oh how i hate the New York Times with its elitist, pseudo-intellectual, east coast, left-wing writers. but hey — put enough of them behind keyboards and eventually one of them will push out Hamlet, or in this case a page-turner about some of my favorite subjects:
- entrepreneurs
- search
- money
this piece from the Old Gray Lady reads like the plot of a blockbuster straight-to-DVD movie: brash young entrepreneurs with a dream and Stanford MBA are whisked from parents’ garage to fabulous offices where they are busy creating the next big thing in … search? okay, so it’s not the Manhattan Project, but it leaves no doubt that better legal search looms around the corner and will not come from Westlaw or Lexis, who will try to stop it just as they have every other innovation that threatened their duopoly. but this time they won’t be able to. the parallels between the legal field and the dominance of Microsoft and Yahoo in the search space is undeniable. how will this all play out? consider this: it took a couple of dreamers to challenge Microsoft and become Google; now a new crop is nipping at Google’s heels to develop better search algorithms and one day become your virtual law librarian.
LPM RECOMMENDS: keep your eye on these contenders in the search space
powerset: natural language search
hakia: meaning-based search (lawyer friendly)
chacha: biggest research-powered search
snap: semantic search that learns from you
wikia: user-contributed content (wikis) plus searches
Going to a law school is a huge investment but worth your while.
pm blog 
The first big development is the creation of a
digital data base. Don’t think your office is
any different that most Law Firms today.
Which in effect is a reflection on the legal
system as a whole. {still paper based}
Lexis/Thomson has been very careful when it
comes to “access” of data. You must be a
subscribed user. That again only applies too
those that can “afford” it. Now if we bring into
play the other 70% of the legal sector that
currently is NOT part of this system those numbers
create opportunity. VCs and developers know
market share.
Subscription base model will stay standard, but
now we compete on PRICE over the SAME service
deeper pockets always prevail. This what tech
advancements is suppose to do. Allow you to
grow your business while lowering your operating
cost. This common thread of business is still
not seen in the Legal Sector, you have to buy
high at it stays there….
Some of you still pay $300+ a month in hosting
a web site. $3,600 a year? And your not buried
in clients?