by Jane Harrison
The theme of this year’s American Association of Law
Libraries annual conference, Forgo the
Status Quo was mirrored in several
programs I attended.
Among them, and two I will discuss briefly in this article
are: Identifying Competitive Intelligence
in Public Filings: 30 Ways to Find
the What, Where, Why and How and
Moneyball for Lawyers: How Legal Analytics is Transforming the Business and
Practice of Law.
In Identifying,
presenters Agnes Mattis [Skadden Arps], Carolyn Hersch [ Ropes Gray} and
Christopher Walunas [Intelligize] offered their insights on the content and
review of SEC filings with a bent toward Competitive Intelligence. It was
suggested that it takes, on average, 90 minutes to review a 10-K. All IPO Table of Contents are the same. Highlights on 10-K’s for many Competitive Intelligence reports are:
Overviews, Section 1a – Risk Factors, Section 7 Mergers, Deals & Acquisitions,
and Section 8 – Financials and the ‘top of the list’ go-to’s when preparing
Competitive Intelligence reports.
The Moneyball
session provided the insights of Owen Byrd [Lex Machina], Peter Geovanes
[Winston Strawn] and Jean O’Grady [DLA Piper].
Byrd outlined how Lex Machina analytics can serve as a catalyst on both
sides of the equation. Geovanes
highlighted services he and his team use in gathering needed data to keep the
firm moving forward. Among his
suggestions: Altryx and Thought Spot.
O’Grady noted Manzama ‘Signals’.
Described more fully in a blog she posted in December 2016, “A company
called
Manzama is developing
Signals and working with a handful of law firms to develop and refine
algorithms which will tease out patterns and momentum from exabytes
of news stories, public records, court filings and social
media posts to generate predictive signals. These custom “signals”
will alert law firms to leading indicators of risk and opportunity
for business development.” When she left the podium she told us her takeaway
was: Play a role in driving analytics into practice.
Are elements of
Moneyball the Crystal Ball of the business and practice of
law?
Surely I do not know the answer. I
would suggest we researchers, and the businesses designing these products would
like to some degree for the answer to be ‘yes’.
Are Analytics the tea leaves of change? It would appear conferences such
as AALL lean in full support of ‘yes’.
The Exhibit floor, so many vendors to visit, so little
time. Or at least it seemed that
way. For example, SMI – Social Media
Information. In brief, they’re about
locating and preserving social media content.
Selecting a jury? Making a new hire? They may be able to help. The genesis of e-books in our collections and
how the format will have a place in our institutions were part of the showcases
at Lexis and ThomsonReuters.
Lots was learned.
Extraneous facts new to me: In
March 2017 Harvard Law School announced it will accept GRE scores in its
admission process. Since beginning this
article, The George Washington University Law School has jumped on the GRE
score bandwagon.
In Canada, Paralegals can represent clients in court, albeit
in a limited capacity. Washington State
non-lawyers can perform legal functions.
In-between programming and in and at vendor-sponsored events
there was lots of conversation. Sure,
about Austin. The city’s slogan: ‘Keep
Austin Weird’ is emblazoned on virtually any product you can imagine. The city has since the conference been
described to me by a UT-Austin grad as the ‘blueberry in the tomato soup’. Aside from interest in the culture of Austin
– you could not escape the music – nor would you want to, the food, and, yes
- the bat tours.
Two issues in the forefront of conversation with several
people: Catalogs and Business
Information Reports [BIR] Several
libraries are looking to change or are in need of replacing their catalogs. There was lots
of dialog about who uses what and the plusses and minuses. The BIRs, where to find content and how to
construct the content aside, lots of talk about meeting the expectations of our
constituents. While the wheels of
justice may grind exceedingly slow, that
is not as many reading this can attest, always the case in the increasing
demand in the business of business development.
I am tremendously grateful to VALL for awarding me grants to
attend the AALL conference this year. I
am equally grateful to my employer for allowing the time to attend and
participate in AALL. I have my list of
follow-ups following the conference.
They include contacting people, evaluating some new sites, and, I trust,
in due time implementing some of these new elements to benefit the development
of the profession, and the organization where I work.
