Julie Gleason, a manager in New Product Development on the WestlawNext team, presented to a roomful of AALL attendees in a session entitled “WestSearch: The Technology Behind WestlawNext.”
“WestlawNext allows you to complete your research in less than half the time and the workflow tools integrate where you work today,” Gleason said.
But how?
“Legal search engines are very literal – they look for exactly what you put in a search box. We knew we could do better than that.”
By talking to thousands of Westlaw researchers and leveraging proprietary Westlaw technologies, like KeyCite, The West Key Number System, attorney-authored editorial enhancements, statutory indices and ResultsPlus, Thomson Reuters has trained a search engine to automatically complete several steps that the best legal researchers perform, all quickly behind the scenes, to first broaden the search across 12 core content sets, then search within this content to present better ranked results. WestSearch also looks at aggregated customer usage – printing, foldering, emailing, etc – to further correlate documents and improve the ranking of results.
We asked Legal Research Center, an independent company, to perform an efficiency study on WestlawNext. Fifty legal professionals used Westlaw and 50 received an hour of training and performed the searches using WestlawNext.
“Thanks to WestSearch, the WestlawNext users were well over 50 percent more efficient,” Gleason said.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Products |
No Comments |
Share
In her Thomson Reuters Innovation Theater session, “WestlawNext Goes Where You Go,” Senior User Experience Specialist Shannon O’Brien talked about the development approach that led to WestlawNext Mobile.
“We wanted to make WestlawNext available to all mobile users,” O’Brien said. “Rather than creating an app for every device, we made a compelling version of WestlawNext available to all mobile devices from a single URL: next.westlaw.com.”
The mobile URL is available to all WestlawNext customers and is already very popular. O’Brien said that customers use mobile to view the contents of their folders, KeyCite a document and run searches.
After her presentation, an attendee asked O’Brien if she and her team considered developing apps for specific devices. She said that they look at each device and ask if it is unique enough to warrant a specific app.
“Most smart phone users access WestlawNext Mobile to view document in a folder, write a note on a document or KeyCite a citation,” she said. “Because the screens are smaller, customers usually use their Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile devices to continue their research. The iPad offers more flexibility – it’s more an extension of their desktop experience, and that is why we are developing an iPad app.”
iPad users can use an optimized version of WestlawNext now on their devices; a WestlawNext app will be available later this summer.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Products |
Comments (1) |
Share
If, on Saturday evening at the AALL annual meeting, you found yourself moseying down the street with your cowboy hat and boots, well then maybe you were heading over to the Westlaw Business annual customer appreciation event at the Cowboy Lounge in spectacular downtown Denver.
The band was good and the Westlaw Business folks put out quite a spread – creating a perfect atmosphere to catch up with colleagues and acquaintances.
Legal Current caught up with Jennifer Perez, Westlaw Business senior marketing manager, and asked her about the event. “AALL is an important show for us and a great opportunity to catch up with a lot of our customers,” she said. “We wanted to gather our friends together and really enjoy what Denver had to offer … a cowboy band and buffalo burgers seemed a good place to start.”
Jennifer Perez is pictured here with Deborah Rusin, Reference Librarian for Latham & Watkins.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Events |
No Comments |
Share
Thomson Reuters has released several video profiles of employees, including our own Stephen Yao, CEO of our Legal business in China, as well as iPhone app developer and senior software engineer, Jay Peyer, and others from across the business.
The purpose of the vignettes is to demonstrate the impact that individual employees can have on our business – how they bring its vision and values to life.
According to our Senior Vice President of Talent, Dimitra Manis, “the stories help us understand what Thomson Reuters stands for as an employer and aims to encourage us all to think about what each of us can do to create a best place to work.”
The stories appear on our refreshed Career Center on thomsonreuters.com.
They’re worth checking out. Let me know what you think.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
We’re not normally inclined to pat ourselves on the back, so I hope you’ll indulge me for a couple paragraphs: the fine work of the entire Legal Current team – led by Kevin Hunt, Angie Schaffer and Gretchen DeSutter – has been recognized by Business Insider, a business site dedicated to reporting and analyzing top stories from across the Web. Business Insider talked to Kevin and discussed Legal Current for an article about corporate blogs.
From its inception in May 2009, Legal Current has worked to provide interesting content about the global practice and business of law, with contributions from Thomson Reuters leaders, employees and authors affiliated with the business. Legal Current also is a timely source of news and information about all the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters.
We particularly like using Legal Current to highlight events in the legal industry that bring together so many of you. A good example is our recent coverage from LegalTech New York, where we attended and recapped sessions at the conference and talked about legal industry trends with thought leaders and other attendees.
Simply put, we view Legal Current as a way to communicate with people like you who are passionate about the practice and business of law – all over the world. We appreciate that opportunity. And it’s gratifying to see that work recognized.
As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | In the News |
No Comments |
Share
So where does data leave off and intelligent information begin?
Rick King, chief technology officer for the Professional Division of Thomson Reuters, discussed just that at a gathering of chief information and chief technology officers at the CIO Forum, held in association with LegalTech New York.
“The core competency of Thomson Reuters Professional Division is integrating content and technology better than anyone, providing customers with Intelligent Information to create knowledge to act,” King told the group. “For example, we painstakingly extract data from opinions, briefs and other documents to create our authority files in Westlaw. This is important to bringing intelligence to our information, relating the previously unrelated, adding detail and lighting up pieces that were before in the dark.”
He went on to say that “Intelligent information begins with a deep understanding of how your customers work and how they use information. Then, the secret sauce is using the technology to really dissect the content – to mine all the data in your content sets, know what it is, map it to other data to deepen its context, and serve it up exactly when its needed.”
King talks about the role of technologists and the influence they can have in law firms and organizations in this video clip from the event:
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Events |
No Comments |
Share
Editor’s note: The video of this event that was once available in this post has been removed as of May 2010, per contract agreement.
Thomson Reuters, Legal CEO Peter Warwick and former Director General of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei sat at a roundtable onstage in an auditorium at LegalTech New York and talked about the world, its people, technologies that threaten civil society and democracy, and the ones that may offer it hope.
During his opening remarks, Warwick discussed why a global view is more important than ever before: “Operating as a global concern has been rich in opportunities. For most US and UK firms operating internationally, growth over the past decade has been much stronger outside their home countries, whether it has been supporting the global investments of Sovereign Wealth Funds; building China practices; or supporting the global M&A, tax and compliance needs of multi-national corporations. In emerging countries we also see a growing number of law firms and legal services suppliers who define their playing field as global rather than national.”
Warwick noted that technology has always been a tool that can be used for good as well as oppressive purposes. Information and communication technologies have helped to facilitate the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Latin America, and they have helped to enable totalitarian regimes to maintain power and control over their populations in Central and Eastern Europe.
But he also 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,” Warwick said. “For example, using automated classification systems can help to codify the law, and make it more transparent and accessible to people. Access to justice through the development of a modern and efficient court system to quickly resolve disputes is a key component of the rule of law and of a legal system that works for the benefit of all.”
Dr. ElBaradei was brilliant. You might think that a career as head of a global organization that monitors and manages nuclear weapons proliferation would have something of a bias against technology, but Dr. ElBaradei also sees technology as an important part of the answer to injustice and oppression.
He talked about the use of social media technology to put oppression on trial in front of the world, and held up the recent election in Iran as an example. “Now, when an atrocity occurs, a photo can be put on Twitter for all to see.” He also said that Facebook has been used successfully to shine a light on government wrongdoings, and said that several Facebook pages have been helpful in his efforts to promote democracy.
Dr. ElBaradei has been a player on the world stage for decades and his examples from history and his own experience spanned World War II to the present day.
John Bringardner recaps the session with Warwick and ElBaradei on Law.com.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
In Practice | Rule of law |
No Comments |
Share
Thomson Reuters, Legal, President & CEO Peter Warwick offered his perspective on the company’s approach to the current economic reality in a panel discussion, “Adapting and Thriving in a Challenging Economy”, at the Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference.
The launch of WestlawNext brings a significant advancement in the way professional legal research is done.
A discussion about online privacy and “The End of Forgetting,” with law professor Jeffrey Rosen.
