“The Vanishing Middle”

The March 29th post on Bruce McEwen’s BLOG – Adam Smith, Esq. – is called “The Vanishing Middle” – and is based on a McKinsey analysis that “both premium and no-frills products grow at the expense of middle-of-the-road offerings”.

How does one apply this analysis to Canadian legal research? Presumably, the on-line legal research services and other more traditional research tools available to us are “premium”. But are we researchers requiring “premium” tools so that we in turn can provide “premium” research to our clients?

If we are seeing a consolidation of clients in Canada (through never-ending mergers and acquisitions) are there fewer and fewer large clients who are prepared to pay for “premium” research? Are we instead using premium tools to produce “no-frills” research?