Microsoft and West Group Launch Legal Toolkit
NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 1998 — West Group, the leading information provider to U.S. legal professionals, and Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of West Group Legal Tools, a suite of integrated software applications customized for the desktop of the more than one million legal professionals in the nation, allowing them to access timesaving tools from one convenient location.
Microsoft and West Group jointly announced West Group Legal Tools today at Legal Tech New York held at the New York Hilton. This is the second joint effort between West Group and Microsoft in the last 12 months.
“West Group is known as an innovator in the legal publishing industry,” said Cory Linton, professional services marketing manager at Microsoft. “West has done an excellent job of fully exploiting the capabilities of Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, making it easier for legal professionals to take full advantage of the Internet. We are delighted to work with West Group on creating this package of applications for the legal community.”
“The issue for today and tomorrow is productivity,” said Michael E. Wilens, executive vice president and chief technology officer of West Group. “The West Group Legal Tools suite unleashes the creativity of the legal professional by providing state-of-the-art technology from Microsoft and premier legal content from West Group.”
Release 1.0 of West Group Legal Tools includes the following features:
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CiteLink. CiteLink scans a Word document to find legal citations and marks them as Internet hyperlinks. This enables users to click on a citation linked to WestDoc
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, West Group’s document retrieval service, or WESTLAW on the Web, where the full text of the citation can be retrieved. CiteLink also uses the marked citations to create a Table of Authorities, relieving the tedium of this common yet vital task and helping reduce errors and missed citations. -
Shell extensions. Find on WESTLAW and KeyCite sm functionality can be added to the Microsoft® Windows® 95 operating system Start menu.
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Desktop themes. Themes for the desktop include custom wallpaper, screensavers, animated cursors, clip art and sounds tailored for users in the legal profession.
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Internet Explorer Favorites folder. This collection of frequently accessed West Group Web sites is installed as a folder in the user’s Internet Explorer Favorites menu.
West Group Legal Tools can be downloaded free of charge from West Group’s home page at (http://www.westgroup.com/) or from the Microsoft legal industry page at http://www.microsoft.com/industry/legal/ (connect-time charges may apply). They can also be retrieved from a West Group Legal Tools CD-ROM.
In August, West Group and Microsoft announced that The West Education Network (TWEN), West Group’s Web-based legal education service, was built using the Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS). More than 6,000 students and 500 professors in more than 100 law schools use TWEN as an electronic extension of the classroom. It can be viewed at (http://www.twen.com/) .
About West Group
Headquartered in Eagan, Minnesota, West Group, with approximately $1.3 billion in 1997 sales and some 8,000 employees, is the preeminent provider of information to the U.S. legal market. West Group is a division of The Thomson Corp. (TSE “TOC”) and was formed when West Publishing and Thomson Legal Publishing merged in June 1996.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. If you are a reporter attending Legal Tech New York, stop by the West Group booth 230 or the Microsoft booth 2401 for a demonstration of West Group Legal Tools.
