Robert Ambrogi Blog
For lawyers looking to build their books of business, there is gold to be found in the biographies of corporate counsel. A shared law school or employment connection from the past can mean a foot in the door today.
Lawyers’ ability to find and act on those connections just got a significant boost with today’s release by Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory of a major upgrade and enhancement of its Corporate Counsel Profiler.
Ken Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of legal markets, told me during a preview demonstration that the internal development team referred to this as the “next generation” of the product, and it lives up to that description.
The main search page includes an interactive map, a variety of search filters, and analytics displaying key data.
Today’s release brings an entirely new look to the product, instant data analytics throughout the site, enhanced search and new post-search filters, automatic highlighting of changes in an in-house lawyer’s profile, and new alerts for tracking changes within a legal department.
The release also expands the product’s coverage, so that it now includes more than 50,000 corporate counsel – including email addresses for 90 percent of them – and more than 14,500 legal departments within the U.S., and adds company subsidiaries and the in-house counsel who work for them.
While the primary use of Corporate Counsel Profiler is by lawyers and law firms for business development, law firms also use it to “keep” clients by better understanding how their legal departments are organized and who is responsible for what within the department.
Also, law students use it to look for jobs and internships, Wolters Kluwer says.
Search and Analytics
During a preview demonstration given by Crutchfield, Reginald Jones, director of product management, and Lucas Otto, product manager, I had an opportunity to see some of the new functionality.
A user can search Corporate Counsel Profiler by any of a number of parameters – company name, company city or state, attorney name, attorney practice area, law school attended, year of bar admission, and more – and a search can pull up to 10,000 records at a time.
While the prior version allowed searches of only one state at a time, this new version allows searches of up to three states. This would be useful, for example, for firms whose practices extend into an abutting state, such as an Illinois firm that also practices in Indiana.
As you search, interactive charts and graphs display analytics about your search results. A company search will show analytics such as the breakdown of its counsel by state, the top five law schools its counsel attended, and the top five practice areas within the legal department.
Results for a search of a city.
As the user filters the search, the charts update instantly. If, for example, the user filters the search to show only the company’s counsel in New York, the charts showing top law schools and practice areas update to reflect that filter. The user can click on any of the graphs for a more granular view of the information they depict.
A new feature with today’s release is the ability to set alerts, so you will be notified of changes. Again, users have a variety of options for the types of events that can trigger alerts. You could set an alert to notify you whenever someone leaves a company’s legal department, or even just if someone’s title changes.
WK says that they update the data regularly, with weekly and monthly monitoring and updates and massive updates three times a year.
When there are updates, another new feature highlights those changes in yellow, so when a company adds new corporate counsel or when their profiles change, search results flag those changes with yellow highlighting.
Even though this is the “next generation” of Corporate Counsel Profiler, it retains the core features of the prior version, including an interactive map and detailed corporate counsel profiles that include title, phone number, email address, website, previous positions, year joined, bar jurisdiction, practice areas, and more.
Users can export any of this information to PDF or spreadsheet formats.
If you would like to learn more about Corporate Counsel Profiler or schedule a demonstration, visit this page.