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Lou Andreozzi LexisNexis’ president and CEO shares his company’s vision. By Cary Griffith |
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One of the first things you notice about Lou Andreozzi’s career is its longevity. In 1983, Andreozzi began working at Reed Elsevier, a professional materials publisher. After earning his law degree from Seton Hall University in 1984, he moved within Reed Elsevier, to become general counsel for Gordon Publications. Since then, Andreozzi’s career has been characterized by rise and change. Throughout the subsequent 16 years, he served in a variety of positions at Reed Elsevier, including vice president, secretary and general counsel for Reed Elsevier Medical Publishing, vice president and general counsel for LexisNexis (after Reed Elsevier acquired the company), publisher of the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, and chief operating officer of Martindale-Hubbell. In May 2000, Andreozzi was named president and chief executive officer of North American Legal Markets, where he was responsible for all of the company’s North American products and services, including LexisNexis online legal research, Shepard’s Citations, Matthew Bender treatises, and Michie indexed and annotated statutes. In February 2001, he was assigned additional responsibility as global officer, marketing and technology, for LexisNexis Group, the global legal business of Reed Elsevier. The new millennium has been good to LexisNexis. Throughout the past four years it has enjoyed steady growth, some of it in the small law office market. LexisNexis has some interesting programs for the small law office, and Andreozzi has an equally interesting perspective about what the future holds. LOC: Since the acquisition of Michie Publishing in 1988, Lexis-Nexis has continued acquiring content and companies (more recently Quicklaw, Anderson Publishing, Applied Discovery Inc. and CourtLink, as well as the recent acquisition of DataTxt’s Time Matters and Billing Matters). What was the purpose of these acquisitions? Andreozzi: As a lawyer, I know there are many activities and components that must all fit together to practice law effectively. These acquisitions allow us to answer the needs of our customers by allowing LexisNexis to go beyond research and providing just laws, cases and regulations. Whether it’s authoritative legal, news or business information, e-discovery, electronic access to courts and court documents, client development, knowledge management or practice management, we feel able to provide a flexible and full range of products and services to guide lawyers in practicing law and managing their practices. LOC: Explain how Reed Elsevier and LexisNexis are structured. Andreozzi: Reed Elsevier is actually two organizations (Reed Elsevier PLC, which is British, and Reed Elsevier NV, a Dutch company) that function as one. Reed Elsevier has four major business units that function under global brands: LexisNexis (legal); Harcourt Education (education); Elsevier (science and medical); and Reed Business (business). LexisNexis in North America is divided into two primary units – North American Legal Markets (legal products and services in the United States and Canada) and the Corporate and Federal Markets (this unit includes news, business corporate tax, legal markets risk management and specialized information technology). The global LexisNexis organization – LexisNexis Group – includes the North American units and LexisNexis in Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In addition, there is a global product development group that reports to the LexisNexis Group. LOC: How has the company changed in the past year, especially considering these acquisitions? Andreozzi: By listening to our customers we found they needed more from us than just comprehensive and authoritative research products. By expanding our products and services into areas such as client development, knowledge management, access to courts and e-discovery, we have substantially expanded the portfolio of products we can provide to customers. We call it “Beyond Research.” LOC: What is your overall sense of trends in the legal industry for the next five years? Where will the industry be with regard to technology? Andreozzi: One trend we are seeing is important new legislation that will affect everyone in the legal industry. To help address this, we have brought new content online to help our customers through it: products and information to help with corporate governance, privacy and security, identity fraud, and new healthcare laws such as HIPAA and Medicare laws. The globalization of the legal profession is another trend we are seeing, which creates the need to serve clients and customers locally and globally in supportive legal, information, technology and business environments. We recently conducted a survey with the International Bar Association and found most of the respondents see the increased globalization of the legal profession as an opportunity to increase the efficiency of trade and improve the profession overall through increased competition (see “International Flair” on Page 36 of this issue). Technology obviously will play a large role in helping legal professionals who are working locally, working within local laws and legal systems, speaking local languages, yet who often have the need to understand compliance and law in other locations around the world. In addition, we are seeing a market contraction among mid-sized firms. Mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies have affected firms with 20 to 100 attorneys. That part of the law firm market shrunk during the past few years, and we expect that to continue a while longer. Among the larger firms, we are seeing fewer partners among their ranks. From a technology standpoint, we have heard the term “knowledge management” for years, and I believe we are finally at a point where the technology can deliver on the promise. KM products help you manage all of your information within your practice, with simultaneous access to external content and internal work product, plus enhanced functionality. KM tools, such as LexisNexis Total Search, are coming to the forefront. As an attorney, I can clearly see a positive impact on the practice of law, increasing my efficiency and leveraging my intellectual capital even more. LOC: Does LexisNexis have an overall game plan for the future? What new initiatives does each portion of the company hope to offer? Andreozzi: While our strategy to increase our offerings beyond just legal research will continue, it’s important that we also continue listening to our customers. That, more than anything, will shape our future. We must answer the needs of our customers quickly and in a way that ultimately helps them do their jobs better and more efficiently. LOC: What percentage of LexisNexis business comes from print sales and what percentage from online, CD-ROM or other technology services? If technology outstrips print, has that always been the case? Andreozzi: Reed Elsevier limits the financial information we can provide. In the traditional legal research business, print is still strong, but we have migrated most of our users from using CD-ROM software to using our Total Research System online. This has been a natural evolution, but also allows our customers to benefit from features they can’t get except online. For example, extensive linking between documents with our new Shepard’s summaries, immediate access to court records via CourtLink, and up-to-the-minute access to late-breaking news. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell has a rapidly expanding online business for firms and consumers, and still does a healthy business in print directories. In Canada, the majority of our revenue comes from online. Most of our acquisitions of late have focused on Web-based services. LOC: What other new products or services has the company focused on (or seen an increase in the use of) in the past few years? Andreozzi: Going back to our strategy of providing other products and services beyond legal research, we are seeing excellent growth in the use of our LexisNexis CourtLink and LexisNexis File & Serve products, which help law firms grow and lawyers argue more effectively. E-discovery continues to be a growing market segment for us, too. As the business of law becomes increasingly important, we also are seeing growth with our client development tools such as LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. LOC: Is LexisNexis now focusing on Internet products and services? Andreozzi: Definitely. Since introducing lexis.com several years ago, we know the Internet must be a focus for us in everything we do. The vast majority of our online users are coming to our Web product. In addition, our latest acquisitions – ADI, CourtLink, etc. – are businesses harnessing the power of the Web to bring very powerful tools to the market. LOC: How would you answer the criticism that your company’s products and services are primarily focused on the medium, large or corporate law office market? Andreozzi: I would say you need to take another, closer look at LexisNexis. We had very strong growth in the solo practitioner and small law firm market in 2003, and for good reason. In late 2002, we redesigned our approach to the small-firm practitioner. Now we are offering more online products for these attorneys tailored for their practice specialties and for their jurisdictions. In addition, many small firms buy print products from LexisNexis Matthew Bender and our other publishing companies. LexisOne, our Internet portal, serves as an online community for solo and small-firm practitioners, and offers daily, weekly and monthly pricing on many of our legal, news and public records menus. These special pricing options make it easy for small-firm attorneys to keep their subscriptions to just the information they need regularly, with easy access to information outside their practice areas or states they might need occasionally. A big draw is Martindale-Hubbell. That, with lawyers.com, helps connect our customers with potential consumer and business clients. Many of our partnerships and new tools benefit the small firms and solo lawyers. Time Matters, HotDocs, CourtLink and LexisNexis File & Serve all offer great products that let lawyers with fewer resources accomplish even more in their practice. LOC: How does the small law office market figure into LexisNexis’ future? Andreozzi: The small law firm market, which we define as firms with one to 20 attorneys, is an important segment for us. We see great opportunities for growth in this segment, especially as we continue to develop state-specific online and print materials, and services that streamline the business of practicing law. The investments we made in the small law firm market are on schedule, and the outcome from those funds will be evident in the state-specific content, easy to use features and more responsive pricing packages that will continue to be released in the months to come. LOC: What has been the biggest technological impact on the small law office practitioner during the past five years? Andreozzi: Technology has paved the way for quick access to a wealth of proprietary and free information. While this has greatly influenced the adoption of technology in firms, it also has created an even greater need for services that can interpret, organize and provide a comprehensive answer set. At LexisNexis, we have embraced this movement, and offer an array of forms and case law for free through our lexisOne portal and through many bar association programs at a nominal fee. We even have created links from Microsoft Windows (Research Task Pane) to lexisOne to make free case law widely available. For those seeking expert advice and interpretive analysis, we also have invested heavily in our editorial resources to add extensive enhancements. The list of navigational and editorial enhancements is long, but as an example, we have added millions of navigational links within documents to analytical, citation, code and case materials. We have more than 700 editors who add case summaries, headnotes and core terms to streamline the research process. The Internet also has given attorneys new cost-effective ways to market themselves and reach out to consumers. This has added dramatically to the appeal of online client development services such as our Martindale-Hubbell legal directory and legal Web page services. These businesses allow small and large firms alike to market their practice strengths to the consumer and legal community. LOC: Will any future acquisitions be geared toward the small law office market? Andreozzi: We always are looking at acquisitions that will further enhance our offering to the small law firm market. Of particular interest are businesses that provide services that assist in running the business of law or offer content that is highly interpretive and enhanced. Our recent acquisition of Anderson Publishing is a great example of how we continue to strengthen state-level primary law, expert analysis and practice guides. LexisNexis CourtLink is another example of an acquisition that has placed LexisNexis in the lead position for online access to the nation’s courts and advanced searching, notification and filing capabilities. LOC: What products and offerings are the most popular among small-firm customers? Andreozzi: In terms of legal research, small-firm customers mainly purchase state-level content, coupled with practice-area treatise materials and our exclusive Shepard’s citation service. Both online and print versions alike remain popular media choices. We also have a growing business in selling client development services in our LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell business, selling practice management services through our alliance with Time Matters, and court-records searching through our LexisNexis CourtLink business. LOC: Where do you see the solo or small law office practitioner in the next five years? Andreozzi: Nearly half of the U.S. attorney population falls into the one to 20 attorney per firm segment and we expect the business opportunities in this segment will greatly increase as technology allows smaller firms to conduct business with the same support services formerly only available in larger firms. LexisNexis intends to be a leader in creating services that leverage technology to the small law firm’s benefit. LOC: What is LexisNexis’ best resource for the small law office, and why? Andreozzi: In the growing area of practice management, LexisNexis offers Time Matters and Billing Matters. The products provide a comprehensive suite of functionality that allows the practitioner to run his or her business with real-time office-wide calendars, task management and work delegation systems, client/customer relations management, project/matter management, research/knowledge management, instant messaging, communications control (e-mail with spam blocker, phone and fax), and more. In terms of legal research, lexisOne provides the small-firm attorney with options including free case law, daily rates, weekly rates and per document pricing. From lexisOne, the attorney also can sign up for an annual subscription to lexis.com or have a sales representative call to identify the best content for the attorney. LexisNexis also has an extensive collection of treatises, codes and practice guides that can be accessed through our online bookstore, http://bookstore.lexis.com. For client development, Martindale-Hubbell has designed special listings and Web page services for the small law firm. These affordable listings and Web pages provide visibility and professionalism on par with large firms. Finally, CourtLink provides extensive search and alert features to review documents and docket information. Electronic filing of documents also is available in a number of jurisdictions. LOC: There is lexisOne pricing for small firms. Does LexisNexis have any other programs, products or services specifically geared to the small law office? Andreozzi: In addition to the range of offerings noted above, LexisNexis has designed many pricing programs and content packaging options unique to small law firms. We will be creating more targeted menus and removing content that drives higher prices but low need. We are and will be providing customer incentives for our new offerings designed to help streamline running the business of small firms. Lou Andreozzi In Brief
Family
Education background
Hobby?
Most important New Year’s resolution?
Winter vacation? |
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR CARY GRIFFITH is a freelance writer and consultant living in Rosemount, Minn. Questions or comments can be sent to: cgriffith@electronicbooks.com. |
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