ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD

what's the big deal? we've had bloomberg law at Columbia for the last two years

Metric tons of money? I get 50 bushels to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

bloomberg law is stil in its infancy, really. the best part about it is that it is extremely wall street/m&a focused, and can tie in news releases with companies with much more ease than westlaw or lexis.

"it's"? Seriously? In the lead sentence?

QR's an idiot.
http://www.convertunits.com/from/bushel/to/hogshead#

because everyone knows the conversion rates of bushels to hogsheads, at least if you're an aspie dweeb

QQ

This idea is stupid.
Mystal is a Walrus.
Lat is gay.

Did I miss anything?

OMG Elie, you almost considered interviewing there? I did interview there, but they passed on me. It would have been boss if we worked together, though. We could have talked about the Jets all day and we would have been BFF. That would have been awesome.

Weren't there rumors a while back that Bloomberg was shopping around for resumes (i.e., soliciting as many resumes as they could, interviewing scores of people, and then literally not hiring anyone)?

I got an email from a recruiter asking if I would be interested in interviewing there. I passed.

Striver Burgreen considers himself an expert bluebooker as well as a master legal researcher using Lexis AND Westlaw. He should have no trouble adjusting to Bloomberg Law.

More competition is good. The basic text of the cases should still be free from the Gov't. But I digress...

I keep seeing advertisements for the Legal Reform movement. Unless that particular movement involves blowing up the ABA, I'm not interested

I've been using this for a few years as part of the pilot program. The latest iteration is actually pretty useful, except for the biometric access restriction. The news search is much better than on Lexis in my opinion.

13,

but I demand massive fees to search through opinions and hyperlink each cite to the opinions it cites to!

Having seen this product up close and personal I can safely say that Lexis and Westlaw have absolutely nothing to worry about.

If you know how to properly craft a Westlaw search, there is nothing you cannot find using that service.

Double negative SECURE.

Bloomberg has been hiring. They hired tons of lawyers on a "temporary" basis, but it appears up to this point that they will be keeping all of them on full time. They treat these employees very well and have invested substantial sums into their training. At least that's the word...

What about Google Law?

CCH 4 Life.

Hofstra Law gang raped my ass.

3500 sq ft wife and a Lexis, bitches!

This sounds awesome! I waste so much time running around the library hunting down the reporters and then having to write down the KeyCite # and paging through the similar cases. Half the time I forget to check the supplement which means I have to go back to third floor.

No wonder that Bloomberg fellow is mayor of New York.

I worked on contract for Bloomberg Law just after the project got underway, doing legal writing of encyclopedia entries and current case summaries for about a year and a half. It was a God-send, because I had just been laid off from a large firm and was too senior to get anything at another firm quickly.

I worked from home and was paid around 80k/year, which gave breathing space for finding another full-time gig again. I really felt it was a good project and the people I worked for were uniformly pleasant and professional. I never felt like a scut-work contract attorney.

For what it's worth.

My friends in high school used Bloomberg Law all the time. It's not big deal.

6-It's a legal tabloid blog, not a law review article. Deal with it.

Needs more cowbell.

Yes! The Bloomberg interface brings me back to better days (the 1980s). Hopefully this is a good omen of things to come...

80s guy: can you confirm or deny that lawyers, as opposed to businessmen, are the kind of sheep that would trade high-volatility stock for a sandwich?

Damn how does that Lexis drive?

20: right on! One wonders when the search giant will put all these impostors out of business

I worked there for almost a year after getting laid off from my firm, and the whole place is a joke.

The attorneys running the projects don't really know what they're doing. The reason they seemed to be "collecting resumes" is that the managers would make decisions based on entirely arbitrary factors: this ran from the hiring process all the way up to big picture decisions on the project. So they would reject perfectly qualified people because the securities manager didn't have the brainpower to understand their qualifications.

Most of the attorneys working there are miserable - the hours are ridiculous and the demands of the airhead managers are utterly demoralizing. For what its worth, most of the attorneys that are still there are convinced that the project is going to fail.

The big value-add that they're counting on, "Points of Law," are nothing more than head notes. And where Westlaw and Lexis has 1,000s of clerks doing these for case law, BBerg had a couple dozen overworked contract attorneys and a bunch of outsourced work coming in from India. As such, most of the data that they analyzed was utter garbage. Up until last fall, they were trying to sell it on BBerg terminals for $2k/mo, and the project that they're trying to sell now is just to cover their asses and save face. It's a half-assed legal database with a couple of newsletters tacked on top. The rest of the case management crap that they're trying to shoehorn on top aren't ever going to be used in the real world because there's really no killer app there.

They'll sink more money in for another year or two, but in three years it'll be a memory.

28 - maybe not lawyers, but how about a certain kind of lobster? (maybe even a kind of lobster associated with a certain kind of ATL editor?)

love the 80s guy. hopefully he's taken care of that bone-itis.

I just saw a demo of their new transactional tool that looks great.

@31 (24 here). I did get a sense that those of us who were contracted from out of town (and had total hours flexibility so long as deadlines were met) were a lot happier than the folks who worked on-site and had to do face time hours. It really worked for me, but I didn't get to see what you saw.

Or maybe I was so grateful not to be unemployed that it all seemed better than it was ...

anyone know if they'll allow work from home positions like Lexis?

Repeat after me everybody: B Law. Blah blah blah.

#31 needs a nap; someone get his blankie & binkie

Bloomberg is going to fail miserably. At first, I thought they really had something for 2 reasons: (1) They had access to some things Lexis and Westlaw didn't, like free built-in Pacer access. (2) Their brilliant per-seat pricing model, which really sets them apart from the per-transaction or time models of Lexis and Westlaw.

Then I met their rep, who was very sweet but whose primary method of customer service was to harass you all the time about doing more training or your access would get cut off. That led to me seeing their interface, which seems to have been designed to mimic Bloomberg terminals in all their weirdness and idiosyncracies instead of being designed for, you know, userfriendliness.

But the #1 reason they'll fail? Because they're pissing off law schools. I went to a Top 10 school and was talking to the IT guys one day about something and they mentioned Bloomberg. They told me that Bloomberg was actually trying to get the school to pay for their academic accounts. Lexis doesn't do that. Westlaw doesn't do that. Bloomberg's just plain crazy if they think they can do it, and unless it's presented as an option to new law students alongside Lexis and Westlaw, they'll never hit critical mass.

I wasn't invited to the party!

My firm has been doing the beta of this, and I think it’s going to be some very healthy competition.

-- The real genius of the product is in the pricing. I can take as much time as I want and not worry about limiting my “transactions”, because it’s free for now and going to be a flat monthly fee. By contrast, westlaw and lexis charges add up at a frightful pace. --------- Similarly, the built in PACER engine means I may not have to pay to see a document at all but, if I do, I can just count on it to be there on Bloomberg for free if I ever want to see it again, instead of being sure to maintain a copy in my own files.
-- The citator is great. Putting context “on” lets you see pretty quickly whether the court is citing your case for something relevant, or for something else entirely. Very handy when later courts end up citing your case for points of law you don’t care about.
-- The docket search is a god-send. Last week, somebody in my practice group asked me to find a bunch of examples of a motion to dismiss in the northern district of Illinois, a jurisdiction I normally have nothing to do with. I had plenty of examples within twenty minutes.
-- The newsletter for my practice area is also wonderful, not sure if it’s equally good for other areas.
-- Their support line, at least for now, is very responsive. I usually get an email or callback within twenty minutes of asking a question.

The interface is a bit clunky-- among other issues, there’s no valid reason to use flash-- but between Bloomberg and loislaw, my usage of lexis and westlaw has trickled down to almost zero. Hopefully they’re smart enough to let law students play with it for free.

28 -

Gutsy question. There are two kinds of people in this world: sheep and sharks. In my day, BIGLAW lawyers were most definitely sharks; in this pathetic decade, however, most young attorneys are sheepish beyond belief.

Sharks are winners, and they don't look back because they have no necks. Necks are for sheep.

I agree with 41. I have used the Bloomberg law product as a pilot user and I find it to be an excellent research tool. I don't have to worry about how much time I spend on Lexis/Westlaw. I can print for free. Retrieve dockets at little to no cost and the interface is much sleeker than any of their competitors. I think this is a home run for them.

Think about it. They are competing with two of the big boys and they comeout with a product that IMHO has the potential to be better than theirs.

I wish them luck and success. Besides competition is always better for the consumer.

I agree with 41. I have used the Bloomberg law product as a pilot user and I find it to be an excellent research tool. I don't have to worry about how much time I spend on Lexis/Westlaw. I can print for free. Retrieve dockets at little to no cost and the interface is much sleeker than any of their competitors. I think this is a home run for them.

Think about it. They are competing with two of the big boys and they comeout with a product that IMHO has the potential to be better than theirs.

I wish them luck and success. Besides competition is always better for the consumer.

Who actually worries about pricing for their searches at a Biglaw firm?

45, I hope you're kidding. Especially ITE, biglaw is doing everything possible to keep the bill down. If you're not doing the same, you're not doing your bit to help the firm retain business and may drive yourself out of a job. I always craft my research strategy to keep the cost down-- that means, among other things, that LexisNexis and Westlaw are absolute last resorts and services like Loislaw and Bloomberg come first. Heck, if I want to see a federal circuit opinion, I'll usually just google the citation-- openjurist or similar will usually have it up for free.

This is going to really challenge both Lexis and WestLaw. I've been using it for sometime now and it's a great system with a much better interface. The customer service puts the others to shame, and their Help Desk is first class.

The best thing about it is integration - news, financial, legal and it's all there. They have great primary content, their Law Reports are fantastic and I urge you to try out BCITE - their Citator. Far better than Lexis and their EcoSearch of searching across cited and citing cases in an opinion is a killer product.

This product is on the right track and in the months to come it will be giving everyone out there a serious run for their money.

(45) I do transactional and haven't touched lexis or westlaw in 6 years, but last I checked, my firm had flat fee pricing. Thought that was the norm.

I see the Bloomberg PR folks caught wind of this thread.

I was one of the temp monkeys working on pulling out the cites. They gave zero direction on what they wanted so the product is going to be horribly inconsistent. They seemed to be entirely motivated by numbers and speed, not what the quality was.

@38 - Maybe if you got T.P.ed, you'd have something less juvenile to say.

Here's a challenge to the "epic fail" crowd: compare. That's it, nothing more; just compare.

If you compare and then can honestly say that Westlaw and/or Lexis come close to the Docket feature of Bloomberg Law, then you will have added something of use the conversation.

If you compare and can honestly say that Bloomberg Law's ability to provide DE Chancery Court Dockets for LESS than Lexis does not make it stand out from the rest, then you will have added something of use to the conversation.

If you compare and can honestly say that Bloomberg Law's "One Product One Price" pricing policy is not light years ahead of the others in so far as ... as another poster pointed out ... trying to reign in costs during these economic times, then you will added something of value to the conversation.

However, until then, the negativity has (coincidentally?) come across as sour grapes from former temps or interviewees.

As this thread stands so far, the only argument of any remote substance is whether Bloomberg Law be free to law schools. As for the rest ...

@31 is correct. I've worked on the product, although I did so onsite. After I was done, I spoke with someone that did quality control said that much of the work done by the temps was crap.

As for working there, the pay for the level of stress was decent, and the HR girl on site had a fantastic ass!

#39 Schools are charged for Westlaw and Lexis contracts. In fact, it is a huge part of their budgets and some schools are considering dropping one or the other.

I hope to be able to see the product without having extremely pushy salescreatures getting involved. Rude, pushy, and condescending on a good day.

I also hope they abandoned chat support that takes twenty minutes to respond.

#40 Schools do pay for lexis and westlaw. The libs. have contracts with each....and they cost a lot of $. Though lesxis and west law DO offer their services free to the students....

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

I have to say, if they do what they say they are going to do....Bloomberg will take over the Law World.
Their concept is revolutionary to the legal community (which is slow to change to say the least),
I have worked on it now for several weeks and altho
they are NOT there yet and there are some buggie items (slow, only NY state law analysis.....)
the look, feel, concept is unbelievable. This will change the way the legal community thinks and acts.
Great, Lexus and West need to get with the program.

Does the service provide access to treatises, etc? E.g. for tax, Ginsburg, McKee, BNAs?

Does the service provide access to treatises, etc? E.g. for tax, Ginsburg, McKee, BNAs?

Does the service provide access to treatises, etc? E.g. for tax, Ginsburg, McKee, BNAs?