Monthly Archives: June 2017

Don’t Be a Hostage to Your Vendor

By Kate | Sole Provider , White Papers

Many firms become a hostage to their vendor due to timing. The timeline for negotiating is dictated by contract expirations. Two or more years of dedicated planning allows for adequate time to evaluate the value of legal information resources and consider if vendor elimination or flipping to another vendor is an option. Your firm may get stuck with a vendor simply because there is not enough time to explore other options.

The idea of transitioning to sole-provider can be daunting, considering the many individuals and processes that might be impacted. There are a great number of elements to examine, from contracts to content, not to mention the strong reactions of users to fundamental system changes. Lexis and Westlaw have both successfully infiltrated law firms’ cultures and infrastructures over their many years of service.

An evaluation of the sole-provider option has become necessary for law firm administrators. Whether or not a firm chooses to go sole-provider, the evaluation in itself provides an opportunity for a firm to review, revise and refine its legal information strategy and potentially save significant money. Additionally, understanding the value of choosing either Lexis or Westlaw for your firm can be advantageous in negotiations.

The Sole Provider Playbook has been developed to be an all-encompassing guide, with tools to quickly determine the viability of the sole-provider option and how to actually execute it. If your firm first wants to only evaluate the sole-provider option, then the Sole Provider Viability Decision Guide is a great starting place. Click here to learn more about Feit Consulting’s Sole Provider Playbook.

How does your Spend Per Attorney compare?

By Kate | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

Imagine you want to buy a house, but you can’t find out how much any other house on the street sold for. Welcome to the world of Lexis and Westlaw pricing. The secretive nature makes it nearly impossible to know whether your firm has optimal pricing.

Feit Consulting’s latest white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing sheds light on the market by providing our view of the market and, in particular, on the Spend Per Attorney metric.

Additionally, the report provides detailed metrics and market benchmarks on usage, discounts, excluded costs, and recovery. The report also includes guidance for achieving optimal pricing on Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg, Wolters Kluwer and other legal information products. Click here to learn more about this report.

Can Lexis unRavel Westlaw?

By Michael Feit | Vendors

Lexis announced this week they have acquired Ravel Law. With acquisitions like Lex Machina and now Ravel, Lexis has seemingly cornered the market on analytics and data-driven decision making.

In recent years, due to Westlaw’s incredible popularity with law school graduates, and some notable problems with LexisAdvance rollouts, Lexis’ value–and pricing–diminished. However, Lexis has regrouped, formulating a strategy to rebound by acquiring new, innovative companies and reinvesting in law school programs. Most importantly, Lexis is promising to knit it all together, linking the new products with a common gateway into an improved LexisAdvance.

The Ravel acquisition is an important pivot point, and we think Lexis’ usage and pricing are headed for a bounce-back. Westlaw is ripe for a take-down. The market will continue to become less tolerant of Westlaw’s high pricing compared to Lexis’ (more than double). For the first time in a while, it is an excellent time to ‘buy’ Lexis, for firms that can negotiate a reasonable and optimal price.