We have reported on this a little while back but this is a nice piece via CBA / ABC National..
Over the last decade, the two main players in this space in Canada, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters, have done just that, and more, by betting on technology to support lawyers in firms and law departments in applying their legal knowledge.
Now, a new competitor hopes to shake-up the space. Earlier this month, Compass, the new Canadian legal research platform — and new incarnation — of Maritime Law Book, announced that vLex, a Barcelona and Miami-based legal publisher, and California-based Justia were taking a stake in the company.
Compass CEO Colin Lachance, who until 2015 headed CanLII, says he’s confident there is room in the Canadian marketplace for the emergence of a new player. “Until now, the prospect of a third competitor in Canada was inconceivable to most practitioners — and to the big two,” he told CBA National. “Our mere presence will drive a competitive reaction that should loosen restrictions and lower prices.”
Lachance says that the partnership with vLex and Justia will provide a foundation for Compass to disrupt a market where innovative start-ups tend to gravitate into the orbits of “the current duopoly” before getting snapped up and absorbed. He calls the need for strong and innovative commercial competition to LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters “pressing.”
“We seek to be a door through which lawyers can access content and services from multiple independent suppliers of legal texts, tech and business services,” he says. “The API and planned collaboration with independent providers and self-publishing firms and institutions creates a truly unique opportunity for users to integrate knowledge resources from multiple places.”
Compass has plans to offer three different platforms: one that grants a free tier of access to Canadian primary law; a professional grade suite of tools and services for lawyers and law librarians; and a global platform that can reach into case law, legislation and secondary materials from over 100 countries.
http://nationalmagazine.ca/Articles/May-2017/A-new-player-in-Canada-s-legal-information-market.aspx
To remind you – this is what Compass do
Maritime Law Book (9766758 Canada Inc. operating as Maritime Law Book) is an independent, Canadian-owned and operated publisher of primary law. It receives decisions from Canadian courts and provides online research and integration tools to facilitate access to that content. In 2017, MLB will expand its primary law content to include decisions of Canadian tribunals as well as Canadian statutes and regulations.
HistoryFounded in 1969 by Eric Appleby as Maritime Law Book Ltd., the company launched as an independent regional case law reporter. Over time, MLB added regional reporters in all provinces outside Quebec; it created important national reporter series; and it developed a unique and much-loved topical Key Number System covering all the content in its collection.
With many jurisdictions lacking official case law reporters, the following MLB collections were often treated, and occasionally explicitly designated, as “semi-official” reports. Reproductions of and citations to the MLB collections have been accepted by courts across the country, in most cases since the inception of each report series.
- Alberta Reports, started 1976
- British Columbia Appeal Cases, started 1991
- British Columbia Trial Cases, started 1999
- Federal Trial Reports, started 1986
- Manitoba Reports (2d), started 1979
- New Brunswick Reports (2d), started 1968
- Newfoundland & Prince Edward Island Reports, started 1970
- National Reporter, started 1973
- Nova Scotia Reports (2d), started 1969
- Ontario Appeal Cases, started 1984
- Ontario Trial Cases, started 1996
- Saskatchewan Reports, started 1979
The MLB Key Number System applied Topic and sub-topic numbers to each case in the collection (e.g., Administrative Law with sub-topics specific to Natural Justice). This permitted topical Key Number-based searching within print and electronic collections.
No less creative on the digital side, MLB was the first to include digital diskettes of its reported case law in the cover of its print reporters; it was the first to transition to the world wide web as its digital platform; and it was the first commercial provider to make a substantial body of unedited case law available online at no charge through its Raw Law service.
Present, Scope of Databases at 2016 and Future PlansOperating under new ownership since November 1, 2016, Maritime Law Book is set to once again lead a revolution in case law access and legal research. It re-launched in December 2016 with a world-class legal information processing engine that leverages cutting edge natural language process technology to make research easier and more efficient.
Reflecting the changing expectations of users, one where researchers prioritize comprehensiveness over searching a curated collection built on an editor’s determination of cases deemed authoritative, Maritime Law Book has discontinued its case law reporters and will concurrently seek to dramatically expand the depth and breadth of its case law databases.
As of November 2016, the collection contained over 350,000 cases from all Canadian jurisdictions except Quebec.
As of November 2016, court coverage includes all provincial, superior, territorial and appellate courts with the exception of the B.C. Provincial Court and the Ontario Court of Justice (current and historical collections of both will be added in 2017).
As of November 2016, the collection also includes over 1,000 leading House of Lords, Supreme Court, and Privy Council cases from the United Kingdom.
In respect of Canadian English-language case coverage, we anticipate achieving parity with other common online databases. We note that for the courts we covered prior to 2017, we are already above 90% of parity with CanLII.
For new additions, we are discontinuing MLB proprietary citations in favour of adopting the neutral citation assigned by the court and identifying parallel citations as well where available. Where historical case law is added, only neutral and parallel citations will be provided where available. As the primarily utility of a citation is to provide a path to finding the referenced case, there is little value in carrying on the practice of developing proprietary citation in a world where online databases prevail and where the databases of each provider will eventually contain all the same cases.
Maritime Law Book believes that the value of a research platform should be measured by the ease with which it gets the user to the information they need. To that end, our future-focused approach is to develop a comprehensive collection of primary law that serves as a foundational element to all manner of legal research. Accordingly, beyond our work in serving users directly, through things like legal analytics, extensive metadata tagging and the creation of points of network and content interconnection, we are committed to working with and supporting players and innovators across public sector, public interest, and legal publishing and technology domains to integrate current and historical case law into the tools and services they create.
