Current trends in the purchasing and supply of electronic products

James Mullan (BIALL LIG Chair)LPE/LIG MeetingBIALL Dublin Conference June 2008

Presentation coverage

• The current marketplace for electronic products• The impact on Law Firms• The impact of free products• The flourishing of niche products• Disaggregation• Costs and Budgets• Integration• CD-Rom and other alternatives to online• New “technologies”

The current marketplace is….

• …a shrinking marketplace• Consolidation of the marketplace means that the Legal

Sector is dominated by the “big three”

– Kluwer/CCH– Thomson Reuters/Sweet & Maxwell– Lexis Nexis Butterworths

What does this mean for Law Firms?

• Less choice/competition• “Cross selling” of products• A captive market for the big three• Pressure from fee-earners to subscribe to products that

other Law Firms have

The impact of free products

• This is still unknown, however there have been major developments to free online databases this year including;

– The Statute Law Database– The OPSI Legislation Website– BAILLI (British & Irish Legal Information Institute)– PreCYdent http://www.precydent.com/ a U.S.

database which is making a big splash in the U.S.

Niche Products

• Increasingly Law Firms are being offered “niche”products by publishers

• These products are aimed at users within specific practice groups for example;

– Complinet (Financial Services)– DebtWire– Mlex

• Ultimately more products no matter how good they are = more cost!

Disaggregation

• This has become a major issue recently:

– FT Content is now only available through Lexis Nexis or Westlaw with an additional licence

– PLC has often “hived” off content to create additional services at extra cost

– Factiva refusing to sell direct to the Legal Market

Costs and Budgets

• Many firms are experiencing downward pressure on their budgets

• Justifying the cost of a new subscription is becoming increasingly difficult

• Yet Publishers continue to rollout above inflation price increases

Integration

• Increasingly Law Librarians are looking to provide federated search solutions

• These provide their users with an easy way to access content from multiple sources

• Publishers should be aware of this and provide tools to support its development

• Lexis Nexis Butterworths have developed some tools in this area (LNB Publisher, Ozmosys)

Integration (2)

• Publishers are also increasingly offering integration as an added extra

• Unfortunately the provision of this service is not consistent across all publishers, some offer it for free, some charge for access to their content

• Law Librarians need to check contract terms carefully if they are considering integrating content from an external source

CD-Rom and other media types

• Most Law Librarians agree that CD-Roms are an outdated technology.

• They require installation, regular updating and often are only available for single users.

• Yet many publishers continue to offer these as “additional” content.

– The White Book (Sweet & Maxwell)– Palmers Company Law (Sweet & Maxwell)

CD-Rom and other media types (2)

• There are alternatives to CD-Roms which publishers could utilize including;

– Secure internet sites which allow the downloading of content and could be password protected

New “technologies”

• I couldn’t help myself…• …what about Web 2.0?• Publishers are and should look to develop their

databases to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies.• Particularly around the use of RSS as a means to

distribute content

New “technologies” (2)

• This should make their services more “marketable” especially outside of the Legal Sector

• The Legal Sector is at the very early stages of adopting Web 2.0 technologies

• Adoption and development of these technologies will only grow and publishers should be aware of its impact

Questions/Thoughts

• I hope to see you all at the BIALL Conference. If not…

• James.Mullan@cms-cmck.com• http://ligissues.blogspot.com• http://www.twitter.com/jimmy1712