Bloomberg Law

• 1. Introduction

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  Bloomberg Law arrived in late 2009 as a pilot program, entering a legal research market that two established giants had long divided between themselves. LexisNexis and Westlaw held dominant positions, and few seriously expected a financial data company to shake that arrangement. Yet Bloomberg L.P. had a different idea. Its bet was that attorneys did not just need case law. They needed the full picture of a company, its finances, its litigation history, and the judges sitting on its cases, all in one place. That combination had never been offered at a fixed monthly fee that included every feature on the platform. What made this more than a search engine? And how did a company built around terminals for banks and investment groups find itself selling subscriptions to law firms? Those questions sit at the center of Bloomberg Law's story.

• 2. A Market of Two

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  Before Bloomberg Law launched, LexisNexis and Westlaw comprised the majority of the legal research market. For practicing attorneys, the choice was essentially binary. Bloomberg L.P. saw an opening that neither rival could easily exploit: the company already possessed Bloomberg's global news network, financial data, and company information. Integrating that proprietary material with legal research was a capability unique to Bloomberg. The Financial Times noted that the Bloomberg Law unit formed part of the data provider's effort to diversify beyond the banks and investment groups that made up the core customers for its eponymous terminals. The formal launch came in 2010, a year after the pilot began, and by 2011 Bloomberg had reinforced its position by acquiring the Bureau of National Affairs, a legal publisher whose materials were then folded into the platform.

• 3. Hiring from the Competition

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  In October 2010, Lou Andreozzi joined Bloomberg Law as chairman. Andreozzi had previously served as chief executive officer of LexisNexis North American Legal Markets. The same month, Larry Thompson, a former global marketing officer of LexisNexis, joined as chief operating officer. Bringing in two senior figures from the market leader was a pointed statement about where Bloomberg Law intended to compete. Greg McCaffery followed in September 2012, named chief executive officer; he had previously served as chief executive officer and president of Bloomberg BNA. In January 2014, Bloomberg BNA, as a Bloomberg L.P. subsidiary, took over day-to-day operations of the platform. Josh Eastright assumed the CEO role at Bloomberg BNA in 2018, and that same year Joe Breda was named President of Bloomberg Law in July, succeeding Scott Mozarsky.

• 4. Building the Feature Set

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  Between 2014 and 2015, Bloomberg Law expanded significantly, adding dockets that cover state, federal, and select international court cases, financial and legal analytics, and practice-specific products for corporate transactions, privacy and data security, and banking. The Dockets feature also gives users access to Breaking Complaints, unlimited alerts, and searches. Bloomberg Law News Search houses over fifty thousand news wires, while the Business Development Center pulls together business news searches covering M&A rumors, bankruptcy rumors, and recent attorney moves. Attorneys can search patent histories, pull stock charts, and find information about relevant judges and attorneys from a single platform. The service is priced so that all these features are available under a single fixed monthly fee, a model designed to give law firms predictable costs while growing top-line revenue.

• 5. Artificial Intelligence at Work

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  Points of Law is one of Bloomberg Law's tools that uses artificial intelligence to identify court decisions on a specific point of law. Smart Code applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to create virtual annotated codes, while Brief Analyzer uses artificial intelligence to reduce the time attorneys spend analyzing legal briefs. State Chart Builders allow comparison of relevant laws and regulations across different jurisdictions. Litigation Analytics organizes analysis by attorneys, law firms, courts, judges, and companies. Practical Guidance covers litigators and transactional attorneys across various practice areas. These tools reflect the platform's stated purpose: to help counsel get answers quickly and efficiently, and to help law firms maintain and increase their profitability.

• 6. Becoming Bloomberg Industry Group

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  In September 2019, Bloomberg BNA changed its name to Bloomberg Industry Group. The new name gathered several services under one umbrella: Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, Bloomberg Government, and Bloomberg Environment. That reorganization reflected how far the platform had traveled from its 2009 pilot origins. What began as a legal research experiment had grown into one division of a broader industry intelligence operation. Bloomberg Law's integration of Bloomberg Industry Group products, with its focus on practice tools for attorney productivity, remained the connective tissue across all the changes in leadership and branding.