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When the news broke a few days ago that ALM, formerly American Lawyer Media, was going to put up for sale, reaction from legal information professionals seemed subdued at best.  Yet we cannot help but wonder what this means for an industry that is still struggling to find its footing in the wake of one of the worst global economic downturns we have seen in recent generations.  Has the independent legal news and analysis been the biggest victim of the ongoing recession?
Continue Reading Et tu, ALM? Another Provider Up for Sale.

iPhoneJD

Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. comments on Law Firm Mobile’s recent study showing only 42.5% of AmLaw 200 firms have mobile sites–this, after the ABA’s 2013 Legal Tech survey stated 90% of attorneys use smartphones. Global 100 firms fare even worse: only 39 Global 100 firms have mobile sites. This is perplexing data–the legal industry is characterized by its competitiveness, why are so many firms choosing to willfully disadvantage themselves by not having a mobile site?Continue Reading Majority of AmLaw 200 Firms Do Not Have Mobile Sites

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As law librarians, I’m sure most of us have a FOIA request horror story or two (hundred): requests that took months to fill, required numerous follow-ups, or were never fulfilled at all. Unfortunately, our FOIA experiences are not out-of-the-ordinary. According to a recent study most government agencies are doing a poor job of handling FOIA requests. The Center for Effective Government, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the transparency of government, recently compiled the results of a study they conducted to measure how quickly and accurately 15 government agencies responded to FOIA requests. The agencies’ performance was assessed under three criteria: processing requests for information, establishing rules for information access, and creating user-friendly access. Seven of the 15 agencies received failing grades:Continue Reading FOIA Futility

BostonPublicLibrary

Appearing March 7th in The New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye’s article “Breaking Out of the Library Mold, in Boston and Beyond” (available here) examines how renovations of large, public libraries exemplify how the roles of public libraries and public librarians have drastically changed. Public libraries are moving far away from being dusty book repositories, and toward being airy, open social centers designed with the omnipresence of electronic devices in mind. And, as this role-shifting and repurposing has occurred, public library usage is spiking upward across the county; Boston’s central library alone saw an increase of nearly 500,000 physical visits in 2013.Continue Reading How Are Public Libraries Changing?

In a surprise move that will empower bloggers, Getty Images has made over 35 million of their archived photo images freely available for non-commercial, online use.  The Getty archives contain some of the most notable photographs ever taken.  From the whimsical image of Albert Einstein sticking out his toungue for the photgrapher to the heart-wrenching smoke trails that remained in the sky following the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, Getty Images has opened a vast collection of poignant and intriguing snapshots the capture the best and the worst of the human experience.
Continue Reading Imagine that! Getty makes millions of photos freely available

AALL announced details on its plans to produce a ROI study about law librarians and law libraries (press release available here). AALL announced late last week their selection of HBR Consulting to conduct the study. The results of this study will provide empirical data concerning the value of law librarians, which will be a boon to law firm administrators especially in regards to their budgetary assessments of library staffing.
Continue Reading How Impactful Could AALL’s ROI Study Be?

If you have ever pulled a federal court document, then you are familiar with Pacer. Pacer’s critics are many and prone to point out the software’s numerable flaws including its arcane UI and user costs. Luckily, we are riding a wave of programmers and entrepreneurs who have been willing to improve upon this outdated interface (see my previous write-up of DkT). The latest is the impressive Pacer Pro, which, as Robert Ambrogi writes in his excellent review of Pacer Pro in the March 2014 issue of ABAJournal (available here) “provides universal search[ing], more robust search tools, more informative search results, and better ways to manage documents and downloads”. He’s right, this is a vast improvement on the Pacer UI–and it’s free! Here are some of the really good things Pacer Pro does:
Continue Reading Pacer Pro is Pacer Improved

When the Software & Information Industry Association named the winners of its 2014 CODiE Awards on 30 January, patent powerhouse Innography walked away with two of the coveted trophies.

Named both Best Legal Information Solution and Best Service Using Aggregated Content, the seven-year-old company found its flagship product a finalist in three CODiE categories.
Continue Reading iBraryGuy Talks More about Innography on FreePint Blog