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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?”2 One business to have emerged from the stable is Ravel Law,3
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
threat as opportunity. The combination of more focused search and abundant free resources online
means that, for many lawyers, Google is their starting point for research.
One of the best examples of a publishing model being blindsided by changes in the digital
2 CODEX, http://codex.stanford.edu.
3 RAVEL, https://www.ravellaw.com.
205
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?”2 One business to have emerged from the stable is Ravel Law,3
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
threat as opportunity. The combination of more focused search and abundant free resources online
means that, for many lawyers, Google is their starting point for research.
One of the best examples of a publishing model being blindsided by changes in the digital
2 CODEX, http://codex.stanford.edu.
3 RAVEL, https://www.ravellaw.com.
205
