At lunch today, I got a look at the Westbusinesslaw.com platform which offers a sophisticated set of templates to get at corporate documentation, both Edgar and Sedar filings, but also a massive storehouse of global corporate documentation, precedents and models. It got me thinking about the power of an installed base. West had started moving from the purely legal market and document databases into financial information back in the Eighties. That trend accelerated after the Thomson acquisition and in turn the merger with Reuters.

But of course, there were installed bases on the finance side: Dow Jones, of course, which was then eclipsed by Bloomberg. Bloomberg sells financial data, news and analytics to 300,000 Wall Street professionals for about $20,000 a year per user. Anyone who has spent time on trading floors knows the ubiquitous Bloomberg terminals – lawyers see them as a throwback to proprietary hardware.

At Slaw, we haven’t really focused on Bloomberg’s entry into the legal market with Bloomberg Law. Given West’s century long lead in the legal information sphere, can Bloomberg Law catch up? It would be realistic to expect that Bloomberg's new legal product could at best hope for a relatively small share of the legal information market within this decade. Much will depend on how rich the product is and how it integrates with its assets in financial and corporate information, with a formidable real time news capacity and where it has a clear advantage over our friends in Eagan and Dayton. the initial iterations of the product to gain a foothold within the legal market. Bloomberg isn’t looking for the average practitioner. But focus on Intellectual Property, M & A, Bankruptcy, and Securities where disbursement pricing isn’t as sensitive, that’s a real market. Expect the white shoe firms to mine the service for business development.

It describes itself thus:

Bloomberg Law is the first real-time legal research system that integrates innovative search technology, comprehensive legal content, company and client information, and proprietary news all in one place. It’s an innovative set of tools that provides the practice-specific information you need, tailored to the way you work. Bloomberg law provides an edge that helps you counsel your clients more effectively, and grow your practice.

Here is the space they're fighting over:

Back in 2004, Bloomberg launched a legal service which require lawyers to face the expense of installing dedicated terminals – the legal profession yawned. The new service is a web-based solution which seems to be closer to giving WestLaw and Lexis/Nexis a run for their money. Bloomberg has included a ton of links to relevant content, persuaded firms to yield up legal opinions and writing their own legal digests in various topic areas. The software combines search, docketing, case citation, news, the features that brokers rely on their Bloomberg terminals for. It’s got a long way to go before the folks in Eagan will lose sleep, especially since the image above suggests that their dominance is increasing.

The WSJ blog offers a concrete example of how Bloomberg may offer something different:

For example, if company X sues company Y for copyright infringement, lawyers representing company X can get more than a copy of the complaint and relevant legal history. They get stock charts, patent histories and corporate filings. In addition, the name of every judge and attorney links to a database that pulls up that person’s school, his or her holdings and boards they served on potential conflicts and case histories.

The one thing that Bloomberg may shake up is the somewhat complacent approach of the two established players to pricing. Lawyers and librarians complain incessantly about the prices charged, but the substantive complaints are relatively rare – they like the product but find it expensive, especially as the free services improve in quality. Bloomberg Law offers a simpler flat rate pricing model: $450 per lawyer per month, for unlimited use. None of the frustrations of peak fees, printing fees and hefty access charges.

The WSJ concludes:

Neither the Westies nor the folks at LexisNexis are known for backing away from a challenge. And they don’t seem inclined to back down now. Clemens Ceipek, who runs new-product development for LexisNexis, says that as cases and statutes become easier for attorneys to find free online, it’s the manpower to make sense of material that increasingly differentiates the leaders.

“That takes a long time to build,” Mr. Ceipek said of the analytical materials that firms like LexisNexis have either bought or developed over the years. “It’s very difficult to catch up.”

For the record, here is what there is:

* Bloomberg Law Dealmaker – a single destination with the vital resources every transactional attorney needs. It consolidates deal news, expert commentary, practice notes, legal treatises, deal timelines and checklists, and a powerful proprietary search system that helps you quickly find precedent documents.
* Bloomberg Law Alerts Manager designed to help you set and organize news, dockets, opinion, and legislative alerts, making it easy for you to stay on top of critical developments that affect you and your clients.
* Bloomberg Law Reports® written and edited by Bloomberg’s professional legal analysts providing concise assessments of recent judicial opinions and legislative and regulatory actions including feature articles that are contributed by leading law firm partners, in-house counsel, and law professors.
* Bloomberg Law Legislative and Regulatory Watch – provides custom search, alerts, analysis and current awareness for regulatory and legislative matters, all in one place.
* The Bloomberg Law Digest, with a topical index
* Bloomberg BCite, a citator with case extracts and citation composites
* Bloomberg Points of Law, with unique legal principles extracted by in-house legal experts
* A powerful docket search, with both keyword and fielded search capabilities, across all federal courts, many U.S. State and international courts and breaking complaints.
* An unlimited research trail so you can always recreate a search or relocate a document no matter when it was last accessed.
* Seamless integration of legal resources with Bloomberg’s world-class, real-time news and company information
* Unlimited access to Bloomberg databases with a single search feature
* Collaborative online workspaces where you can save and share your research
* A customizable interface that can be tailored to your specific practice and role
* 24/7 Help Desk – Bloomberg Law’s help desk combines the knowledge of skilled legal, business, research, and technology experts to answer all of your Bloomberg Law questions.