Wilson: Against an eBook Model for Legal Publishing

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has published Adopting an eBook Model Is a Terrible Idea for Legal Publishers, at rethinc.k.

In this post, Mr. Wilson reflects on the current role of eBooks in legal publishing. He presents several arguments against pursuing a digital legal publishing model focused on the eBook, one of which is that the attributes of an eBook publishing model — “including single issue, book pricing, lending, supplementation, etc.” — are inconsistent with “the direction [in which] the web has been headed.”

Instead of eBooks, Mr. Wilson argues:

What we need is a system that promotes access (law), answers (commentary), and annotations (community), and satisfies the perceived needs of eBook-desiring consumers (e.g., resource management tools and rational pricing plans).

For more information, please see the complete post.

HT @jasnwilsn.

Wilson: Should Reed Elsevier Sell Lexis-Nexis?

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has published Should Reed Elsevier sell Lexis-Nexis? at rethinc.k.

In this post, Mr. Wilson comments on recent reports and posts about the possibility that the publishing conglomerate Reed Elsevier might leave the legal publishing industry by selling its LexisNexis unit.

Mr. Wilson places this discussion within the wider context of the decline of the legal publishing industry, as described in Robert McKay’s recent Slaw.ca post entitled The End of Legal Publishing?

For more information please see the complete post.

Wilson on Flattening Content: Why Legal Publishers Will Shun Customization

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has published Flattening Content: Why Legal Publishers Will Shun Customization, on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.

In this post, Jason argues that legal publishers should offer access to large quantities of multitopical legal data, rather than customizing subsets of data geared to particular practice areas. He sees several benefits for consumers of this “flattening of content” approach:

Flattening analytical content and charging a single monthly or yearly rate will actually be better for the consumer in a few important ways. First, you’ll be exposed to more content and more possible answers to your questions than if you were buying by the slice. [...] Second, publishers will recognize that “data” means up-to-date data, and editorial processes will evolve to make sure the content is accurate at the time you look at it. [ ...] Finally, publishers will recognize that a key feature of digital content is the ability to add material because there are no longer restrictions—what we used to call book bindings and PPI (pages per inch)—to limit growth of the content.

For more information, please see the complete post.

Wilson on Technology-Driven Transformation in Legal Services

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has published two widely discussed new posts on technology-driven change in legal services: The Rise of the Programmers and I Am Now an App. The posts appear on Slaw.ca, the Canadian legal blog.

In these posts, Jason presents a distinctive vision of how technology is transforming the provision of legal services. He describes the rate and salience of change, furnishes examples of technology-driven development in the legal sector, and identifies practice areas that seem particularly susceptible to substantial change under the influence of technology.

More of Jason’s writings on legal technology and legal publishing are available at his blog, rethinc.k.

New on VoxPopuLII: Holmes on Accessible Law

Nick Holmes of infolaw has posted Accessible Law, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. Holmes discusses the state of the free access to law movement, and the challenges of making free law usable by ordinary citizens. Mr. Holmes describes FreeLegalWeb, his new free access to law service, that combines free primary law with expert legal commentary presented via blogs, to make the law more accessible to the people.

Mr. Holmes also discusses the recent debate between Bob Berring, Tom Bruce, and others over the quality of access to law provided by commercial computer assisted legal research services and free law services, as well as Jason Wilson’s concept of online legal publishing as curation.

This post will be of interest to those who develop or manage legal information systems; to the legal publishing community; to the free access to law community; and all who are interest in improving public access to legal information.

Wilson on Curating Legal Analytical Material

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has a thought-provoking new post entitled Curating the Legal Web?, on Slaw.

In this post, Mr. Wilson describes the potential benefits of legal professionals’ using current technology to curate — i.e., evaluate, authenticate, and create quality descriptive metadata for — legal analytical materials. He contends that this is an extremely promising way to introducing innovation in legal publishing.

Wilson on Exploded Legal Data

Jason Wilson of Jones McClure Publishing has an interesting new post entitled Exploded data, the legal web, and what we’re missing, at his rethinc.k blog.

Jason’s post draws on his conversation of last month with Dr. Peter Jackson of Thomson Reuters about the challenges of automatically extracting implied semantics from legal texts.

Jason elaborates on this idea by applying to legal texts Mike Cane’s concept of exploded data, meaning the potentially enormous quantity of implied information contained in small quantities of text that are processed in complex or multiple contexts.

Also of potential interest are Greg Lambert’s responsive post and Prof. Simon Fodden’s comment on Jason’s post.

Jackson on WestlawNext and the State of the Art in Legal Information Systems

Dr. Peter Jackson, Chief Scientist and Vice President of Technology at Thomson Reuters, discusses the new WestlawNext computer-assisted legal research system, and the current state of the art in legal information systems, in a very interesting interview with Jason Wilson of Jones McClure, published today on Slaw, the Canadian legal blog.