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Welcome to LawBytes
A News Forum for Law Librarians from Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
It’s hard to believe that the holiday season is now upon us and that the promise of the New Year is only a matter of weeks away. In this spirit of new possibilities, I am very pleased to announce the release of our latest customer communication platform, “LawBytes.”
As background, we at Wolters Kluwer Law & Business understand how much work it takes to do your job effectively. You provide the backbone of the legal profession through your expert research and you have been the source of inspiration for many of the legal profession’s technology innovations. Therefore, we are committed to supporting you with insightful information, which we hope may assist you with the daily challenges you face.
You have already been receiving our Law Librarian Newsletter publication, created to keep you apprised of pertinent Wolters Kluwer Law & Business products, tools and solutions. Now we have turned our deep domain knowledge towards providing you targeted insight into the changing legal environment with LawBytes – A News Forum for Law Librarians from Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. Created specifically for and about law librarians, and delivered online to you every other month, LawBytes will allow us to use our unique lens to translate new technology and innovations into functional tools that will help you navigate the challenges of today’s law librarians.
Moreover, our goal is to build LawBytes into an interactive forum, where readers can post comments and thoughts about articles, topics or issues, as well as take a more active part in its voice as guest authors. It is my pledge, shared by my colleagues throughout Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, that the content of LawBytes far surpasses that of a promotional brochure; rather, it is our objective to provide a means of facilitating insightful, topical and two-way communication that will help us all.
As we proceed with future issues, we hope to engage you in an ongoing, open dialogue about the topics that are most pertinent to law librarians nationwide. Since this is for you and about you, we invite you to send us your feedback and comments on articles we present and request your suggestions for topics you would like to see addressed in future issues. Share this publication with fellow law librarians; link to our survey, attached to this publication, to tell us what you want to see in future issues; even take a stab at being a guest author!
As always, if I can assist you with any questions or issues related to LawBytes or Wolters Kluwer Law & Business in general, please do not hesitate to contact me at Robert.Lemmond@WoltersKluwer.com. I hope you will become an active participant in this forum and look forward to discussing with you, learning from you and embarking on a bright future for us all.
In closing, I do wish you all a wonderful holiday season and offer my very best wishes for a joyful new year.
Yours Truly,
Robert Lemmond
Vice President
Legal Markets Group
TRENDING TOPICS
Helping Law Librarians to Be “Future Ready”
By: Linda Lev-Dunton
Segment Marketing and Librarian Relations Director
The role of the law librarian has evolved tremendously over the past five years. New technology and increasing dependence on digital workflow tools, combined with recession-based budget cutbacks and the elimination of many administrative/research positions at law firms have required law librarians to expand the scope of their knowledge to embrace alternate research methods while meeting increased demands for instantaneous information.
In a recent SLA.com blog post, John J. DiGilio, National Manager of Research Services for Reed Smith, talks about how important it is for law librarians to address this challenge by being ‘future ready,’ saying:
Being future ready means being adaptable and responsive. It requires keeping your finger on the pulse of change and meeting it head on with new methods, fresh ideas, and unwavering enthusiasm. It is also embracing the fact that as times change, so too will the definition and domain of the librarian.
For law librarians to remain relevant, being agile and forward thinking is not enough. They must also have the needed tools and knowledge at their disposal to meet the demands of firms who look to law librarians for their expertise and guidance. As information providers and trusted partners, it is our responsibility to rise to that challenge. Over the past year, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business has taken an increasingly active role in incorporating the voice and needs of the law librarian in our product development process.
Keeping a pulse on trending practice areas within the legal profession, and developing the products and solutions to address them, is an important way in which Wolters Kluwer Law & Business works to differentiate itself as a valued partner. An example of this is our popular CCH Employment Law Daily. According to Fulbright & Jaworski’s 2011 Litigation Trends Survey, when asked to identify the most numerous types of litigation pending against their company in the previous 12 months, corporate counsel ranked labor and employment and contracts at the top of the list. Employment Law Daily brings immediacy to the forefront by delivering currency and enormous time-savings through same day reporting of breaking court decisions and legislative developments. In one concise daily wrap-up email, CCH Employment Law Daily delivers a snapshot of everything of importance that happens in Labor and Employment Law each day, ensuring law librarians and users do not miss key information that could impact their litigation activities.
Facilitating workflow is also a major priority in today’s legal profession. Information providers must do more than supply librarians with page after page of content. Efficient researching requires the means to access that content in meaningful ways to help users more quickly get to the answers. Our Securities Act Handbook (also known as the Red Book) has always been regarded within the profession as the definitive securities publication. Our new RBsource product takes that Red Book content online and enriches it through integration with related SEC issued forms, primary SEC guidance resources and interpretive materials that are needed to support rule-checking, legal decision-making, client advisement, and document drafting. As a result, you are better able to support your securities attorneys by bringing together related materials in one place, increasing the efficiency and accuracy of your SEC research.
Rather than viewing the future as a challenge, we see great opportunity to play an active role in the ongoing transformation of our profession. By continuing to keep our finger on the pulse of trends within the profession, and embracing a spirit of collaborative partnership, we will continue to develop the tools and knowledge needed to help our law librarian customers be ‘future ready.’
If you are interested in lending your voice to our product development process, please contact us.
A Fond Farewell and Best Wishes
Gitelle Seer, Library Director at Dewey & LeBoeuf, is retiring after a long and dedicated career. Gitelle started out as Assistant Librarian/Tax Librarian at Dewey Ballantine and remained with the firm throughout her 40-year career, including after its merger with LeBoeuf Lamb. Her dedicated talents and abilities brought the respect of her library staff, as well as publishers and peers in the library community. Those fortunate enough to work with her found a true professional, whose knowledge and spirit exemplified the best of what a librarian does and brings to a firm. She will be missed by many. Our Wolters Kluwer Law & Business family wish Gitelle the very best as she embarks on a new chapter in her life!
Mary Ann Loustaunau
Executive Director of Sales – Legal Markets Group
Calling All Aspiring Authors
LawBytes – A News Forum for Law Librarians is an exciting, interactive new publication created specifically for you. For it to achieve and maintain its goal as both an information resource as well as a forum for discussions on pertinent issues, we are also looking to the law librarian community for those interested in contributing articles and guest posts. This is your opportunity to discover your hidden writer and share your knowledge with colleagues across the country. If you would like to be considered as a guest author, please email Linda Lev-Dunton, Segment Marketing and Librarian Relations Director linda.lev-dunton@wolterskluwer.com.
We Want to Hear from You!
As your knowledge partner, it is our goal to develop new ways to deliver the news and information you need and connect you to colleagues who share your interests. But it is what you think that is most important and will help us continue to tailor our new publication to better serve your specific needs. What can we do to make LawBytes more interesting, more interactive, more useful, more relevant, and more of what you need to do your job more effectively? Please take a moment to link to a short, 5 minute survey telling us what you think about LawBytes – A News Forum for Law Librarians. All respondents will be automatically entered to win an iPad 2!
