Blog - Improve your Current Awareness Strategy

As I read the various articles outlining legal tech trends for 2020, one article stood out. It inspired me to explore some of the reasons why Vable has led the way in innovative current awareness provision in the past few years. On 1st Jan 2020, Bob Ambrogi wrote, 

Every year, I write a year-end wrap-up of the most significant developments in legal technology. But as we reach the end of a decade, I decided to look back on the most significant developments of the past 10 years. Looking back, it may well have been the most tumultuous decade ever in changing how legal services are delivered.

Bob lists ten* significant legal developments outlining the changes and trends which have shaped the past 10 years. These developments have made automated news monitoring and aggregation platforms like Vable possible; in terms of preparing for the legal industry’s attitude to tech, the changing business of legal practice, and the continuing importance of information skills which are central to creating intelligent systems.

Here we are again, bouncing into a brand new year and towards a new decade!  The Vable team is currently finalising our product development Roadmap for 2020 and I am happy to report that the future of current awareness and news aggregation is bright and exciting. But as is traditional in January, let’s take a brief look back at 2019. 

We attended various key legal information and marketing conferences in different capacities; exhibitor, delegate, and speaker. For me, last year was all about communications, connections and conversations,  which was reflected in our stories from Vable’s current awareness strategy blog. Enjoy catching up with 7 of our most popular posts from 2019.

These longer evenings give me time to reflect on an eventful year - for legal tech as well as the broader political landscape. It’s hard to believe that we are so close to the end of another year - and indeed another decade. But we can’t avoid the gallop to the finish; festive lights are going up, whilst temperatures are going down.

The final case study that I presented at the KMInsight Legal Libraries 2019 event illustrated how aggregated current awareness can be used by firms to differentiate themselves. As I said here and here, my overall talk theme was ‘how can we use tech to empower the legal librarian role and unlock value’. As always, every information solution depends on the organisational context. 

“OK Boomer?” If you have been following Twitter over the past month or so, you’ll be aware that social media believes intergenerational differences remain as marked as ever. For example, Millennials mock Boomers for their nostalgia and typos; and Boomers assume Millennials are easily offended and self-obsessed. Despite the storm in a tea-cup feel to it, many publications -  FT, HBR, TED - are sharing serious research into the disparate group we call ‘Millennials’.

Creating engaging and powerful images and videos can be a real challenge for library and information people. Effective marketing relies on us making a real impact on social media and other communication channels. Our sophisticated and visually attuned audience wants to be entertained, inspired, educated, and informed - in new and interesting ways.

As proof that even the most text based, traditional areas of information are being visually transformed, City Law School has recently launched an inspiring website called TL;DR which aims to be a showcase for legal learning and communications focusing on alternative visual ways.

I had the privilege to speak at the KMInsight conference recently and thought that it would be helpful to publish an excerpt from my presentation. My overall theme was ‘how can we use tech to empower the legal librarian role and unlock value’ and my 3 case studies illustrated some of the challenges that organisations are facing due to information overload.

Maintaining and building trust with end-users remains an important issue for information professionals so this is my focus here. In my role at Vable I regularly share information so I need to know that my sources are reliable, trustworthy and well researched. The conference was an excellent opportunity to discuss ‘trusting one’s judgment’ in the face of a growing amount of 'fake news'.

In my previous post on legal tech sources I enjoyed demonstrating what I want to explain in this post. A recent Jinfo webinar got me thinking about the question of “How do you get relevant external content into your intelligence platform?” In short, the answer was ‘ask your information person’.

Team Vable get asked about content all the time; some questions are technology based and fairly clear-cut. But source assessment requires a certain level of specialist knowledge. Not only do you have to have an excellent understanding of your organisation’s underlying business goals, but also you will need to know which sources are relevant to their information needs.

I spend a lot of time curating the various law and tech community websites and blogs. In order to get the best legal tech current awareness alerts, you need to start with relevant and reliable sources. So when someone on Twitter asked for recommendations, I thought I’d share the contents of my search filter!

‘I was talking to someone interested in legal tech today who doesn’t come from a legal background, but is interested in what is happening. Does anyone have a single one-stop-shopping recommendation for an overview of the various things happening in this space?” @GTeninbaum 

Here is a list of some of the leading sources/publishers I aggregate for use in my newsletters. Although it depends on what the reader wants, and what type of content they are after, some of these may prove valuable to people: