It’s been a long time coming, but Bloomberg is finally ready to unveil its new legal research tool. It will compete with Lexis and Westlaw for the hearts and minds of law students and junior associates across the land.

Bloomberg Law will have its launch party at the end of the month at the west side offices of Willkie Farr.

It is way too early to tell if Bloomberg Law will truly offer an innovation in case law research. But we already know the company has put a metric ton of money into the product.

And we know that they’ve been hiring former attorneys for at least two years. I found out about the Bloomberg Law project way back in early 2007, when I was freelancing and looking for work (I declined to follow up on the opportunity). More recently, if you know a New York attorney who was laid off at the end of 2008 who didn’t interview with Bloomberg, then you know a New York attorney that wasn’t really trying that hard to get a job.

Click here (PDF) to check out Bloomberg Law’s initial offerings.

We’ve learned how to Shepardize, we’ve learned how to KeyCite, will we all soon learn how to Citator?

Life happens fast. This morning we reported that Thomson Reuters had revoked free printer access to law schools in Puerto Rico.

It seems that the policy has now been reversed. A message from University of Puerto Rico law professor José Julián Álvarez González, after the jump.

Update (4:15): After this post went was published, Thomson Reuters reversed course and reinstated the free printer access to Puerto Rican law schools. Click here for our coverage.

Thomson Reuters owns Westlaw and is one of the two major gatekeepers to legal research in the modern world. Recently, the company made an economic decision that some claim unfairly impacts law students in Puerto Rico. A tipster reports:

It seems Westlaw has decided to cut their free printer service to the four Puerto Rico Law schools for economic reasons, while keeping the service in all US law schools.

Why would Westlaw only discontinue free printer access to Puerto Rican law students? One Westlaw user wrote to Thompson Reuters, asking the company to reconsider its decision. But he also seems to have figured out why Westlaw made this decision.

Here’s some news that will surely generate schadenfreude over at Westlaw. From The Hook:

Nearly 300 Lexis Nexis employees will soon be looking for work…. The layoffs, announced at a companywide meeting in Lexis’ Dayton headquarters [on Monday] afternoon, are bad news for Lexis’ Ohio staff, particularly those in data collection, conversion, editing, and business systems.

According to Lexis spokesperson Sue D’Agostino, 215 of approximately 3,000 positions will be cut or outsourced in Dayton over the next 10 months, with another 75 positions being cut from some of the company’s other locations- Albany, Colorado Springs, New Providence, Newark, San Francisco, and Charlottesville.

No word on whether Lexis will stop supplying law students with free highlighters and tote bags.

There were warning signs that layoffs might be in the works, as reported last month by The Hook:

At the [Charlottesville] Lexis operation, employees are “anxious,” say sources too fearful to use their names. They cite several new policies implemented since January as examples of ways the company may be trying to push them out: 120 editors were converted from salaried to hourly status in January, a move some fear could make it easier to fire them.

Also implemented in January: a system by which employee comings and goings are tracked. Anyone who arrives late, leaves early, or calls in sick without giving a full 24 hours notice is given a citation called an “occurrence.” According to sources, as few as seven such “occurrences” can result in termination.

Tracking the comings and goings of workers? No big deal. Some law firms do it, too.

In addition, many employees were suddenly forced to sign a release allowing the company to do credit and criminal background checks, something one employee believes might have been the company’s way of seeking to cut more positions without having to provide severance compensation.

And conveniently enough, they won’t run up thousands of dollars in charges to conduct these background checks — they’re Lexis.

A digression, to satisfy our idle curiosity:

Lexis lay-offs come true… in Dayton [The Hook]
Reed Elsevier cost cuts to claim 1,000 jobs [Telegraph]
Lexis reacts [The Hook]
‘Occurrence’ worries- Lexis lay-offs? [The Hook]