2008

In the The end of the story – as we know it in Guardian Media Jeff Jarvis republishes the argument in his earlier blog post that The building block of journalism is no longer the article.

Single posts, videos, Wikipedia entries or search results may be new building blocks of media, but we need order atop them. … We have many tools to work with now, first and foremost the link. … Still, we need magnetic poles to gather news around and organise it. If not the article or brand or the happy coincidence of links, then what? I think that the new unit of journalism needs to be the topic. …

I want a page, a site, a something that is created, curated, edited and discussed. It will include articles. But it’s also a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides curated and annotated links to experts, coverage from elsewhere, a mix of opinion and source material. Finally, it’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but tries to add value. It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organised.

Sounds to me like he’s calling for the application of skills that have been rather dismissed in the deluge of news and blogs that has so unsettled news publishers and journalists and the clever algorithms that automatically calculate relevance. Those who “create, curate and edit” something more substantial, cohesive and longer-lasting than a collection of relevant news stories are known as editors and publishers. There is immense value in the (human) evaluation, ordering, categorisation and improvement of “content” (formerly known as “publishing”) and only now that the web is seen as too messy are the Jeff Jarvises realising that. Google realises it too.

I’ve been asked – and I ask you as I have some difficulty with the question: What are law firms’ needs when it comes to legal publishing? And to what extent are those needs being met by the legal publishing companies?

My difficulties with the question are twofold. Firstly, who and what are “legal publishing companies”? 15 years ago this was an easy one to answer, but now they range from the two giants to the smallest new web startup. We would automatically class LexisNexis and Thomson/Westlaw as “legal publishing” companies, but they are are more than that, with diverse portfolios of products for the legal profession; and at the other end of the scale, is every small player with a useful law-related web service a “legal publisher”?

My second problem is that law firms’ needs range from the requirements of the top 100 who largely dictate the strategic direction of the big two publishers, through to those of the sole practitioner who increasingly rely on free and low cost web services.

So I rather think I will have to limit myself to trying to answer the question, are your legal information needs being met? and to posing some more specific questions: Are you getting the legal information you need the way you want it and at an affordable price? Where are the (larger/trad) legal information publishers going wrong? What type of (smaller/new) services do you find more relevant to your needs? To what extent do you now rely on free legal information?

Answers please!