Page 199 - Leaders in Legal Business - PDF - Final
P. 199
users complete online forms about transactions that generate a full suite of documents instantly,
while algorithms compare documents in order to look for unusual language. Like many of their
mainstream counterparts, legal publishers are reinventing themselves as media technology
businesses.
A number of start-ups are challenging the existing models of both law firms and
publishers. One of their key philosophies is that knowledge is a commodity, and that it is the
management of knowledge — and in particular, the application of technology to it — that creates
powerful digital products. As the big data explosion continues at an incredible pace, data
scientists look set to be in huge demand at publishers as they present improved ways to analyze,
visualize, and curate this endless stream of information.
The bountiful supply of (free) basic legal information and know-how is changing not
only how lawyers consume information, but also what they consume.
Perhaps the biggest threat to some publishers comes from technologies that can process
vast quantities of information and apply advanced technology to analyze and curate it. CodeX,
the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, is a good example of the kind of initiative that will
drive change in the legal technology marketplace. As they put it: “What happens when you
combine legal code and computer code?”1 One business to have emerged from the stable is
Ravel Law,2 which illustrates how tech-powered disruptors can challenge the publishing
incumbents. Seeing that cases themselves are just a commodity, Ravel applies analytics and
visualizations to the connections between cases, facilitating a more intelligent approach to legal
research.
User Experience
Customers experience powerful and evolving user interfaces every day. They shop
online, read the news on a tablet, watch TED Talks, connect with others on LinkedIn, and use
countless apps to solve small problems. All of these services combine a customizable experience
with some degree of automatic tailoring. Customers are also experiencing the benefits of
collaboration through wikis, forums, and listservs; Wikipedia seemed to replace the
Encyclopedia Britannica as the default general knowledge bank almost overnight. Publishers will
seek to leverage the potential of crowdsourcing opinions and information.
Users bring expectations from those experiences with them to legal publishing. Legal
publishers will thus need to provide interactive, granular, and tailored experiences.
The effects of diversified distribution and content are also making themselves felt in the legal
sector. Law firms large and small have seized on digital content marketing as the best way to
promote themselves to clients and prospects. Blogging platforms, along with content discovery
and enrichment tools, are enabling them to publish quickly and effectively on niche topics. Thus
far, reliance on word of mouth and social media to grow audiences is limiting their reach, and
they are still turning to publishers to tap their intended audience.
The larger publishers with more content and datasets of primary sources will respond
with further attempts to become the place to do legal research, slicing and dicing, repurposing,
and tailoring their content to meet the needs of as many niche audiences as possible.
But technology is a double-edged sword for publishing companies, representing as much
1 CODEX, http://codex.stanford.edu.
2 RAVEL, https://www.ravellaw.com.
185
while algorithms compare documents in order to look for unusual language. Like many of their
mainstream counterparts, legal publishers are reinventing themselves as media technology
businesses.
A number of start-ups are challenging the existing models of both law firms and
publishers. One of their key philosophies is that knowledge is a commodity, and that it is the
management of knowledge — and in particular, the application of technology to it — that creates
powerful digital products. As the big data explosion continues at an incredible pace, data
scientists look set to be in huge demand at publishers as they present improved ways to analyze,
visualize, and curate this endless stream of information.
The bountiful supply of (free) basic legal information and know-how is changing not
only how lawyers consume information, but also what they consume.
Perhaps the biggest threat to some publishers comes from technologies that can process
vast quantities of information and apply advanced technology to analyze and curate it. CodeX,
the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, is a good example of the kind of initiative that will
drive change in the legal technology marketplace. As they put it: “What happens when you
combine legal code and computer code?”1 One business to have emerged from the stable is
Ravel Law,2 which illustrates how tech-powered disruptors can challenge the publishing
incumbents. Seeing that cases themselves are just a commodity, Ravel applies analytics and
visualizations to the connections between cases, facilitating a more intelligent approach to legal
research.
User Experience
Customers experience powerful and evolving user interfaces every day. They shop
online, read the news on a tablet, watch TED Talks, connect with others on LinkedIn, and use
countless apps to solve small problems. All of these services combine a customizable experience
with some degree of automatic tailoring. Customers are also experiencing the benefits of
collaboration through wikis, forums, and listservs; Wikipedia seemed to replace the
Encyclopedia Britannica as the default general knowledge bank almost overnight. Publishers will
seek to leverage the potential of crowdsourcing opinions and information.
Users bring expectations from those experiences with them to legal publishing. Legal
publishers will thus need to provide interactive, granular, and tailored experiences.
The effects of diversified distribution and content are also making themselves felt in the legal
sector. Law firms large and small have seized on digital content marketing as the best way to
promote themselves to clients and prospects. Blogging platforms, along with content discovery
and enrichment tools, are enabling them to publish quickly and effectively on niche topics. Thus
far, reliance on word of mouth and social media to grow audiences is limiting their reach, and
they are still turning to publishers to tap their intended audience.
The larger publishers with more content and datasets of primary sources will respond
with further attempts to become the place to do legal research, slicing and dicing, repurposing,
and tailoring their content to meet the needs of as many niche audiences as possible.
But technology is a double-edged sword for publishing companies, representing as much
1 CODEX, http://codex.stanford.edu.
2 RAVEL, https://www.ravellaw.com.
185
