Meet "Bloomberg Law"

Last week I met the head of Bloomberg's relatively new "Law" initiative, aimed at putting $1,500/month Bloomberg terminals on the desks of senior partners and general counsel. 

Before I describe what "Bloomberg Law" is about, I invite you to take a look at their brand-new offices (between 58th and 59th, Third and Lex), which are a visual and experiential delight unmatched since "Star Wars"—with the distinction that these spaces actually function.

As we all know, Bloomberg is already The Name Brand in financial intelligence, with over a quarter of a million subscribers to their core business and financial market information resources.  Bloomberg has also long since gone multimedia, with Bloomberg TV and Radio, a suite of magazines and publishing resources, and, lately, podcasts.  So what does Bloomberg Law offer?:

• a comprehensive set of legal, regulatory, and compliance databases;
• news, both real-time and archival;
• rankings;
• company and biographical information;
• legal research tools; and
• of course, all the rest of Bloomberg's financial news, data, and analytic applications.

The head of Bloomberg Law, Constantin Cotzias (a Brit who practiced at Denton Wilde Sapte and elsewhere) is unapologetic about the price of the terminals and unabashed about the scope of Bloomberg Law's ambitions compared to competitive offerings:  "Well, if you want an Audi, you should buy an Audi, but if you want to go nought-60 in 3 seconds, you really need a Ferrari, don't you?"   So what exactly can this Ferrari do for you?

For the co-chair of Orrick's New York bankruptcy group, Lorraine McGowen, it enables her to research and discover companies potentially on the brink of financial meltdown, identify their bondholders and unsecured creditors, and tailor a custom-made pitch letter drawing from (say) the content of actual loan agreements retrievable online, as well as more sophisticated tools such as "relative value" rankings—Bloomberg's rating of the operational strength of a firm vis-a-vis its peer group.  In keeping with Bloomberg's high-quant-quotient roots, here are some of the tools available to analyze likelihood of default:

"Specify whether you want to solve for the Altman Z-score, the Double Prime Z-score or the Hillegeist Z-score. [Prof. Edward] Altman [of NYU's Stern School of Business] developed his original Z-score for manufacturers. The Double Prime model is more suited to nonmanufacturing companies, while the Hillegeist formula generates a probability of default in addition to the Z-score."

For Brandon Becker, co-chair of the securities regulatory practice at Wilmer-Hale in Washington, it permits him to analyze trading patterns in a security tick-by-tick and view breaking company news surrounding those patterns, as well as to see how other companies in the same industry were trading simultaneously.  Armed with this information, he obviously has a far clearer view of whether insider trading is something to be concerned about.  (Obviously, the same tools arm both plaintiffs' and defense attorneys.)

I intend to stay in close touch with Constantin; for people who need bleeding-edge tools, I for one would put my money on Bloomberg without looking back.