“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future,” beamed a confident Shawn Hoover, the President of the newly launched Bloomberg Law last night as he pitched his nascent company to a standing room only crowd of attorneys at the company’s offices in Manhattan. “Today, you can put your long days and nights of fruitless searching behind you. Bloomberg Law is here to save your day and quite possibly the entire legal industry!”
The key component to Bloomberg Law’s pitch is its proprietary search functionality, called “Snap, I Found It.” The company claims this technology will quickly make lawyers realize that the days of Westlaw and LexisNexis are numbered. According to Bloomberg Law’s promotional materials, the “Snap, I Found It” feature can handle the most ridiculous search phrases and locate the case law that can support even the most incomprehensible arguments. In very limited instances when a case can’t be located, "Snap, I Found It" will generate a comprehensive analysis as to why looking for the case in the first place was a really stupid idea.
Before the launch of this new functionality, lawyers' only options were the often disappointing “Focus” and “Locate” features offered by LexisNexis and Westlaw. These tools were of little help to lawyers who were given tasks like finding a case in Montana that allows for a defendant to avoid paying damages when the jury awarded a verdict for the plaintiff. With “Snap, I Found It,” the lawyer can confidently either locate the case or print out a Bloomberg Law certified response that such a case simply can't be found.
Lawyers everywhere are chomping at the bit to the use the new technology. “Honestly, I am really kind of angry at LexisNexis after making me press ‘focus’ on my searches all of these years,” explained an attorney who asked to remain anonymous out of fear that he'd lose his weekly free time. “Focusing is kind of my job so please just give me the results already.” Other lawyers claim that Westlaw’s ‘locate’ feature makes them feel ridiculous. “Locate? That's what I was trying to do with my initial search. Seems like there's a problem with the software and not the searcher," explained an annoyed attorney who identified herself as a 50-state survey aficionado. “I can’t wait for another option in the legal world."
Welcome Bloomberg Law, the Litination awaits your impact on the profession.
3 comments:
I've been using Bloomberg law as a free trial for a couple weeks. its ok, but not earth shattering. It is more of an application than a website. I don't think that I've had the SIFI functionality, so I'll be sure to try it next time I have a research project.
the real question... will it provide points for law students
It does provide points of law...and also provides the lead cases for those points of law and, just added, the ability to search for terms in the points of law....very cool stuff....
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