Lexis-Nexis Backs Berkman Research

Berkman to Research Legal Technology (Press release from Lexis-Nexis, a member of Reed Elsevier Group plc [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK], which is among the information services companies in the NMMDEX).

Will Harvard start issuing diplomas with corporate logos soon? Will it trademark the Latin noun ‘veritas’?

Doesn’t the performance of their hedge-fund managed endowment give them the luxury of dispensing with such embarrassing dilutions of their academic-autonomy brand?

The point of the exercise, I gather, is to discover whether H-Law ought to offer tech courses to its aspiring movers and shakers as part of the official curriculum.

But I thought Harvard Law had already reformed its curriculum?

And besides, shouldn’t it be the makers and vendors of legal technology that carry the burden of making their technology more user-friendly?

In the spirit of that interface designer I read an interview with recently who said, “If the user needs a manual, I have not done my job”?

I found this demurrer on the part of the legal publisher interesting:

The Berkman Center, one of the premier research centers in the world focusing on the intersection of law and technology, includes among its ranks such notable faculty as Charles Nesson, Charles Ogletree, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, William Fisher, and Lawrence Lessig. This project is unrelated to work and opinions on copyright and in no way represent an endorsement by LexisNexis of those views. This partnership is an example that business and academe can work together for the benefit of legal education while agreeing to disagree on other issues of import.

Two sentences reinforcing the same basic notion: that the quid pro quo does not involve Lexis-Nexis drinking the Creative Commons Kool-Aid.

I would call that pretty emphatic, given the literary conventions of the press release.

In other words, “we pay them, they do what we want them to do, and that is that.”

Can we get copies of the contract?

Young John Palfrey — I was using Lexis-Nexis on glowing green ASCII screens while this guy’s dad was still assuming the position at Skull & Bones — is a notable legal scholar?

I had not noticed that from canvassing the journals.

I also did not know that eBay was funding Berkman now, although certainly the Omidyar Foundation is in the thick of things.

And Google, too. I knew that the guy from the Open Economies Institute had gone to work as their chief lobbyist, but I did not know they were contributing to keep the tuition down at that little night law school they are running there in Cambridge.

With this project, LexisNexis joins an elite list of companies that partner with the Berkman Center. The Berkman Center’s other current corporate partners include Google, IBM, Microsoft, eBay, Reuters, and others [unnamed, for some reason -- Ed.]. A white paper created by the Berkman Center under the supervision of John Palfrey will be released at the end of the year.

The leader of the project, Gene Koo, sent out this request for input on his blog.

LexisNexis has offered to help us (the Berkman Center’s research initiative) learn more about how prepared new lawyers are for today’s legal work world by conducting a survey of recent graduates.

In my experience, it can often happen that when a firm “offers to help you learn” why you should use its products, the hypothesis tends to get a little skewed from the beginning, unless you have safeguards in place, as many joint academic-business studies do. And a transparent relationship. As many sponsored research projects do.

(But as a growing number of junk research projects don’t — as I can testify from having worked as the guy who has to sit there and pick out the real thing from all those dumb-ass faxes from PR firms of those straw polls you sales guys take among attendees at your company’s booth at the last convention, written up by flacks to sound like AC Nielsen spent a year on it and used to support the notion that we should buy your product.)

Does this study? I can’t seem to find the research proposal — you know with the methodology and the controls and how you arrived at the hypothesis to be tested and the review of the literature and the selection of subjects and the design of the questionnaire and all that.

I mean, surely someone has studied this question before, right?

Seems there isn’t a research protocol — yet.

I ask anyone with an interest in the topic to submit your suggestions for what this survey should entail. While not every question can be answered by this survey, I hope to get some good ideas as well as instigate some good discussion. Because our project focuses on the influence of technology on practice and on education, I would especially appreciate questions that poke in that general direction.

What, we’re paying for research and we don’t even have a formal research proposal yet? Just a general idea of where we want to “poke”? Hmmm.

And with the research to be completed and written up by December, the guy is asking us, “Who should I ask? What should I ask?”

I mention all this because Harvard faculty have taken some heat lately over the quality of their corporate-sponsored research.

See, e.g., Harvard Should Be Crimson Over IT Study.

But I do have some general questions to contribute, I think.

Yes, does this mean that young associates of the future will required to use “technology” to produce more for less pay, like journalists and equities analysts and the like?

Will the legal profession start using its first-year associates up the way that investment banking houses do — a phenomenon that, one reads, freshly minted MBAs are starting to rebel against?

So, to restate the question: As someone interested in legal education or training (whether you’re a law professor, law firm manager, CLE provider, director of professional development, legal technologist, law librarian, associate, or law student), what did you wish you knew about today’s newest attorneys (say, those with 0-5 years of experience)? Also, given limited resources, should we attempt to survey one population (say, big firm associates) more thoroughly, or try to get participants from across practice settings?

Seriously, as a journalist interested in the “future of work” and the transformation of the liberal professions thereunder — and as an educator, a starer into proprietrary research screens since 1985, a vigilante consumer of legal and business information, as well as someone who has covered e-learning and that sort of thing — I would like to hear from managing partners about their relationships with technology and automation vendors, and their level of satisfaction with same.

See also The End of the $400 Hour?

Could allegedly non-tech savvy senior practicioners not be interested in vendors’ “rhetoric of the technological sublime” for reasons more substantial than that they simply “don’t get it”?

It sounds like this study is assuming the contrary as a given.

(Let me tell you about the migration project I worked on for a white-shoe Wall Street firm sometime — from the VAX mainframe to a network of Windows PCs. It was an interesting experience in the real-life “workplace of the future.”)

And what their views are on the often-commented “industrialization” of the legal profession.