Just two days ago, I wrote here about the launch of LawArXiv, a website devoted to preserving open access to legal scholarship. The launch was prompted by concern among academics and librarians over the acquisition last year by academic journal publisher Elsevier, a sibling company of LexisNexis, of the Social…

A survey released yesterday on the business of law and legal technology finds that competition for legal services remains high, demand remains relatively flat, and law firms are feeling pressure to lower prices and enhance operational efficiency. But what caught my eye in the survey was the question, “Which technologies provide law firms with…

Chances are you’ve downloaded a preprint of a law review article or some other scholarly article from SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. It has become the leading U.S. repository for scholarly research papers across a broad range of disciplines, including law. But when SSRN was acquired last year by academic…

Last year, as I wrote here in December, a group of undergraduate law students at the University of Cambridge in the UK launched what they called the world’s most advanced legal chatbot, LawBot, designed to help crime victims by providing a preliminary assessment of their situation and of the actions available for them to pursue. Since…

PDF software is a must-have for most law offices. For many lawyers, and especially for litigators, just any PDF software won’t do. They need features such as Bates numbering and redactions that are typically available only in the “pro” versions of higher-end PDF programs, such as Adobe Pro DC, which starts at $179.88 a…

Two competing providers of platforms for managing intellectual property today announced their merger and their plans to create a next-generation IP software and services company.

Boston-based Anaqua, Inc., which has products for both corporations and law firms, and Fremont, Calif.-based Lecorpio, which focuses on corporations, say their newly combined company will focus on powering…

Call me naive, but I would have thought that entering the identical search query on, say, both Westlaw and Lexis Advance would return fairly similar results, at least among the cases ranked highest for relevance. After all, shouldn’t the cases that are most relevant to the query be largely the same, regardless of the research…

A legal and financial technology startup, Bootstrap Legal, is today launching online software that uses artificial intelligence to automate the drafting of legal paperwork for real estate investors raising capital for projects in the range of $2 million or less. The bot is targeted at real estate investors who are originating private…

A 162-year-old legal publishing company is changing its name to reflect its evolution from print publications to digital products and services. Chicago-based Law Bulletin Publishing Company, publisher of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, a mainstay in the Illinois legal community, is now rebranding as Law Bulletin Media.

“We are changing our name…

Some items I’ve been meaning to blog about:

LexPredict open-sources its contract analytics platform. LexPredict, the technology consulting and development company founded by CEO Michael Bommarito and Daniel M. Katz, professor at Chicago Kent College of Law, has announced that it will open source the development of ContraxSuite, its platform…

In a post here yesterday, I offered my thoughts on the just-completed annual conference of the American Association of Law Libraries. During the conference, Kevin O’Keefe, founder and CEO of LexBlog and blogger at Real Lawyers Have Blogs, interviewed me on Facebook Live. He called it an interview, but it really more of…

The exhibit hall at AALL.

People often ask me which are the best legal technology conferences to attend. As I pointed out in a column last year at Above the Law, three conferences form a triumvirate of national legal tech conferences that draw the most attention and biggest headcounts: ILTACON,…