Jean O’Grady at Dewey B reports
Today Fastcase and Matterhorn Transactions are announcing an alliance that will make M&A deal data and analytics available in Fastcase’s legal news platform. Law Street Media. The deal terms and data will be added to its existing litigation-focused coverage of technology, agriculture, and health law.
According to the press release: “Matterhorn proprietary data analysis provides legal professionals with unparalleled capabilities to search for and compare the market terms of mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and other transactions. The company provides transactional attorneys both consolidated information on market terms as well as detailed legal language used for specific deal provisions, based on underlying legal agreements and financial disclosures. Matterhorn enables its clients to know precisely the frequency, form, and language of transaction terms and provisions by tying each deal term to the actual documentation.”
It is axiomatic that lawyers and law firms are hungry for data and analysis- so this is a smart alliance. I am not personally familiar with the Matterhorn product. But the description above sounds similar to the content available in Lexis Intelligize, Thomson Reuters “Westlaw Business” (formerly GSI) and Bloomberg Law. I have no doubt some brilliant research librarian will undertake an analysis of each platform to tease apart the unique and common content and features across these platforms.
The integration of analytics with news has been a growing trend for the past two years. In addition to Fastcase— American Lawyer Media, Lexis Law360 and Bloomberg have all been pushing data into their news offerings.
Growth without Greed I am an agnostic on how these products compare at this point. Everyone is welcome to the join the analytics party – legal consumers win as the quality and scope of products expand. But I do have to cheer for the addition of sophisticated M&A data to products available through Fastcase – which has taken a unique “growth without greed” approach to transforming the legal research market.
“For years, we’ve worked with Docket Alarm as an unparalleled and timely source of litigation news, with free links to source dockets,” said Law Street Media Editor-in-Chief David Nayer. “In the same way, Matterhorn will serve as a must-have news source within Law Street Media for transactional lawyers, with free access to the underlying deal documents. Law Street Media already tracks litigation and analytics, and now we’ll have the ability to provide news to transactional attorneys in a whole new way,” he added. Each week, Matterhorn CEO Logan Beirne will provide expert insights and with the support of the Law Street Media reporters, highlight the deal and terms that stand out within the transaction. NOTE: If you are a history nerd like me take a look at Logan Beirne’s Wikipedia page –more books to add to my reading list.
“We are thrilled to be working with Fastcase’s innovative team and the more than 1.1 million lawyers they serve,” said Beirne. “Fastcase has revolutionized the legal publishing market by democratizing the law, providing access and analytics, and we are proud to add Matterhorn’s extensive deal databases to advance their work.”
Free Subscriptions to Law Street Media: Readers can look forward to multiple news stories covering the latest high-dollar transactions each week. The new articles will be available on Law Street’s website as well as via newsletter. To receive notification of Beirne’s articles or for free subscription to any of Law Street Media’s newsletters, sign up at https://lawstreetmedia.com/ls-subscribe-basic-1