LexisNexis Communities: Legal Blogs, Podcasts & More

Over three years ago, LexisNexis launched its first Web 2.0 Community, the LexisNexis Insurance Law Center. More than a blog, the law center was designed as an interactive online community devoted to insurance law available on the open web for attorneys, paralegals, judges, government officials, academics, students, librarians, journalists and consumers. Today, the LexisNexis Communities have grown to 16 Practice Area, 12 Professional, and 4 Global sites featuring a combination of authoritative LexisNexis legal content and user-generated content from leading experts.

The law centers contain expert commentary, blogs, news headlines, news about leading legal professionals and organizations, award-winning podcasts, webinars, free article and form downloads, videocasts, top cases, links to industry conferences, and much more.  LexisNexis Communities are designed to appeal to a broad audience and assist visitors in effectively targeting their professional efforts by providing timely and focused information, as well as a portal into the most relevant legal content and tools for their needs.

Each practice area Community engages with industry thought leaders to surface first-class content. For example, the LexisNexis Tax Law Center has partnered with Tax Analysts to provide the most current tax news available and with Tax.com for insights on breaking tax developments.  In addition to partnering with well-respected firms like Pepper Hamilton, McDermott Will & Emery, and Morrison & Foerster, the LexisNexis Communities feature a multitude of the best and brightest in the legal community, such as Lex Larson, Dave Rossmiller, Randy Maniloff, Kevin LaCroix, Bob Rassp, Bill Barker, Brian JM Quinn, Tom Gorman, James Fanto, Margit Livingston, Lee Zeichner, Ken Winer, Rebecca  Morgan, Vorris Blankenship, Dr. John E. Murray Jr., Anne Gilson LaLonde... the list goes on and on! The LexisNexis Workers' Compensation Law Center even has a group of judges that blog about EAMS in California.

One of the key features that sets the LexisNexis Communities apart from other legal communities is the availability of free downloads of selected forms and excerpts from treatises normally available only to LexisNexis subscribers. For example, the LexisNexis Estate Practice & Elder Law Center offers both free forms, such as model will and trust provisions, and free excerpts from leading treatises.  The other practice area Communities provide similar content.

The LexisNexis Communities have also engaged in a number of campaigns to recognize leaders in the profession.  From top blog honors to "notable newcomer" recognition, the Communities strive to showcase professionals of interest to our visitors. Other Communities' offerings that assist the busy practitioner are the LexisNexis Legal Business Community and the LexisNexis Continuing Legal Education Center, both of which deliver solutions for the business side of legal practice.

Part of what makes the Communities so valuable to legal professionals is their clearinghouse nature: there is something for everyone, all delivered in a variety of media.  For example, not only are the Communities' podcasts available on the law centers themselves, they may also be accessed on iTunes. Downloads of these award-winning podcasts average 30,000 per month. Recently, Newstex, with Amazon Kindle, has extended the reach of the blog articles from several Communities by surfacing them at the Kindle store.

Recognizing that blogs are only one facet of the future of the law industry, LexisNexis has branched out to other social media platforms. Currently, numerous community leaders at LexisNexis are microblogging in Twitter, e.g., @lexisnexis, @ LNTax, @LNBiz, @LexisHub; networking in Martindale-Hubbell Connected and LinkedIn; and sharing on Facebook, e.g., LexisNexis Communities and LexisNexis Corporate & Securities Law Center. The Communities also make content easy to access and share through RSS feeds, e-newsletters, and ShareThis. We've also created LexisNexis myIDEAS, a virtual space for visitors to brainstorm and share ideas on how to improve LexisNexis.

The LexisNexis Community sites have changed in order to provide visitors with new resources and easier navigation. The new design includes  easy-to-find featured content on the left side of the screen, allowing one-click access. Visitors can create profiles and even make the selected Community a home page. The top stories are conveniently featured in the center of the page, so hunting and scrolling is no longer necessary. Another exciting new feature is the ability of visitors to request authorship rights to directly post original content to the Communities.

The LexisNexis Communities reflect the ongoing commitment of LexisNexis to legal professionals to improve ease-of-access to legal content, to provide opportunities to establish thought leadership, and to further professional networking goals. As Web 2.0 morphs into Web 3.0, LexisNexis intends to stay at the forefront of the ever-changing technology to deliver solutions to legal professionals.