In its first year, more than 15,000 firms and law departments upgrade to WestlawNext - including 33 percent of Am Law 100 firms

EAGAN, Minn., Jan. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, announced today the rapid adoption of its next-generation legal research system, WestlawNext™ (http://www.westlawnext.com). In the year since its launch on Feb. 8, 2010, over 15,000 law firms; corporate law departments; and law departments in federal, state and local government organizations have upgraded to WestlawNext, including 33 percent of Am Law 100 law firms.

"Given our extensive research and development in this platform, as well as our passionate focus on our customers' research workflow, we were confident WestlawNext would be popular with practicing attorneys and librarians," said Andy Martens, senior vice president of New Product Development, Thomson Reuters, Legal. "But frankly, the pace at which the market has adopted WestlawNext has exceeded all of our expectations. We're seeing more than 1,000 new law firms, as well as over 100 new corporate law departments, upgrade each month."

The Knowledge Effect

The new search algorithms in WestlawNext leverage over 100 years of extensive editorial enhancements to the law created by Thomson Reuters, Legal attorney editors, and the algorithms emulate the best practices of legal researchers to deliver in minutes what used to take hours. New workflow features for organizing and collaborating on research drive efficiencies even further. Thomson Reuters calls this unique focus and success at putting the right information in its customers' hands to deliver competitive advantage The Knowledge Effect. "I would challenge anybody to say research could be done faster without using WestlawNext. I don't think it's possible," said Susan Clary, partner at the law firm of Hennelly & Grossfeld in Los Angeles.

"At Reed Smith, we differentiate ourselves with an uncommon commitment to high-quality service and an authentic development of long-term client relationships," said Tom Baldwin, chief knowledge officer for Reed Smith.  "With WestlawNext, we believe we'll be able to respond to clients even faster and even more cost-effectively."

The efficiency benefits of WestlawNext are particularly attractive to corporate law departments. In less than a year since launch, over 1,400 corporate law departments have upgraded to WestlawNext, including those from 20 percent of Fortune 100 companies. "WestlawNext is very efficient and very accurate," said Joe Reinhardt, senior vice president, chief claims counsel for Fidelity National Financial, the nation's largest title insurance company. "WestlawNext has allowed us to bring more matters in-house, which is a savings to the company. And when our outside counsel use WestlawNext, we can trust that we're going to get the right answer at the lowest possible cost."

WestlawNext enables firms to differentiate themselves with modern technology and keep pace with the evolving expectations of clients. "We have been rigorously evaluating WestlawNext and have been impressed with it," said Jean O'Grady, director of Library Services at DLA Piper. "We're getting ready to roll it out to all of our attorneys over the next few weeks. We're always looking for ways to deliver better value to clients."

"The attorneys in our evaluation group really liked it," said Sheila Sterling, Orrick's Research & Information Resources executive. "Finding ways to help the firm deliver the right answer to clients faster has always been part of our department's core mission."

In addition to rapid commercial adoption, WestlawNext is available in 97 percent of ABA-accredited law schools. "We've been extremely impressed with the speed and accuracy of WestlawNext," said Paul Lomio, library director, Stanford University Law School. "It offers an entirely new approach to legal research. I believe the big advantage of WestlawNext is that it allows our law students to spend less time finding the law, and more time focusing on what really matters – analyzing the information that they've found in the context of developing their thinking as attorneys."

Since its launch, WestlawNext has continued to improve with regular product updates. "We're proud of what we've accomplished, but we're not standing still," said Mike Dahn, chief marketing and product development officer, Westlaw U.S. "Last year we launched a WestlawNext mobile site designed to work well on all smartphones and an iPad app that puts answers at our customers' fingertips while away from their laptops. We also developed research-sharing capabilities that enable firms and law departments to tap into the collective knowledge of their entire organizations quickly and easily. Leveraging thoughtful work that's already been done well by a colleague can be an enormous time-saver."

Work is currently under way to build enhancements that will drive even greater efficiencies for WestlawNext customers – modern firms, law departments and law schools that are committed to solving business problems quickly and cost-effectively – including:

To stay up-to-date with the latest enhancements or to see video testimonials of WestlawNext customers describing how they're using WestlawNext to deliver better legal services at a lower cost, visit http://www.westlawnext.com.

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

SOURCE Thomson Reuters Legal

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