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?

Last week, we reported on a questionable offering in the Lexis-Nexis Rewards Program store: an “Asian Angels” calendar.

Shortly after our post went up, the calendar came down. It seems that legal research companies respond well to media coverage.

But the calendar, despite being quickly withdrawn from the Lexis swag offerings, still incurred the ire of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at UC Berkeley.

Read their response, plus a statement from Lexis, below.

LexisNexis has a rewards program that allows loyal users to accumulate points for certain research activities and then to use them to “shop from millions of items.”

One of the items makes us want to give LexisNexis an “ex” rating. An ATL reader and loyal Lexis-Nexis user pointed the item out to us, writing:

Search for it in the rewards store. It’s available for 1261 points. Pretty shocking if you ask me. The calendar that is, not the price.

We’re red-flagging this. Check it out, after the jump.

Lexis employees who Shepardize “Lexis salaries” may now find a red stop sign attached to their search results. Last Tuesday, the powers that be at Lexis sent around a company-wide email announcing that 2009 salaries would be frozen at 2008 levels for all employees:

In order to address what is shaping up to be a more challenging 2009, the senior LexisNexis management team, which includes the leaders of all business and functional units, has had to make some difficult decisions. These decisions include freezing salaries at 2008 levels across all of LexisNexis Group…Except for a promotion or when an increase is required by local law, no one in LexisNexis Group will receive an increase in 2009.

Salary freezes these day are as common as HPV, but a tipster reports that Lexis’ freeze is actually surprising given an earlier announcement:

This is after they announced on a company-wide call in December that there would be a 2% pool for raises.

What’s Locke Lord Bisell got to do with it, after the jump.

As firms deal with the difficult economic environment, they’re looking for ways to cut back on costs (that don’t involve firing their associates). Kirkland got rid of the granola. K&L Gates went to one-ply toilet paper. A LittleLaw firm in Minnesota said goodbye to Kleenex.

We don’t know the status of the paper goods or bagels at Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, but we do know the firm is cutting back on its legal research costs. A Locke Lord associate tells us the firm is embracing Loislaw for non-billable legal research:

Thanks to the faltering economy, we are now required to use Loislaw instead of Lexis or Westlaw for certain things.

Unlike its more expensive counterparts, Loislaw has one “low, all-inclusive flat rate, with no hidden charges for printing, copying, downloading, or hyperlinking to primary law or analytic materials outside the scope of a current subscription.” Loislaw will now be Locke Lord’s destination for primary legal research. To travel on to Westlaw or Lexis, a client has to be footing the bill. From the firm memo announcing the new policy:

* All non-billable legal research involving case law, statutes or regulations at both the state and federal level should first be performed using Loislaw. * Loislaw should also be used for billable research where appropriate, resulting in a much lower cost to the client. * If additional research is required on Lexis or Westlaw that research must be billed to a client/matter.

Full memo from Locke Lord on the switch to one-ply legal research, after the jump.

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]