Here at HOB we have to laugh when we see senior individuals at Lexis Nexis waxing lyrical on all things new and technology...
Of course everything has changed at LN and they've had a year zero moment....but we remember a company who couldn't see the point of turning looseleaf product into databases -- at least in Australia and we think you'll find the attitude was the same in the UK.
We also remember a company who wouldn't / didn't want to put their reporting series onto CD for fear of losing revenue... so when we see a report like this on US Public Radio.org (NPR) where Michael Walsh the CEO for Lexis Nexis US legal markets suddenly becoming the experts on new technology we do tend to plant our tongue firmly in our cheek.
He says ...
“You can have Gen Y-ers who are busy looking at their BlackBerrys. They’ve got their laptops flipped open, they’re engaging in social networking right during the course of a meeting, and you have a boomer rolling their eyes, not understanding it. Two-thirds of boomers that were surveyed indicated that they felt that use of devices, technology — such as e-mail, social networking, the Internet, etc. — contributed to a decline in office etiquette.”
Read the full report at http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/scratchpad/2009/06/t-t-talking_about_my_generatio.html
Yes.. we know we should be glad that LN have cottoned on to social networking as a business tool .. but we do wonder how much is talk and how much is action that's useful for clients. We've said this before .. in terms of legal we reckon that the switched on company is Kluwer and in terms of law KLI & CCH. They are really experimenting with new ideas and seeing what clients need.. yes we see that Lexis do Twitter but to be honest as a non paying client we haven't seen that much that is useful from them.
HOB knows that LN management will now recognize the names Google, Facebook, Linked In & Twitter.. But what about the next generation of tools and products that could be applicable to the legal market ?
