Thursday, January 19, 2012

Lexis-Nexis Is a Government Innovation

Who would have thought it?  That was my reaction when I read this obit in the Post. Three paragraphs:
Mr. Rubin was a corporate lawyer in New York during the late 1960s when he was asked to give his advice on a new computerized legal research system.
The digital database had begun as a project to catalogue Ohio state laws using Air Force technology [emphasis added] that tracked intelligence reports. Mr. Rubin quickly saw the system’s commercial potential because of its ability to make millions of legal documents easily and quickly available to law firms.
The key was to ensure that the database was simple to use, Mr. Rubin said, because “lawyers can’t type, and only 15 percent can spell.”
 Of course, I enjoyed the last paragraph as well. 

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