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New Lexis and Bloomberg Law as Competition for WestLawNext : Legal Research Search (LRS) Enters a New Era

By Andis Kaulins

Jill Schachner Chanen at the ABA Journal in Exclusive: Inside the New Westlaw, Lexis & Bloomberg Platforms already announced in January of this year the coming war in the battle for legal research dollars, as "legal research" metamorphizes into full-blown "legal research search".

3 Geeks and a Law Blog now report that "New Lexis" is in the offing as competition for the already introduced new WestLawNext, not to mention BloombergLaw.

Gabe Acevedo wrote in February at Above the Law in Did Lexis Nexis Just ?Bing? Westlaw? that the "New Lexis" will -- most likely -- be partnering with Microsoft by being integrated into Microsoft Office and using the Bing search engine, while market leader WestLawNext searches across its own ca. 40,000 law-related databases and Bloomberg Law offers "a legal, regulatory, and compliance research platform".

Many speak of "competition" but the practical effect will be that many law firms and larger law offices will have all three.

I remember well during my early days as an associate at Paul, Weiss et al. when there was a billing period in which I alone billed more than 50% of the firm's total time online at the firm's first online legal research service (so I was told -- I cannot verify that in documents). Online research was not yet the thing to do -- and I even got some raised eyebrows about that billed time -- then.

Always just a step ahead.
No wonder that I later taught inter alia legal research at the University of Trier Law School FFA program.

How things have changed.

Full post as published by LawPundit on May 25, 2010 (boomark / email).