Often it seems much of the terminology used to describe innovations or trends in legal publishing are referring to very similar concepts. I recently started thinking about this more after reading a blog post by Christine Kirchberger entitled Law as an App. The post addresses a discussion brewing among some legal informatics experts on the concept of “law as a service” and asserts that the concept is about focusing on how apps or other software might use legal information to directly warn users of potential legal issues before they arise and advise how to avoid them. Read further >

A quiet sunday morning, I’m channel surfing on my big screen when I come across an enticing teaser on the Wolters Kluwer Channel. I carrousel through the Health and Tax panels and select Legal. I start reading the news articles and a particular phrase intrigues me. I spread my arms to zoom in and make a left to right swiping gesture in the air to select it… Read further >

A value-added service in many public search engines has been auto-complete and pre-search suggested searches for searchers. You go to Google or Bing and begin typing a query, for example, “bus”, and Google’s auto-complete suggests “bus times,” “business links,” “business for sale,” and “bus timetable.” This feature is very helpful in several aspects. By displaying alternative word forms, the researcher has the opportunity to discover a better formulated version of his or her query. The suggestions might be words that are directly related to the searcher’s intent but which also serve to expand or refine the user’s search. Auto-complete in mobile devices, where the logic seems to be driven by an app in the smartphone itself, such as in my iPhone, can be quite annoying because frequently the suggested terms are wholly unrelated to my search intent and I experience it as low value-add, in fact, a nuisance. But I’ve adapted my search workflow to the iPhone. Read further >

People who know me, will probably describe me as being analytical and pragmatic. And I fully agree with that assessment – most of the time. But every now and then something happens, which touches my emotional side and if my analytical part also agrees, I can get rather passionate. Exactly that happened in the previous months, when a vision became reality. I am talking about Jurion – an innovative and new kind of software and knowledge platform for the legal market, covering all the different aspects that really create added value to our customers’ professional processes. Read further >

Creating a positive user experience out of a single content asset is more challenging than ever. Just think about a single treatise. It can be available today in print, CD-ROM, as an ebook on the Kindle device, the Kindle Cloud Reader or the Kindle iPad app. It could be available on the Kindle Fire, taking advantage of color and graphics. It could be available as a PDF accessible through the Kindle, iPad, or a PC’s deskt0p. There are many ways to make it available through the iPhone. It also could be accessed through a Web-based research application, such as IntelliConnect. In the context of Web-based research applications, user experience can differ according to the type of browser used – Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer – and even the version of a particular browser, such as Internet Explorer 8 versus Internet Explorer 9. Early adopters might be experimenting with Internet Explorer 10. It’s a multichannel, multi-browser world. Read further >

I just sat through a presentation of a practice management software application that transformed the way people worked and functioned. Innovation according to Wikipedia is the ”creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society.” It is interesting to note that innovation differs from invention where as the former is relating to use of a new idea or method and latter is the creation of the idea. Read further >

Private publishers such as Wolters Kluwer have long been an essential part of the tax, legal & regulatory content value chain. Traditionally they have aggregated, organized, linked, and explained primary and secondary sources of law so that professional practitioners — lawyers and accountants — can help their clients better predict the consequences of their decisions. Print-based aggregation in looseleafs and treatises over time transformed into digital aggregation in full-text searchable databases organized by document type and/or practice area. Digital aggregation is challenging because government sources of law, including legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government, make their data available in different formats according to their own schedules. If these different government entities could make their data available using uniform standards, private publishers would be able to aggregate primary sources of law more quickly. Of course, that would mean that explanations, linking, and topical organization could occur more quickly. This is how I view the promise of 5-star linked data for tax, legal & regulatory publishers. Read further >

At Frankfurt Book Fair, I gave a presentation on “Semantic Web for Publishers”, including what semantic search means and how it affects our current and future business. Since all chairs were taken – some people even had to stand at the back – and nobody in the audience left before the session was over, one can certainly conclude that the buzz word “semantic” has caught the attention of the publishing community. Read further >

Algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated at finding and categorizing information. Indeed, for a thought-provoking talk on the importance of algorithms in general, check out this TED presentation, entitled, “How Algorithms Shape Our World.” Google, for example, has built a business on algorithms. Google’s PageRank algorithm ranks search results for researchers based partly on the authority of links. Google Scholar applies algorithms that purport to identify for US cases (1) how a case has been cited; (2) the documents that are cited by a particular case; and (3) related documents. There is even a patent. I applaud Google’s research and development. But can algorithms replace human editorial expertise? Not yet. Read further >