GREG DICKASON
Managing Director, LexisNexis Pacific

Hello, and welcome to the second edition of KeyNews in 2020.

Since the first edition, our team has pivoted to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on our customers, people, and the wider legal community.

This edition describes the solutions we have built to deliver to your needs, including a dedicated COVID-19 information site, the option to shift the format of the text and hardcopy services you receive to a digital or online format, and our support of the court and academic library communities.

With the shutdown, LexisNexis^® was fortunate to already have a flexible working environment that allowed staff to work remotely. We were able to seamlessly transfer to remote work with all meetings moved to Microsoft Teams. Our offshore centres in the Philippines were able to procure the needed hardware and moved to remote work within a week of the crisis. This has enabled us to maintain service without interruption.

Remote work has its own challenges, in particular the lack of social connections and maintaining team alignment. We have modified our communications approach to deliver daily short videos from senior leaders (the ‘Daily Dose’), have biweekly town halls or Q&A sessions with the team, and implemented a ‘LexWell’ program with virtual mindfulness / meditation sessions at lunch times. The result has been a jump in engagement, in particular in advocacy for our business and alignment to our values.

Product adoption and usage has increased through the crisis, and the similar issues module in Lexis Advance^®, released late last year, has seen significant growth in usage. The new feature uses algorithms and natural language processing to identify semantic similarities between different judgements and provides more options for terminology to search in addition to lines of argument and other useful judgements outside the established run of citing relationships.

We have also seen strong demand for our Regulatory Compliance modules, in particular international modules assisting with financial crimes regulations. With the local launch, for free, of our Modern Slavery Module we have also seen renewed interest in Regulatory Compliance from in-house corporate counsel.

If there is any way we can assist you at this unusual time, or if you have any ideas for how we can serve the wider legal and risk management community, please let me know.

Keep safe, socially distant, and connected.

Greg

Format shift, academic initiatives and information hub

At LexisNexis, we are committed to providing practical and compassionate support to help continue the important work of law schools and the legal community during this crisis. 

To support our customers, access has been provided to their existing print titles, where digital versions were available, on our flagship digital platforms Lexis Advance and Lexis Red^®, initially until 31st July 2020. Click here for more information.

The following initiatives have been made available to Australian Law Schools since 11 March 2020:

1. Gratis watermarked PDFs of high use chapters from prescribed and recommended texts for upload to University LMS for access by all students, on a course by course basis.
2. Gratis eBooks for download to two devices are available for any hardship student as vetted by a University Law School, Department or University Equity Programme.

In addition to the above, a dedicated and free COVID-19  information resource hub as well as the LexisNexis Practical Guidance toolkit have been created.

Please reach out to your Relationship Manager for more information.

Capital Monitor™

Early May this year saw Capital Monitor launch its brand-new user interface to replace one that has been in use since 2009. As well as copious enhancements, big and small, the new interface aligns with Lexis Advance and global user experience best practice to deliver consistency across the LexisNexis suite of products and increase usability.

In operation for the last 30 years, Capital Monitor opened doors for business in January 1990. To keep ahead of the curve, it has since then undergone several transformations, yet remained true to its core purpose of alerting subscribers to parliamentary, political, legislative, regulatory, and judicial news and information from its base at Australian Parliament House in Canberra.

Now delivered within minutes of publishing through email alerts, newsletters, and live web pages, fully text-searchable source content is indexed in the cloud to the Capital Monitor digital archive for search and retrieval anywhere, anytime, every 90 seconds.

Observing trademark commitment to stay close to the customer, Capital Monitor has taken a disciplined approach to collecting feedback historically. It is this that ensured customer pain points and a problem-solving attitude were front of mind while redesigning the mint website.

This upgrade follows an end-to-end systems’ overhaul in play since 2017 that has bridged the gap between content and knowledge from the past with continuous improvement and technology from the present. Changes include neater visual elements and style, as well as Lexis Advance aligned colours, iconography, and font.

The most significant change is the introduction of a consolidated global navigation menu that can be minimised when not in use and that displays the Capital Monitor Alert and Product pages. The menu can remain open if navigation preferences always need to remain visible.

An enhanced Products and Alerts Manager pages now contain all and live web pages alerting options in one place, while the Search tabs are fused under a common drop-down menu to uncover less crowded interface with all the functionality subscribers have come to expect, and more.

The new user interface is now live to all Capital Monitor subscribers; however, everyone continues to land on the old one, allowing them to visit and familiarise themselves with the new website at leisure initially. Both websites have been scheduled to run simultaneously until 30 June at least.

A series of public webinars are being planned and scheduled to run before and after the old website is phased out to ensure a smooth and easy transition for all subscribers. Service updates will be shared at each step.

Lexis Advance

Improved Precision and Power: Paragraph Filters in CaseBase^®

In early June, we launched Paragraph Filters: a new interactive data visualisation feature for CaseBase Case Citator. The filter takes the form of a graph with each column indicating the number of times a paragraph of the judgment has been cited. Data clusters reveal frequently discussed arguments, while isolated spikes indicate passages which may be compelling obiter or a useful summary of the issues.

The user can interact with the filter by:

• selecting a column to see the cases that have cited that paragraph;
• selecting a judge to jump to the start of the opinion written by that judge; and/or
• entering a term in the ‘Search within’ field to see the cases that have used that term, and the paragraphs those cases have cited.

The result is an enhancement that brings unprecedented precision and power to case law research on Lexis Advance. By combining the paragraph filter with the ‘search within’ field, users can streamline their research to see citing cases that pick up a relevant theme or issue in the cited judgment, especially by focussing the search on specific portions of the citing cases such as their catchwords. This means users can now delve into the relationship between cases based on the way they discuss and build on arguments. And since arguments can be dealt with in multiple non-contiguous passages throughout a judgment, highlighting columns corresponding to all the paragraphs cited in thematically related cases makes for more thorough research than pursuing individual threads associated with selected paragraphs.

The feature is now available to all CaseBase subscribers and can be found in the ‘Cases referring to this case’ table for Australian judgments from 1998 on. The filter appears where at least one citation by a superior court has mentioned a paragraph of the judgment. The new filter complements the existing Court and Year graphical filters, both of which remain available to users by way of a button in the top left-hand corner of the graph.

Entering a query into the ‘Search within’ field filters the list of citing cases to those which discuss the user’s term(s) and highlights in green the paragraphs which the citing cases discuss.

What’s New on Lexis Advance

Features and content on Lexis Advance are constantly evolving to better meet your needs. Below is a short list of changes you may have missed. For more information on the below, please contact your Relationship Manager or Customer Support.

Changes to sources shown in the Publications Pod

From late June, Lexis Advance users may notice a change to the order of titles appearing in the Publications Pod on the Lexis Advance home screen. To make it easier to access our most popular content sets, users who do not already have a customised list of titles in their Publications Pod will see that we have:

• Grouped related sources to free up space for other titles – For example, Law Reports can now be found under a single heading. Users can expand the group to see options for individual Reports.
• Provided easier access to high-use titles from around the country – For example, Civil Procedure titles from the most populous jurisdictions now feature more prominently.

The movement of a title out of the pod does not mean access to that title has been removed. Users are able to add, remove, and sort titles for themselves, by selecting the ‘Edit’ button in the top right-hand corner of the pod. The content of the Publications Pod remains subscription sensitive; a title can only be added to the pod if the user subscribes to that title.

Changes to citations for Queensland Reports

In March 2020, the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for the State of Queensland (ICLRQ) announced the release of a new series of Queensland Reports, the authorised report series for the Queensland Supreme Court. The launch of the new series will also see a change in abbreviation and citation style. Judgments from the new series are already available to subscribers on Lexis Advance.

New Snapshot view for International Cases Search Results

In early June 2020, we released a new results view for international cases on Lexis Advance. Before running a search from the Quick Find pod or International Cases advanced search form, users will be able to choose whether they are taken to the standard Cases results view or the new Snapshot view.

To help the user decide which jurisdiction provides the most promising results, the new display shows up to 3 results per country, with countries displayed in order of number of cases returned (which should reflect overarching relevance to the query). To access the full palette of post-search filtering tools, the user can click through to see all results from that country.

Lexis^® Draft

A new release of Lexis Draft is now available to download and install via our Downloads page.

Our newest version is the result of customer feedback and a focus on improving performance, consistency and user experience. Please review our Technical Guide before installing.

Lexis Draft gives legal practitioners peace of mind that their documents are accurate, complete and consistent, validating their citations and proofreading their work within Microsoft Word and Outlook:

• Accurate Citations & Research – Review cited cases & legislations, easily accessing deeper research via Lexis Advance, CaseBase^® & LawNow^® without leaving your document or interrupting your concentration.
• Fast, Efficient Proofreading – Quickly scan documents for term risks, cross-references, formatting errors, details missed during a long negotiation, or unwanted residual information from repurposed documents.
• Simple, Collaborative Editing – Easily mark and share errors for colleagues when there is more than one contributor to a document.
• Consistent Language Review – Improve the clarity and readability of your document, keeping your writing polished, concise, and consistent when multiple staff are editing.
• Seamless Document Conversion – PDF to Word conversion made easy.

For further information on the enhancements and bug fixes in this release, please review our Release Notes.

If you would like training or a refresher session for your team on Lexis Draft, simply contact your Relationship Manager.

LexisNexis Practical Guidance

Practical Guidance COVID-19 Toolkit

Free access to helpful resources to aid legal practitioners in navigating the legal implications of the ongoing pandemic. Visit our website to explore key guidance, checklists, infographics, and latest legal updates.

Practice Area Round-ups

Fortnightly newsletters, our new Practice Area Round-ups are a current awareness initiative to provide subscribers with the practice area news highlights they need delivered directly to their inbox. Covering latest developments in practice and in their subscription as well as key calendar dates.

New Subtopic view

This enhancement on Lexis Advance aims to improve the browse experience when a user clicks into a subtopic from a Practical Guidance module homepage. The new design better surfaces core Practical Guidance content that users need: overview documents, guidance notes, precedents, forms, and key cases.

Corporate training materials

We are excited to be creating new training materials for in-house counsel and governance, risk and compliance specialists to deliver to their staff on a range of workplace issues. Starting with the topic of modern slavery as a growing area all organisations need to be on top of, the materials we have created are white label, meaning organisations can apply their own branding and add organisation-specific information. This will allow the in-house legal team to reduce their time spent preparing training for staff in their organisation and consequently increase time on managing in-house legal matters.

Practice area highlights

• PG Banking & Finance – New guidance on how finance transactions may be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting regulatory changes. New guidance on remote and electronic signing, and emergency legislation in response to COVID-19 regarding signing and witnessing documents. New guidance on legal opinions, provided as condition precedent to a corporate finance. And coming soon: guidance on borrower issues and hardship and default during a pandemic, and LIBOR transition.
• PG Competition – New resources on the ACCC’s approach to competition law during the pandemic including COVID-19 Toolkit for competition law and Checklist for co-operation between competitors during COVID-19. New practical checklists on dealings with competitors. Coming soon: New practical checklists on dealings with trade associations, dealings with customers and competitors, types of exclusivity for exclusive dealing conduct and an infographic on the key elements of cartel conduct.
• PG Cybersecurity, Data Protection & Privacy – New materials in response to COVID-19, including addressing cybersecurity and privacy risks with a remote workforce. New topic on digital currency and blockchain, helping practitioners navigate this emerging area of regulation.
• PG Employment – New COVID-19 Toolkit for Employers and guidance on dealing with the impact of widespread disease on the workplace. New topics covering labour supply chain (including coverage of modern slavery audits, risk assessment, KPIs), private sector whistle-blower protections, discriminatory conduct under WHS laws, underpayments/wage theft (including an underpayment audit checklist) and pandemics and COVID-19. Substantially revised topics: Managing employee illness and injury (including, absenteeism, and performance management checklists) and Modern award variations, and other awards. And we’ve embedded new links to essential Fair Work Ombudsman tools providing guidance and document templates for key workplace issues that all employers need to be across.
• PG Insolvency – Guidance has been updated to reflect the temporary changes regarding statutory demands arising from COVID-19 and new guidance is being provided on the temporary suspension of insolvent trading laws. And coming soon we will be launching an automated statutory demand and winding up tool: using an efficient Q&A process the tool will generate statutory demands, verifying affidavits, all court-related documents, and ASIC forms for an undefended winding up.
• PG Succession – New Smart Tool allowing practitioners to quickly create the first draft of a simple will for NSW, Vic, or Qld. The language and terminology used is based on Hutley’s Australian Wills Precedents, as the recognised authority in the field, with custom drafting allowing for tailored requirements.

Lexis Red

Recent Updates – Lexis Red 3.13 released on 1^st May 2020

Lexis Red is a digital platform through which you can access your preferred legal content. Through the app you can browse, search, share, and annotate faster than before. Lexis Red is available on iPad, Android tablets, Windows 10 and Macintosh desktops, and laptops.

In our recent release (Lexis Red 3.13), the team focused on improving the user experience of Lexis Red. This includes:

• Hide/show commentary for loose-leaf titles: a great addition to Lexis Red. The hide/show commentary function enables a selective view of legislative provisions by quickly hiding commentary;
• App version displayed on login screen: from version 3.13 onward, the app version will appear in the Lexis Red login screen. With this, one can easily identify the app version they are using.

The next Lexis Red app update is planned for August 2020 release.

Additionally, our team is currently working to release new LexisNexis practitioner books on the Lexis Red platform which will be released throughout 2020. You can view the book release plan (Jan – June 2020) from our Lexis Red microsite or click here.

If you would like to learn more about Lexis Red, please contact your Relationship Manager.

Practice Area Updates

Civil Procedure
Commencement of new uniform civil procedure rules in May 2020

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

The new Uniform Civil Court Rules 2020 have now been gazetted and commenced 18 May 2020. The landmark legislation for the first time introduces uniform rules for the SA Supreme, District and Magistrates Courts, and have been designed by the Rules Committee to coincide and integrate with the launch in the SA courts of electronic filing. Civil Procedure South Australia will of course be updated to incorporate the new Rules, but in addition subscribers will have access to a schedule of updates throughout 2020 whereby the annotations to the existing 2006 civil Rules will be reviewed, updated by our authors and applied as appropriate to the 2020 Rules.

Property
COVID-19 legislation

ALL JURISDICTION

Spanned over issues 35.3, 35.4 and 35.5 of Australian Property Law Bulletin, LexisNexis will be publishing articles summarising the operation and effects of the various legislation being passed by the State legislative bodies in relation to COVID-19 as it relates to various aspects of property law.

Insurance
Coronavirus and its impact on Australian insurance

ALL JURISDICTION

The Insurance Law Bulletin will soon feature a special coronavirus edition (#36.1) of the newsletter, which will feature topical perspectives from experienced practitioners on issues affecting various aspects of insurance law, including travel insurance, life insurance, business interruption, and public liability insurance.

Corporations
Government's response to the Hayne Royal Commission recommendations

ALL JURISDICTION

The response to the Hayne Royal Commission recommendations has been one of the most comprehensive corporate and financial service law reforms in Australian history. The Treasurer indicates more than 50 out of 54 of the Government's commitments in response to the final report of the Royal Commission will be implemented or subject to legislation by mid-2020. Austin and Black's Annotations to the Corporations Act has been and will be updated in a timely manner to reflect those legislative changes. The commentary features updates prepared by our prominent authors such as Justice Ashley Black, who gives insights into the short and long term effects of the response.

Costs
Overall update to publication including:
- WA adoption of the Uniform Law
- Currency of language updated when referring to LPUL (Updates currently awaiting processing)
- Updated cases in the Assessment chapter

NEW SOUTH WALES

Legal Costs NSW has been significantly updated to reflect multiple legal developments in the area of costs law.

Notably, the language in the publication referring to the Legal Profession Uniform Law has been updated so that it is no longer a 'recent development'. The content on the LPUL has been expanded to detail more on informed consent and disclosure in costs agreements.
Cases added to the Assessment chapter of the publication that illustrate apportionment by cost assessors.

Native Title
New commentary on native title agreements

ALL JURISDICTION

LexisNexis has upcoming commentary on legal issues involving native title agreements which summarises the cases and law around breach, specific performance, damages, frustration, declarations and interlocutory and other remedies. This chapter from the Native Title Service deals with ‘Agreements about native title: Indigenous Land Use Agreements and other contracts’.

The chapter details the different types of Indigenous Land Use Agreements (including procedures and processes for their authorisation and registration, and objections) and the latest update covers native title contracts in general.
This chapter on native title agreements has far-reaching implications that will impact customers outside of the traditional native title jurisdiction.

Bourke's Criminal Law News Victoria
Issue 2 was a special COVID-19 issue

VICTORIA

Issue 2 of Bourke's Criminal Law News Victoria, released in April, was a special double issue, exclusively covering the law of the COVID-19 lockdown in Victoria. Authored by Felicity Gerry QC and Raphael de Vietri, the issue looks at Australia's legal structure for public health emergencies, the Biosecutiry Act 2015 (Cth), the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 (Vic), public order offences, offences against the person, powers of arrest and detention, human rights law and much more.

Loans and Finance
COVID 19 - Impact on Australia

ALL JURISDICTION

As a result of COVID-19 many borrowers will be facing the prospect of defaulting on their loan(s). To accommodate this, the Australian Encylopaedia of Forms and Precedents now features a new Forbearance of Debt Agreement which may be entered into where a borrower has defaulted under a loan agreement as a result of COVID-19 and the lender agrees not to exercise its rights of remedy against the borrower for the forbearance period. For borrowers looking to enter into a forbearance of debt agreement due to COVID-19, this precedent may be particularly useful.

Building and Construction
Impact of COVID 19 on the Building and Construction industry

ALL JURISDICTION

NSW Procurement has stated that from and including 7 April 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic qualifies as an “emergency” for the purposes of the Public Works and Procurement Act 1912 (NSW) and has released guidance to NSW Government agencies on how to conduct emergency procurement under cl 4 of the Public Works and Procurement Regulation 2019. We have published commentary summarising the key changes set out in the Emergency Regulations that now apply in New South Wales including how signatures can be witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Media, IT & Communications
COVID-19 impacts

ALL JURISDICTION

A double issue of Privacy Law Bulletin, 17.1&2 tackles matters brought to the fore during this global pandemic which has increased existing tensions between an individual’s right to privacy versus public safety. Issues looked at include the possible implications of widespread government surveillance; the use of facial recognition databases; what is the the role of privacy frameworks in assisting with and influencing risk mitigation efforts in relation to personal data; and how different regulators around the world have approached data privacy issues and guidelines in the context of COVID-19.

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