Several months ago there was a “soft” release of a new legal industry news product–Reuters Legal News (RLN). Today Thomson Reuters released several new features enabling lawyers and legal business professionals to create a customizable reading and alerting experience. Reuters which employs 2,500 journalists around the globe, now has a team dedicated to writing, curating and tagging legal news so it can be easily customized for the busy lawyer. The RLN content is organized into four broad categories: Litigation, Transactional, Government and Legal Industry. There is a columnist dedicated to each of the four categories of legal news. In addition to news from Reuters, the site includes selected content from Westlaw Today, The Thomson Reuters Institute, and Practical Law Updates.
Account Setup. Accounts can be set up on the desktop at www.reuters.com/legal or by downloading an ios or adroid app on your mobile device. There is a “registration wall” rather than a paywall. The service is free! Users can customize content by selecting from 42 practice areas and topics.
I signed myself up for legal industry news and located four sub-topics which I will appear in “My view”: legal innovation, practice management, industry insight and competitive intelligence.
Westlaw Today vs. Reuters Legal News. Who do you onboard to what news product? Westlaw Today is a news alerting service within Westlaw. It was released in November 2020, and is designed for lawyers who are engaged in legal research. Reuters Legal News is targeting partners, transactional lawyers, law firm leaders, business professionals and inhouse counsel who may not be regular Westlaw users.
Here are some of the key features available in Reuters Legal News:
- Top legal news
- Law firms in the News
- People news
- Attorney analysis – from law firms
- Companies (clients) in the news
- Enhanced tags appear at the top of each story
- Registration wall not a paywall
- Toolbar makes it easy to follow companies and law firms
- My view page organized around a users interests
- Follow feature – follow authors, companies, law firms
- Legal Video editorial content covering business and practice of law
- App for Ios and Android.
No Onepass No Kidding! The Administrative Portal tool will enable law librarians and knowledge manager to upload an organization’s members emails in order to simplify the registration process. Lawyers will be sent a “Welcome to RLN” email and then can set up their own passwords and personalizations. This password is not tied to the user’s OnePass. I can hear my colleague cheering!
The Administrative Portal will allow librarians to view usage data and analytics for the organization
Librarians can contact Reuters Customer Service at reuters.customers.service@thomsonreuters.com.
A blog post from Thomson Reuters describes Reuters Legal News as “the first platform to bring deep legal news into the context of Reuters global business news with an enhanced user experience, mobile first platform, delivered with the world-class, bias-free journalism only offered by Reuters.”
Maria Korkontzilas, head of Transformation at Thomson Reuters and the business champion for the legal news offering is quoted: “Reuters Legal News brings together deep domain expertise on practices, firms and companies with comprehensive global business news to provide the most thorough and relevant information to drive informed, effective decision-making.”
“My View will be critical to legal professionals who want a specialized and steady stream of industry-specific practice area and business of law news in the context of Reuters global business news,” added Korkontzilas. “We are excited to continue innovating and enhancing the reader experience for professionals around the globe.”
Market Impact I am a news junkie. I have repeatedly highlighted th
e irony that Westlaw owned by a leading news organization was so late to the legal news party. In recent years there has been increasing energy, innovation and competition in the legal news market. Law 360 owned by LexisNexis keeps expanding its reach, ALM launched the mobile only Law.com Radar, Fastcase is building a legal news platform. The market question is – can this Reuters offering have any impact on the market share of the well established, fee based legal news platforms?
