0514-cvr2There is a trend in legal information, rapidly gaining momentum, in which visualization tools and design concepts are used to help lawyers, students, consumers and scholars make sense of the law. In the cover story of this month’s ABA Journal, I take an in-depth look at this trend.

I write about some emerging innovators in this area, such as Ravel, a legal research site that presents search results visually, and Stanford’s Program for Legal Technology and Design, which is using design principles to build better tools for delivering and educating about the law.

I also discuss some of the early innovators, including Fastcase, which introduced its Interactive Timeline in 2008 to show search results comparatively along a timeline, and UK company Justis Publishing, which launched its JustCite Precedent Map in 2011 to help illustrate the relationships among cases.

And, yes, even the Big Three are mentioned here, with reference to graphical and visual products from LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg Law, where a Bloomberg VP tells me that data visualization is “baked into the DNA of the company.”

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.