, Martens and Dahn:
For more information, watch this video showcasing the development and features of WestlawNext and visit www.westlawnext.com.
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Today marks the official launch of WestlawNext from Thomson Reuters Legal.
WestlawNext is a ground-breaking legal research system that represents the culmination of more than 100 years of West attorney-created editorial analysis and technological innovation.
More than five years in the making, it offers a clean, modern interface and powerful new search functionality that makes legal professionals significantly more efficient and gives them the confidence that they’ve explored every relevant document.
Unveiled today at LegalTech New York, the largest legal technology conference in the world, WestlawNext represents the largest product launch from Thomson Reuters, Legal in more than a decade.
“We’ve combined our 138-year legacy of analyzing and organizing legal information with cutting edge search technology to set a new standard for legal research tools,” said Peter Warwick, president and CEO, Thomson Reuters, Legal. “This combination of authority and insight, driven by peerless technology and innovation, is the essence of intelligent information and provides a powerful advantage for our customers.”
The cornerstone of this significant advancement in legal research is WestSearch™, a proprietary search engine that automates the best practices of expert legal researchers, delivering more inclusive, better ranked results. WestlawNext also includes powerful new tools to help legal professionals analyze and organize legal information more efficiently than ever before.
After watching hundreds of legal professionals perform research and thousands of hours of Westlaw log analysis, it was clear to the project team that researchers typically start by finding relevant documents, then turn to powerful finding aids that link documents together, such as the West Key Number System, KeyCite and Westlaw’s vast collection of authoritative treatises and practice guides, to complete their research.
Working with customers, the WestlawNext team saw that legal professionals could benefit from solutions beyond search. Using current tools, it’s cumbersome to annotate, organize and share relevant documents. With WestlawNext, users can highlight relevant sections of text and create notes on a document – all online. Important documents also can be organized in the WestlawNext online foldering system. These folders not only save users time and map to their workflow, they also support an organization’s efforts to “go green.”
In this video, Mike Dahn, vice president of WestlawNext Product Development, provides an overview of WestlawNext.
A longer version of that video, here, features an extended look at the features after the overview by Dahn.
WestlawNext is available for U.S. practitioners now and its capabilities will be progressively added to Westlaw platforms across the globe.
For more information about WestlawNext, visit www.westlawnext.com.
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The U.S. Constitution is one of the most powerful and impactful documents in existence. It literally touches every American’s life, and has since its creation in 1787. Recently, I had the opportunity to view the document first-hand as part of a new exhibit, “We the People: The First Official Printing of the U.S. Constitution,” sponsored [...]
Earlier this week, we released our 2011 Annual Report in an interactive format available online at thomsonreuters.com. Along with information on the company’s financial performance as well as business unit overviews, this year’s annual report contains a variety of dynamic content including interviews with our new business leaders as well as stories of how we [...]
We’ve got a great episode for you this month, kicking off with our “Chaos in the Courts” segment that, believe it or not, is yet another story about the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. Since our March podcast, another person has fallen victim to the establishment’s trademark bypass burger.
Then in our “On the Blawgs” [...]
