Did Lexis Nexis Just 'Bing' Westlaw?

It’s almost as if Westlaw (Thomson Reuters) had a crystal ball before this year’s LegalTech. From the get-go, they brought out the razzle dazzle in announcing their new WestlawNext. Before you could even enter the exhibit hall, they had music, giant television screens, and people running around with MacBook Airs showing off their new product. Hello smoke, meet mirrors.
However, all the fanfare failed to temper LexisNexis’s big announcement: a legal research partnership with Microsoft. From the ABA Journal

The competition for your legal research dollars just got a little more intense today as LexisNexis unveiled at LegalTech in New York its newest offering: a partnership with Microsoft.
Lexis will now be integrated into Microsoft Office products, allowing users to do legal and general research directly while working in Microsoft Word, Outlook and SharePoint. Users, who must have a Lexis subscription, need only click on a Lexis tab in the ribbon of utilities available in Microsoft Office 2007 and the forthcoming 2010 version to start researching, Shepardizing cases or even gathering information from Bing or Google search engines. There is no need to navigate separately to the Web and log on to Lexis or a search engine.

So the salvos here at LegalTech have been launched. Will Westlaw have to “Google-ize” themselves as well, or (dare I say) “Twitterize”? Let’s not forget about Bloomberg’s entry into the fray with BLAW. Who knows, maybe they will attempt legal research on Foursquare. Kidding, kidding.
One thing is for certain, the battle continues…

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