Law publication aggregators
Jinfo Blog

5th July 2009

By Diana Nutting

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This is a source of company information that I have never used before, but it does seem very useful. All law firms write client memoranda and articles for their client in house lawyers, which act as a source of know-how, and are often useful introductions to a topic. By making their knowledge as widely available as possible they raise their profile amongst potential and existing clients and have the opportunity to showcase their expertise. Information professionals can easily tap into this expertise. According to My Corporate Resource the top 100 American law firms produce more than 10,000 client alerts addressing the key commercial and legal issues faced by their clients, so the amount of potential information is huge. There are a number services that aggregate law firm publications, including My Corporate Resource (http://mycorporateresource.com), Lexology (http://www.lexology.com), Mondaq, (http://www.mondaq.com), and Linex Legal (http://www.linexlegal.com. These services allow the user, to search, for free, by firm, legal topic/sector, jurisdiction and keyword. My Corporate Research seems to be the most comprehensive at first site, but it does confine itself to USA law, while the others are more international. I particularly liked its “hot topics” section, which can be invaluable for current awareness services. My Corporate Researcher and Linex Legal link out to the source material as hosted in the individual law firms’ sites, rather than hosting copies of the material themselves, which is what happens with Lexology, and Mondaq. I would have assumed that these sites were mainly for legal researchers, but on looking more closely at them they seem extremely useful, especially as they are free to use, for market and company intelligence purposes also.

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