Today Thomson Reuters announced the availability of new API’s ( application program interfaces) that will allow customers to integrate content from Practical Law into their practice and workflow portals. Litigation analytics from Westlaw Edge will also be available for integration with internal data sets
Law firms are in a race to extract and analyze their own data and turbo charge it with litigation and deal data, Thomson Reuters move is addressing a growing demand from clients to leverage commercial data for custom insights.
“Our customers are continually seeking insights that will help them raise their service for their clients and operate more effectively and efficiently,” said Tony Kinnear, president of Thomson Reuters Legal Professionals. “Co-developing side by side with innovative customers to provide our editorially curated content through APIs allows us to deliver entirely new capabilities through a more open and collaborative approach.”
Katherine Lowry, Director of Practice Services at Baker Hostetler is quoted in the press release highlighting how the analytics will be used for projects initiated by the firm’s newly launched Digital Assets and Data Management Group.
Data Wants to be Free (Of Platforms) Historically legal information vendors have sold platforms not data. Newer competitors such as Fastcase have led the market in allowing customer to manipulate data with their Workbench and Sandbox offerings. Still it is a major market shift for a dominant player like Thomson Reuters to allow customer direct access to content which can be creatively re-purposed for insights and innovation initiatives. Now all law firms can move on to competing for data science recruits to analyze the data.
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