All Posts by Michael Feit

Does your firm or organization need a Modern Library Audit?

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting , Modern Law Library , Resources

If you are a Librarian or Administrator who has the mindset of continuous process improvement with the goal of optimizing resources (time and money), the Modern Library Audit provides concrete steps specific to your firm’s needs to achieve this.

In a Modern Library Audit, Feit Consulting’s team of experts conducts a thorough assessment of all legal information functions in the library and the support provided for various departments and practice groups. We evaluate the utilization of personnel, internal processes, technology, legal information resources and the overall support for the business of law.

From the assessment, we develop and present a plan to further modernize your Law Library. What this equates to is a solid plan with clear action steps and ROI for improving how your Law Library operates.

The Modern Law Library is not a destination but an approach to managing legal information resources. Even when a firm reaches the realm of modernizing their law library, changes will occur – internal and external to the firm – that affect the role of the Library and what it provides.

The result of a Modern Law Library Audit is a clear plan with recommendations specific to your firm/organization with the goal of saving money, improving efficiencies, and maximizing the utilization of resources.

If you are ready to take your Law Library to the next level, Feit Consulting’s Modern Library Audit provides a clear path forward. Contact a Feit Advisor today to set up an initial consultation and schedule your Audit.

Feit Consulting Announces their Managed Services Evaluator: First-of-Kind Service

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

We are pleased to announce our Managed Services Evaluator (MSE), the industry’s only unbiased approach to the outsourcing of legal information management.  This new advising service offered by Feit bridges an industry gap.  

As more firms are evaluating outsourcing service models, there is a marked lack of data to help firms understand the current value of their in-house operations.  Before considering outside services, it is critical the firm understands the value it is currently deriving from its legal information resources.   

If it is determined that outsourcing is a potential option, MSE helps Feit clients differentiate between outsourcing providers, ultimately comparing the value and impact of in-house versus outsourced solutions.   The Managed Services Evaluator provides firms with the critical knowledge required to make the best choice for this important business decision.

As law firm information services have evolved and grown to deliver cross-departmental and cross-practice value, the industry has experienced a simultaneous boom in outsourcing providers offering varying degrees of support, with hybrid and fully outsourced models for firms to consider.  It is becoming a part of firms’ due diligence to investigate managed service options as part of any assessment of firms’ information services value.  But the question is, who is the right party to provide such an assessment?

President of Feit Consulting, Michael Feit, comments, “Managed services discussions can be a pain point for law firms, both on the librarian side and firm leadership side.  Feit’s Managed Services Evaluator is designed to help guide both librarians and management towards the best decision, starting with the right data.  For librarians, our assessment can illustrate the market value of their current legal information delivery system.  For firm leadership, an unbiased assessment of service providers has heretofore not even been available – as the other advisors in this space are also providing the outsourcing services under consideration.   In the end, what is most valuable is putting the two together to create the right conversation – with the right information.”

To guide an unbiased evaluation, Feit presents data in neutral fashion, across comprehensive review of your existing library and external/outsourcing options if indicated. 

Feit’s decades of expertise and experience in legal information consulting helps firms successfully understand their market position, including answers to these questions:

• What is the genuine value of your in-house library?
• What is the real cost of your in-house library?
• Is outsourcing an apples-to-apples replacement?  Something less?  Something more?
• Will my firm reduce costs, increase costs, or simply move them to a different cost center?

To learn more about Feit’s Managed Services Evaluator, go here.

About Feit Consulting

Feit Consulting has been a pioneer in the field of information services management consulting for almost two decades.  The experts of Feit Consulting are trusted legal information advisors and partners in the assessment, negotiation and implementation of customized solutions that optimize information services while achieving substantial savings for the top 400 firms, and now for small firms. As leaders with unparalleled experience, Feit Consultants have been challenging existing paradigms for the benefit of their clients since 2001.

Patricia Ann Nagy, DirectorProxy Public Relations LLC188 Grand Street #201New York, NY 10013347.384.2993patricia@proxypr.com

Meet the Managed Services Evaluator Team!

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

As we launch our new offering, the Managed Services Evaluator, we sat down with our lead law library consultants, Stuart Zimmerman and Becky Bowman to discuss their thoughts.  Both Stuart and Becky have distinguished backgrounds as law library leaders.

Stuart was the Director of Research and Information Services for Davis Wright Tremaine for 18 years, Becky was the Chief Research and Information Analysis Officer for Baker Donelson for 32 years. Both Stuart and Becky bring a long track record of incredible accomplishments achieved at their firms, and look forward to their leadership and insights evaluating managed services options.  Read more about Becky and Stuart here.

As Stuart notes, “Every firm’s culture is unique as well as their mission and market-positioning—there’s simply no one-size fits all solution, which is why it’s so important to have a critical eye weigh all the factors into this decision. As outsourcing becomes more prevalent, many firms are going to want to reevaluate their in-house operations.  Librarians tend to be more vocal about the research they provide and focus less so on making their value visible.  Costs, however, are laying very heavily on firms.  They know they need information services, but no one wants to pay for it.  I look forward to helping firms understand the value that flows from the library throughout the firm as well as how to most cost-effectively place that spend, in-house or outsourced.” 

Becky adds, “We will be approaching Managed Services Evaluator with firms in an unbiased way, but also holistically. Law librarians are caught between two worlds:  vendors who want new business and managers that are cost conscious.  Both have inherent self-interests which is why it really is helpful to insert an unbiased voice into the dialogue.

Some law firm leaders are reluctant to embrace what is going on.  They are disconnected and don’t have a way to connect the increasing cost to market trends.  We will help them look at the big picture, from staffing, to collection trends, and of course analyzing their contracts.  Firm management often likes the theory of outsourcing, but there are tradeoffs when there is homegrown staff right there with institutional knowledge.  I am looking forward to helping firms put data on both sides of the equation that guides better decision-making.”

Click here to learn more about the unbiased, Managed Services Evaluator.

The Importance of Lexis’ and Westlaw’s Ancillary Products

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Earlier this year when pulling together the data for our 2019 Optimizing Legal Information Pricing book, we noticed a trend across our AmLaw 200 segment.  Some of our most impactful dimensions – Market Power, Penetration, and Importance–resulted in a nearly identical “Top 4” ranking among Lexis and Westlaw ancillary products, 3 of which fall to Lexis currently (Law360, ALM, NYTimes/WSJ) and just one (Practical Law) under Westlaw.  Only in the importance ranking does Intelligize bump the NYTimes/WSJ Lexis ancillary product out of the top 4.

Take a look at the details of the top-ten products in our charts below:

As vendors drive tougher bundling packages, particularly for Lexis, the stickiness of the ancillary products is proving to be a key factor in retention.

Agnostic Approach to Legal Information Management

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Edge: Failure or Masterstroke?

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Our recent mini survey about Westlaw Edge and Lexis Context results are in, and it is interesting to compare the data to our forecast for Edge pricing. In our latest book, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, we forecasted that roughly 20% of the market would purchase Edge within a year, at nearly 10% increases.

With almost a year under its belt, it appears that Edge adoption will be very close to our forecast. With 15% of Westlaw firms having already adopted, we think it is reasonable to expect that in the next 5 months Westlaw Edge will penetrate another 5% of the market.

The average Edge percentage price increase is slightly lower than the double-digit year-one increases we expected, coming in at 9%. Firms that have purchased the product are happy with it, but for the most part, they do not feel that Edge is a game-changer in the way that WestlawNext was.

So, has Edge been a failure or a masterstroke?

To understand the impact Edge sales have had on Westlaw revenue, we looked at the large law firm market segment (defined as firms with over 100 attorneys). We made some general assumptions about that population and for illustrative purposes, using a hypothetical average spend per attorney to come up with potential revenue impact for this segment. Please note this hypothetical does not match our actual price guidance for Westlaw. (You can find that guidance in our Optimizing Legal Information Pricing book here). Below are our assumptions:

• 400 firms in the over 100 attorney segment
  • 80% of those firms have Westlaw
  • 320 firms have Westlaw
• Average firm size is 250 attorneys
  • 80,000 attorneys total large law population with Westlaw
• Hypothetical average spend per attorney for Westlaw in the market $175 per attorney per month
• Hypothetical revenue to Westlaw for over 100 attorney law firm segment: $168 million

Our survey indicated that roughly 15% of the market has purchased Edge, which translates to 12,000 attorneys with the product. If their cost increased 9%, Westlaw’s annual revenue grew roughly $2.2 million annually, or roughly only a 1.4% increase. If this 1.4% increase was the entire story, you’d probably call Edge a failure.

However, to really understand how well Westlaw has actually performed with Edge you need to consider who the real purchasers likely are. In our Optimizing book, we note that roughly 15% of the market is over-paying for Westlaw, by 150% or more. Although we have no way to correlate who each of those firms are, it is very likely that they are most of the early adopters of Edge. These firms tend to be early-adopters of all products and have less price resistance than the market in general.

If you assume that most of the early adopters of Edge have a spend per attorney that is vastly (>150%) above the market, Westlaw’s incremental revenue grows to $6.8 million per year. This represents a 4% increase alone, just from Edge. If that is the case, Edge would be deemed a moderate success.

Beyond this, and likely the greatest impact to Westlaw is the ability to leverage Edge to lock-in and extend a majority of their highest-paying customers. Every Westlaw Edge discussion that is not a renewal (about 2/3rds) is a reason to drop into the firm and extend the agreement for another 3-5-year period, securing a very significant and otherwise vulnerable revenue stream.

In conclusion, although Westlaw Edge may seem to have had an unspectacular first year, the dollar value increase combined with the ability to extend existing contracts has bought valuable time for Westlaw to hold off potential threats from Lexis or Bloomberg – making Edge a masterstroke.