Solcara Founder Speaks to the Benefits of Open Systems
January 28, 2015
The article titled How to Force Giants to “Stop & Listen”- The Legal Tech Entrepeneur Prising Open “Closed Systems” on The Legal Review examines the rewards available for those firms and entrepreneurs willing to take risks. The story of Solcara, the “federated search” technology company that started up just after the .com bubble burst in 2001. The article explains,
“Using Solcara, firms would be able to search legal content buried deep within the likes of “Lexis Nexis, Westlaw UK and Practical Law from Thomson Reuters…using a single search interface. Unsurprisingly, legal publishers who were used to a “closed system”, where they could print and sell entire libraries of bound books to clients, were initially uncomfortable with Solcara’s cherry-picking innovation. ..”The only way Solcara was able to successfully achieve [federated search] was working directly with the law firms… such as Norton Rose.”
Eventually Thomson Reuters acquired Solcara as well as Practical Law, leading Solcara’s co-founder Rob Martin to suggest that something similar needs to happen soon in law firms or clients will force a change on their own. Martin firmly believes that taking risks on innovation and being prepared to change direction is the only way to thrive in a market that fluctuates so easily.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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