All Posts by Michael Feit

Feit Consulting Releases 2019 Optimizing Legal Information Pricing Book

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

We are delighted to announce the market availability of the 2019 Optimizing Legal Information Pricing book. This is an invaluable resource for legal information professionals to improve procurement, optimize content and save on costs.

Optimizing Legal Information Pricing integrates vital market-wide information providing market context, with detailed pricing and forecasts for all major products to help law firms purchase the right product – at the right price.

Tremendous pricing disparity exists among the leading vendors—LexisNexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg and Wolters Kluwer—and bundling tactics have added new layers of complexity to purchasing and, in fact, disadvantage buyers. Books like 2019 Optimizing Legal Information Pricing are one of the few ways consumers can obtain context and improve their negotiating position. Price differentials between firms for some contracts can vary widely, as much as 300%. The potential ROI of informed negotiations to law firms with their legal information vendors is substantial.

The 2019 Optimizing Legal Information Pricing book offers pricing guidance on all 4 major vendors–Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg, and Wolters Kluwer–as well as ancillary products including: Law360, Practical Law, WSJ/NYTimes, Courtlink, Intelligize, Alert Management Center, Drafting Assistant, LegalEdCenter, Monitor Suite, Newsdesk, Securities Mosaic, Lex Machina, West KM, Lexis Practice Advisor, Patent Optimizer, Lexis Search Advantage (LSA), Contract Express and more.

This year’s edition shows market pricing movement that can influence short- and long-term decision making at all firms. Despite their positive consumer sentiment, this book presents Feit’s guidance which shows that Westlaw, will likely be the only product to see a decrease in pricing over the next 5 years.  

Is Bloomberg winning despite itself?

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Our 2019 Legal Information Market survey contains many surprises – and several contradictions.

One of the most surprising contradictions was that despite the overwhelming market dissatisfaction with Bloomberg (at 64% reporting moderate or extreme dissatisfaction – more than all the other vendors combined), just 28% of our survey respondents intend to cancel or reduce Bloomberg this year.

Content wins out over extreme dislike – at least for the time being.  

The market was relatively unprepared for Bloomberg’s aggressive upselling tactics in 2018.  It is clear the market has only so much price tolerance.  The verbatims in our survey (more than 500 in all) reveal many things – including a desire by many firms to find solutions to replace Bloomberg. 

Regarding Bloomberg’s performance, our survey collected data on how successful the Bloomberg enterprise expansion has been, and pricing expectations from law firms for Bloomberg and the other vendors.  For that part of the story and much more you’ll want to get a copy of our survey here.

One thing is for sure, 2019 is going to be a tumultuous and exciting year in the legal information space. You can get Feit’s complete strategic market overview, including price guidance in our upcoming book: Optimizing Legal Information Pricing.  Don’t miss your chance to pre-order the 2019 release here. Through February 15^th, the book is 15% off. 

Optimizing Legal Information Pricing is an indispensable source for decision makers who manage legal information resources. It provides the latest information to help them make informed choices in the legal information vendor market, in 2019 and beyond.

Feit’s Top 5 Blog Posts from 2018

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Looking back and assessing the highlights (and lowlights) of the past year is a healthy exercise, both personally and professionally.

Here at Feit Consulting, we reflected on our own blog posts to see what content our readers were most tuned into.

It doesn’t surprise us that readers are most attracted to our posts on pricing practices and the feelings of information professionals regarding the major vendors, and the two dominant players in particular.

Pricing practices have long been purposely obscured by these vendors so they can leverage terms that vary greatly from firm to firm.  This is a true challenge with which firms struggle–and 2018 only cranked up the heat on this complexity with the changes each provider made to their bundling models.  2018 was a year where firms found themselves even less able to understand the offerings of their own long-term partners – and the only salve to this is data.

Feit Consulting’s benchmarks are invaluable, and we are continuously driving market research into our services–but even better, we help firms look at the full picture and understand their firm’s attorneys, and their content needs better. 

And with no further adieu, here are our most popular blogs from 2018:

1. Inside Bloomberg BNA’s Fall Pricing Surprise
2. Lexis Legal Pricing Strategy Has Haters
3. Will Westlaw’s Edge be Undone by its Pricing?
4. Legal Information Vendor Market Survey Surprising Results
5. Sole Provider Trend: Alive and Kicking?

The Big Reveal: 2019 Legal Information Vendor Market Survey Results

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

A big thank-you to all the law firm professionals throughout the country who participated in our semi-annual Legal Information Vendor Market Survey. The survey wrapped in December and we have been hard at work analyzing the results since.

We captured opinions from 23% of large U.S. Law Firms (with attorney counts of over 100) – providing a confidence level in the findings of over 90%.  Here are some of the survey highlights:

• 75% Unimpressed with Edge. Three quarters of the respondents weren’t too excited by Westlaw Edge. In fact, 46% indicted that they will wait 12 months or more before they consider an Edge purchase, and 30% said they are unlikely to buy Edge, ever.
• Edge, gratis? Of the respondents who would take Edge, a third of the respondents stated they would not take it unless it is offered for free.

This should be business-school 101, but the Survey revealed a significant correlation between price expectation and satisfaction with vendors:

BBNA: a strong link between a price hike and dissatisfaction.

• 11% of respondents think their firm’s BBNA pricing will rise more than 25% in the next renewal cycle – more than all other major vendors
• 65% of respondents are Extremely or Moderately Dissatisfied with BBNA. Again, that dissatisfaction rate is more than all the other vendors combined.

Lexis Surprise:  Indispensable products create leverage. 

• Lexis has the most leverage of any vendor, with two products that respondents ranked as the most indispensable: Law360 and Intelligize.

This is just a snapshot of the survey results.  For the price of a new vendor lunch ($250) you can read the entire survey.  And remember your copy of the survey is shareable with your entire firm.  Get your copy here.

Should You Cancel When Your Contract Renews?

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

Contract cancellation and changing vendors doesn’t happen overnight.

These changes occur sometimes over years of dissatisfaction, poor services, price increases.  We’ve asked our survey respondents to tell us how likely they are to cancel when their contracts renew – and the results are telling.

We’ve noted in other posts in this blog series about the satisfaction rates of Westlaw, so these do not surprise us – but Lexis and Bloomberg have cause for concern.

Do these statistics mean your firm should question your services?  Not necessarily.  Don’t miss out on the complete results!  ALL participants receive a complimentary copy of the Survey results and participating takes less than 10 minutes.  Click here.

Will Westlaw’s Edge be Undone by its Pricing?

By Michael Feit | Feit Consulting

In July, Westlaw launched its AI-technology powered, predictive legal search tool Westlaw Edge.

Westlaw has long been considered the leader in comprehensive legal information services, providing a comprehensive package of services at premium prices. Early results of our annual market survey show a continued high level of satisfaction with Westlaw:

However, despite their popularity, the survey also shows that many firms are going to postpone consideration or adoption of Westlaw Edge until the pricing falls.   To date, less than 20% of firms who have responded have noted that they intend to go forward with Westlaw Edge in the next 12 months.

Compounding the situation, Westlaw Edge is entering the market at nearly the same time that LexisNexis and Bloomberg BNA, are competing with their own enhanced AI products, with similar technologically advanced features.  In the case of Lexis, their pricing tends to be much lower than that offered by Westlaw, and as a result Lexis is likely to be more palatable.

When competing products include many of the same analytical features, pricing becomes more important.  Westlaw is fine with only 20% of customers purchasing Edge at the high, introductory price as it stands to see a considerable increase in revenue due to this.  Westlaw is risking that firms will try the AI alternatives at a lower price and Westlaw will lose future business altogether.

As law firms are experiencing long term downward pressure on price, the Edge pricing strategy is out of synch.  There are myriad stories of market dominant companies that don’t heed the call of price sensitivity or shifts in the market place – Sears, Blockbuster, Blackberry, remember Kodak? To regain market share, Westlaw’s competitors–principally LexisNexis–have made adjustments, not only to their prices, but also to their product offerings.

Due to Westlaw’s tremendous product loyalty, prices have grown to a point where their customer’s are being forced to try alternatives.  Edge could help Westlaw retain its popular position if pricing was perceived to be less aggressive.

Share your thoughts on Westlaw Edge and the market!   Our Survey is closing in just over a week on December 15th and all participants receive a complimentary copy of the full results.  To join, start here.