------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library and preservational electronic archive. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ===================================================================== New Legal-Information Service Is Plannee By EDWARD FELSENTHAL Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Two big legal-information proriders are joining forces to create a computer service offering court decisions and docu- ments on line while enabling lawyers to communicate with each other about legal developments. The partnership between Mead Corp.'s Mead Data Central unit and American Lawyer Media un- ites the vast elec- LI~{I~I ItEAI' tronic archive of ,,~ ~1 news and court de- cisions in Mead's Lexis and Nexis f!i~ !]~i services with Coun- sel Connect, a data- base and electronic- . .. mail hookup launched last year by American Lawyer Media. American Lawyer Media will own a majority stake in the service, to be called Lexis Counsel Connect, and will manage it, according to Steven Brill, chairman and chief executive of American Lawyer Me- dia, New York, a partnership owned by Mr. Brill and Time Warher Inc. The deal is expected to be announced today. Mr. Brill described the service as a sort of "cradle-to-grave" array of infor- mation for lawyers and their clients. "It's one place to go for legal information, ranging from as far back in an archive as you can go-the case 50 years ago that may be on Lexis - to six expert lawyers in an area having a discussion right now about a [court] decision that morning." The service is intended to enable law- yers to move easily back and forth from Mead's archives to various Counsel Con- nect offerings, such as law-firm memos on -current topics in the law and on-line legal discussions with experts on those topics. In addition, the companies plan before year's end to offer a personalized newspaper that will package information about legal devel- opments and other breaking news based on subscribers' individual interests. Over time, the venture is likely to provide a variety of specialty services that could help corporate-law departments, said Jon Klemens, a principal in the infor- L mation-services group of the law-firm con- sultancy AIrman Well Pensa Inc., New- town Square, Pa. It is a low-cost way to get "topical information ... that law firms would [otherwise] have been selling tO their clients on an hourly basis," Mr. Klemens said. Mr. Brill's new Counsel Connect service will benefit from Mead's cash infusion, its nationwide marketing apparatus, and its --base of more than 300,000 Lexis/Nexis subscribers. Counsel Connect currently has about 4,500 subscribers. The compa- nies declined to disclose the size of Mead's interest in the venture, but a person famil- iar with the deal valued Mead's investment at more than $10 million. The companies also wouldn't provide their percentage stakes in the service. For Mead Data Central, based in Day- ton, Ohio, the venture represents an oppor- tunity to diversify its legal-information services beyond the provision of on-line research, an area that has become increas- ingly competitive in recent years as the technology involved has become less ex- pensive. Until a few years ago, Mead Data Central and its main competitor, West Publishing Co., "really were monop- olies," said Mr. Klemens, the law-firm consultant. "Now all of a sudden it's a very competitive environment in the infor- mation area." Providing the kind of interactive serv- ices available on Counsel Connect will "extend the name Lexis and make it less of a product and more of a brand," said Rebecca Wendy Bass, vice president for Legal Information Services at Mead Data Central, which had revenue of $551 mil- lion last year. ================================================================= If this is a copyrighted work, you are acknowledging by receipt of this document from FACTNet that on the basis of reasonable investigation, you have not been to obtain a copy elsewhere at a fair price, and that you are and will abide by the following copyright warning. 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