QUITE A NICHE

Last year, I got very excited about The Long Tail, an important book by Chris Anderson (editor of Wired) that argues that web-based economies make it possible for "niche" products and services to thrive. I immediately saw the relevance of Anderson's theories to the legal profession (and to publishing as well) and ran a big analysis story in our Sept. 06 issue.

One of the theories I've been espousing lately is that the big three (Thomson, LexisNexis and Wolters Kluwer) will continue to gobble up legal technology companies right and left -- that there will be a ton of road kill by those that aren't Darwin enough to survive -- and that niche products and services will thrive (until bought up by WexisK).

An example I frequently cite is Levit & James -- a small Virginia based company that produces software for specific tasks, like converting from Corel's WordPerfect to Microsoft Corp.'s Word. Ian Levit is the energetic and enthusiastic "front man" and nobody does a demo better. That's him above, at ILTA's NASA-themed vendor launch party. (Recluse programming guru Fletcher James stays outta sight.)

The company got a lot of traction for its helpful CrossWords migration program, and former WordPerfect addicts love CrossEyes, which soothes their aching for Corel's "reveal codes" when using Word.

L&J next tackled the thorny issue of creating Tables of Authorities, with Best Authority. Talk about a niche product -- no document assembly task drives assistants and lawyers crazier than trying to create ToAs in court documents. In June, L&J upgraded the program to version 2.0, adding a new wizard to reduce training time. The program has  been adopted by 80 firms -- including 12 members of the AmLaw 100 roster, says Levit. 

Explains the website:

...Best Authority guides users every step of the way through the production process. Best Authority starts by scanning the document and automatically marking all the citations. A draft can be checked before it is built, using extensive reviewing and editing tools to assist with revisions. These tools include having the citations automatically marked and identified by type of citation with color.  “Suspect” fragments are also easily identified with a specific color so they can be reviewed and corrected. This process is aided by a split-screen interface, so the user can readily compare each TOA citation to its counterpart in the original brief. Perhaps best of all, all revisions to citations or to the TOA are permanent, and will remain no matter how many times the document is revised and re-scanned.

The upgrade addresses issues raised by clients, says Levit, including the ability to hyper-link page numbers to the citation in the document. "For Illinois and three other states, we can now list citations in the Table of Contents or Points and Authorities," he says. They've also added special formatting options for that always-finicky state, California. And the upgrade supports Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007.

The company is about to launch a second flavor of the program, geared at small firms, which will probably be dubbed "Best Authority Lite or Light." It will feature a simpler interface, so less training time, says Levit -- about an hour. Pricing starts at $250 per litigator.

The always-traveling Levit will be at seven paralegal conferences in October and November, so there's a good bet he'll be at a city near you, shortly, if you want to see him in action.  E-mail him here. Here's an unmasked photo, (right, with his brother Mark) -- but he's not hard to recognize -- just look for the most energetic vendor in the hall.