Value does not automatically increase 3-5% annually “just because”!

By Michael Feit | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

Value does not automatically increase 3-5% annually for every product “just because”! To pay increases annually, it would be expected that the firm is receiving more value, content or features than the year before. Complacency or lack of diligence in managing information resources can have long-lasting unfavorable implications on both processes and costs, thereby hampering overall efficiency.

Feit Consulting’s Optimizing Legal Information Pricing shares steps for evaluating the value of your firm’s legal information resources, and arms decision makers with the necessary knowledge and leverage for negotiations. Feit Consulting’s benchmarks provide context for assessing the favorability of your contracts compared to the market.

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Legacy Contracts: The Challenges New Librarians Face

By Michael Feit | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

One of the tougher situations a law librarian can encounter is accepting a new position at a law firm and immediately being faced with tight deadlines for negotiating online contract renewals. Legacy contracts are a conglomerate of past points of view regarding what the firm needed in terms of content and the cost the firm was willing to bear at the time of negotiation. The secretive nature of online pricing just adds to the dilemma faced by librarians in this position, because it is impossible to truly know if what is being offered is best in market pricing.

If your legacy contract pricing is way above market, reaching a reasonable benchmark in your current negotiation cycle can be difficult or impossible without any knowledge of market pricing. In many cases, even with market knowledge, it can take several negotiation cycles to achieve contracts closer to market rates.

Feit Consulting’s latest white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing was designed as a valuable tool to guide and assist information professionals through the online contract negotiating process. By providing insight into market metrics for Lexis and Westlaw, along with other key legal information vendors, the report outlines best practices for a contract audit and provides a handy checklist of dos and don’ts for the negotiation process. With a future forecast of what to expect from online vendors, this white paper is an essential resource for preparing for negotiations and successfully navigating the negotiation process.

Click here for more information on this resource.

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.

Secret Pricing Published

By Michael Feit | Pricing , White Papers

With 15-25% of the law firm market substantially overpaying for Lexis or Westlaw, Feit Consulting seeks to empower law firms with the knowledge necessary to achieve reasonable and mutually beneficial pricing. For too long, pricing has been kept secret. No firm knows whether their contract is truly “excellent”, which the vendors often claim with each new renewal.

Until now, only Feit’s clients received this intel. In our next white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, Feit Consulting will be disseminating our benchmarks on what is reasonable pricing historically, current, and projected, with supporting data and rationale.

Why share this privy information? By publishing our unique market view, firms that are trapped in bad contracts will obtain the necessary context to take the first step towards corrected pricing. Having this market knowledge is only one element to achieving successful contract negotiations. Feit Consulting is here to advise firms at all stages of vendor contract negotiations and overall legal information strategy.

Act now! Have up to five of your firm’s legal information contracts benchmarked against our data. Sign up here.