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With the launch of Private Market Data from LexisNexis® Practical Guidance, attorneys can expect to gain access to a wealth of information they never or rarely had access to before, regardless of the size of their firm. Now you can research, inspect, and gain actionable insights using data from your peers across the country to work smarter when negotiating commercial real estate leases, labor and employment discrimination settlements, and more.
Private Market Data (Commercial Leasing) is a unique databank featuring more than 40 customizable data filters. Filling out the survey will give you access to data on trends to ensure your clients get the absolute best from your negotiations. You’ll also get access to a complimentary high-level report full of actionable insights.
Private Market Data (Employment Discrimination Settlements) includes thousands of recently negotiated, non-public employment discrimination, harassment, and/or retaliation settlement agreement terms. With it, you can gain insights on current market trends, develop more effective settlement strategies, and ensure your clients receive the most favorable settlement agreement terms.
We asked LexisNexis product manager Johnston Chen all about Private Market Data in this special video interview. Watch to learn more about Private Market Data, or scroll down to read the transcript!
Transcript:
LexisNexis Private Market Data – Interview with Johnston Chen, Product Manager
Q: Johnston, can you tell us a little bit about your story?
Johnston: Yeah, absolutely! So my name is Johnston Chen. I'm a Product Manager here at LexisNexis and I work on building new products that get our attorneys excited about data analytics and new initiatives. I've been here at Lexis for about four years now and before that I worked for five years as an M&A Attorney at a white-shoe firm here in New York City.
Q: Very cool. So you recently were heavily involved in the development of a novel new product for attorneys at LexisNexis. Can you tell us about the story and where the idea came from?
Johnston: Yeah, great question. So, I'm working on a new initiative called Private Market Data. Private Market Data really came from our customers. Essentially what the product is, is a way for attorneys to gather private information about highly negotiated agreements specifically in commercial leasing on the real estate side and executive discrimination settlement agreements on the labor and employment side. We are able to provide attorneys with data from these agreements that are not available anywhere on the market today. They're not available on public sources, they’re not available outside of their firms. But through Private Market Data, people are now able to get this information for the first time ever.
To address that specific question, where did this idea come from, it really came from our customers. Our central mission at LexisNexis is listening to our customers and leading with where they want to take the legal research industry. You know we know that transaction attorneys are always looking for market information. They want to know where the market is, where it's going, and they want to be at the forefront of it when they rely on our products. You know, when I was a practicing M&A attorney here in New York City it was always my job to provide the strongest positions for my clients and that really required knowing the market’s stance on every provision, every single provision, that I'm working on. And when it comes to private agreements that you don't find on Edgar that can be very difficult. You know you might have precedent and agreements within your law firm you might rely on senior associates, your colleagues, the partners, but you know really one thing that we heard over and over again was that it would be an amazing and truly groundbreaking opportunity to get access to this information that was never available before.
We know that Lexis already provides great products when it comes to public data for example we have Market Standards which provides hundreds of data points on the most negotiated deal terms when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, finance with respective credit agreements and commitment letter, and also with executive employment agreements. You know, customers really wanted even more than that and so by bringing in this private data you know we're really able to bring this, to bring access to higher level, and that's where that's where Private Market Data comes into play and really where this idea came from.
It truly is from listening to our customers and hearing what they have to say about where the legal research industry should be going.
Q: Can you talk to me a bit about the current process, what an attorney has to go through if they don't have access? Let’s say a real estate attorney working on an agreement, what they have to go through if they don’t have Private Market Data.
Johnston: Yeah, it's a great question. For attorneys who don't have Private Market Data, you really have to rely on the agreements that you've already negotiated, the guidance and expertise of the other attorneys at your firm, which if you’re at a large firm you may have access to more and if you're in a smaller firm you may not have access to those, and beyond that, you know really just depending on intuition.
What's different about Private Market Dat is that it is the very first time you can get national data across the country on how people outside of your firm, attorneys like you outside of your firm across all different types of firms are working on and negotiating each of these specific provisions. So if you don't have Private Market Data and you see a provision for example a commercial lease agreement that you never seen before you may not have a direction to know what to do about that. Perhaps you will rely on your own experience and perhaps you email a colleague and say what do you think about this provision. But what you wouldn't be able to say is across the country or in my particular region or my particular city this provision only comes up 20% of the time in retail lease agreements or for office lease agreements of a similar square footage in a similar region to me.
And now because of Private Market Data you will be able to filter down and see those exact criteria and know, “Actually, opposing counsel is being a little unreasonable here in that market in my region and I know because I have the numbers not it's not reasonable in the tri-state area or it may not even be reasonable nationally.” With Private Market Data, attorneys are armed with that kind of information to go back to the negotiating table and ensure that their clients are getting fair and reasonable provisions in their agreements.
Q: It sounds like in specific situations that attorneys deal in they could be dealing with opposing counsel naked or not fully equipped if they're not going to the table with with Private Market Data. intuition alone and particularly with smaller firms they are not being equipped in an adequate way without Private Market Data.
Johnston: Absolutely and you know there’s even more to the story because even in larger firms for example there are plenty of junior attorneys who may not have experience with these particular provisions or these particular agreements. Access to Private Market Data helps those firms as well because junior attorneys who don’t have that experience are able to quickly ramp up which saves time for them, saves time for senior associates, and for partners, to ensure that people are aligning properly and are getting access to this kind of information.
I will also say that it even extends beyond opposing counsel. You know, negotiating agreements with opposing counsel is critical and having Private Market Data during those negotiations makes a huge difference but it is also relevant in other places as well. And I'll give you an example of that.
For labor and employment we offer Private Market Data, Executive Employment Discrimination Agreements, and attorneys may be familiar with negotiating discrimination settlement agreements but maybe not for every type of claim. Maybe you have experience working on a claim that is based on race or gender but maybe you don't have experience working on one related to sexual orientation or disability or national origin. And you might have a prospective client come up to you and say, “Here's my story. What do you think the odds are for me to get a settlement amount and what is an average settlement amount that I can expect?”
By having access to Private Market Data, that attorney would be able to look up the particular claim type that we've described, that this attorney may not have experienced in, could look up average settlement amounts and see when those settlement amounts change depending on the stage of the proceeding. For example, when only a demand letter is sent, when an EEOC charge has been made, or perhaps at the very end after litigation or demand for arbitration has been made. That attorney suddenly has access to all of these numbers for all of these claims types and is able to say, if it is a harassment claim, if it's a disparate treatment claim based off of the discrimination that you've described, at this point in time this is what we can expect to see on average in this area.
There is an incredible amount of layering of nuance that can be gathered to help attorneys understand what they could expect when taking on new clients and on the other side, representing the other side, it can also help organizations understand what might be a reasonable or unreasonable settlement amount that plaintiffs attorneys might be bringing. And so there really are so many dimensions to the ways that Private Market Data can be leveraged at different places in an attorney's workload to equip them, to really equipped them, with information that they hadn’t had access to in the past.
Q: It sounds like the level of detail and the degree of resolution is pretty powerful that attorneys can be equipped with, with Private Market Data. If you had to pick one advantage of all the advantages that Private Market Data gives attorneys, which singular advantage would you give? Is it data information or is it feature specific with the product? What one thing gets you the most excited to talk to attorneys about?
Johnston: I mean really the thing that gets me the most excited about this are the customizable filters. So, you know, we talked a little bit about them but this is really just scratching the surface. For real estate, we have over 40 filters all of which are customizable and on employment discrimination settlement agreements, we have over 30 of them. All of these are layerable; they can be stacked one on top of the other to gain insights that you wouldn't be able to find. And I'm so proud that we are able to do all of this and give attorneys that kind of power. It’s really an exciting way of changing the way that law is practiced.
Q: If the layering is the most exciting thing, if, let's say an attorney isn’t properly equipped to layer as you say or apply multiple filters, then are they at risk of picking examples and cases that aren’t really in the market in their particular region? Are they are not doing it the right way since they don’t have the detail the databank can give them?
Johnston: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the way to think about it, for me, is without Private Market Data, there’s plenty to rely on there is an attorney’s own experience to rely on, there is the experience of their colleagues, there is analogous, not exact situations that they could probably find publicly but having this kind of private data means that they can gain access to and have a collective form of knowledge.
They can have a collective form of information and knowledge and experience that still includes everything that they have access to but it is now just amplified exponentially because suddenly the experiences of other firms of other regions or perhaps competitor law firms that do something similar… Suddenly all of that is there it is available to them to amplify their experiences.
And, you know, we see that. We see that happening in other industries where data is not just data anymore it suddenly becomes Big Data. Big Data aggregates large volumes in order to see trends, in order to see patterns, that may not be visible to any one person, may not be visible to any one firm. But when Big Data is created suddenly becomes clear.
I recently spoke to an in-house counsel at a Fortune 100 company who had access to Private Market Data and he told me that in his view Private Market Data deserves 5 out of 5 stars. He says he said that he never had access to this type of data before. He was able to spot trends in the data and that as an in-house counsel it suddenly became very valuable in his day-to-day work as well, so not simply at major law firms, not simply at smaller firms, but even in the in-house setting as well. And it makes me so proud that he can do his job better you know because we are providing him with something that he can't get anywhere else.
Q: All right talk to me about the value proposition of the report itself. So if an attorney was operating with just the interactive tool that's the baseline, what extra insight does the report give them relative to them doing it themselves?
Johnston: Yeah, it's a great question. Everybody who gains access to Private Market Data, which is the tool with all the filters that we talked, about also gains access to a complimentary report. This complimentary companion report is created by senior attorneys with subject matter expertise here at LexisNexis analyzing the key trends and inside of the Private Market Data databank.
Why is this useful? It’s useful because we know that attorneys are busy. They may not have time to dig into details. That's fine! We want to make this as easy as possible for them and so we created a companion report where we have analyzed the most important trends, and the most important insights, and provided that in an easy to read and digestible way immediately. From there, it's a great jumping-off point for attorneys to find additional details within the databank that may interest them but we want to make this the most user-friendly and informative tool that we can. And we really think that having a report that lays out in simple, easy-to-read terms what are some key insights is the best way of doing that.
Q: What does Private Market Data symbolize or signal to attorneys in the U.S. about who LexisNexis is as a company? When they see Private Market Data it should signal to them something about LexisNexis and our brand. What is that?
Johnston: Private Market Data should signal to every attorney in the U.S. whether they're at a large firm, whether they’re at a small firm, whether they’re a solo practitioner, whether they’re in-house counsel that LexisNexis is all about innovation. LexisNexis is always thinking about anticipating the next big thing. We are about finding new ways of creating value for our attorneys by helping them work faster, work better, work smarter, and getting them answers to questions that they may not even know to ask. We are always thinking about the next big thing and people should see Private Market Data and realize we are always working towards that goal.
Q: Nailed it! Thank you!
Johnston: Thank you!