Tuesday, February 2, 2010

LegalTech: Lexis! It's Shiny!

So yesterday was the Westlaw Next review. Today was Lexis's turn.

Now, I'm a Lexis girl. Not because of the database, because Lord knows it's the biggest pain in the hindquarters area to search. Not because of the content, because 90% of it is free online somewhere else.

I'm a Lexis girl because Lexis is run by Reed Elsevier, who runs Reed Exhibitions, who runs New York Comic Con, and who is taking me to Chicago come this April, which my father bought for two zuzim. So even though the Wexis Twins are more or less interchangeable, I'm a Lexis girl because I like Batman.

More after the jump



While West has come out with a new interface for existing content, Lexis has come up with a partnership deal. Microsoft Office 2007 and Lexis are now (or will be whenever Lexis actually releases it) be BFF.

When a partner receives an email in Outlook, or looks at a document in Word, Lexis will be on the toolbar. It'll automatically scan the document, highlight the relevant terms, and perform the search on them for the attorney, listing the results at the side for easy access, clickability, and other fun things.

It searches the internet, provides results in both Bing and Google; it searches Lexis, provides relevant case law and documentation, with a filter for jurisdiction that you can set at the beginning; it searches your whole firm's documents, pulling up related information and files.

It does everything for you if you're too busy/swamped/untrained/dumb to do it yourself.

So while West has changed the way lawyers research, Lexis has removed the need for research entirely-- it's smarter than you are, and here's the lovely list of citations and full case text to prove it, happily linked in at the side of your document. Oh, you want to know who else at your firm is working on a similar case? Well, we also search your KM system and provide that for you, same place. Also, you have this case saved on your computer, here it is you fool who was too busy to search for it. Also also, we can cuddle and you can be little spoon, just because I love you that much. And here, have a cookie and a cup of cocoa and some Brandeis Briefs for a bit of light reading.

The only downside I've found so far, aside from having the same catch as Westlaw Next (i.e. we'll let you search everything, and won't stop you from clicking into something that'll be an extra gazillionty dollar fee) is that the whole system still had a definite feeling of being unfinished. The Lexis rep who showed it off had to answer "That's coming soon" more than once, and left the general feeling that this had kinda been pushed out a bit prematurely, in order to compete with the Westlaw Next premiere at Legal Tech.

But, I got a coffee mug. That says Lexis on it. Which I obnoxiously drink from while wearing my Westlaw Next earbuds at my friendly neighborhood Wexis competitor's computer terminal.

It's a good thing.

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