Purchasing Preferences & Needs - Views from UK Top 200 Legal Firms
Jinfo Blog

By Catherine Dhanjal

Abstract

Legal firms invest considerable sums in purchasing high quality content. We ask Robin Neidorf, FreePint's director of research, why organisations should read FreePint's 2015 research into purchasing preferences and needs from our survey of the top 200 law firms.

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As part of our programme of original research, FreePint has carried out research into purchasing trends and preferences in the legal market in the United Kingdom. The first iteration of this research was in 2010, and the most recent has just been published (subscriber content).

FreePint's director of research, Robin Neidorf, explains, "Our research combines closed questions requiring ratings for easy comparison between products or between years with free-form comments from respondents which add a rich layer of context to the research." 

Top 200 UK Firms

We surveyed senior information professionals from top 200 firms who told us about their use of the four main products in the market - Westlaw UK and Practical Law from Thomson Reuters, and LexisLibrary and Lexis PSL from LexisNexis - and how they rate them in terms of content quality, coverage, technology and ease of use, as well as ROI.

We also asked about supplemental products for current awareness, for example. Core question areas also covered overall influences and variables in making purchasing decisions.

Discovery Systems and Digital Content

This year we also asked new questions around organisational structure and support for purchasing, around technology relating to licensed content (such as content management or discovery systems), as well as asking about preferences around content format and the shift of budget to digital formats.

The results make interesting reading for those information professionals, managing partners, practice area heads and other influencers and budget holders in firms which purchase legal sources and databases. Information managers are always interested in the responses about budget levels and increases or decreases in budgets for information sources.  

Robin concludes, "Anyone who specifies or has responsibility for content budgets in law firms will want to read the research as an essential part of their benchmarking and pre-purchase research."

FreePint Subscribers can log in now to read the FreePint Report: Research on UK Legal Purchasing Preferences and Needs 2015.

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