A new feature allows CourtLink users to have case updates delivered regularly. Screenshot courtesy of LexisNexis.

LexisNexis Legal & Professional announced early Monday morning that its CourtLink court docket and document solution has been integrated into the company’s legal research platform Lexis Advance.

Among other things, this means that users will now be able to access CourtLink via the Lexis Advance mobile app. They’ll also be able to access both CourtLink and Lexis Advance using a single username and password, which speaks to the overarching motivation behind the integration in the first place: Bringing CourtLink into the modern age of solutions.

Eric Olson, director of litigation solutions at LexisNexis, said the company relied on customer feedback to help get them there.

“Frankly, the biggest customer complaint we got is, your courts are great, your functionality is terrific, but your product is really hard to use. It’s old, it’s got too many steps in the way to get things done and it’s just not a modern tool,” he said.

So what constitutes a modern tool these days? For starters, a docket or document search can be now be executed, filters and all, from a single screen as opposed to the five that users had previously been required to navigate. There are also fewer steps required to manage the CourtLink alerts regarding new litigation activity on a case, which can be setup in conjunction with alerts from Lexis Advance and timed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

In other words, it’s about efficiency. Operational efficiency has remained a critical element of focus for law firms looking to maintain a competitive edge against alternative legal service providers. Such an environment puts pressure on solutions to be more intuitive and user friendly in a manner that echoes the technology platforms attorneys are engaging with in their personal lives.

“It’s often very, very hard to get the end user of the data, the attorney, to attend training. They have actual other work to do than learn how to use our products,” Olson said.

Even the decision to fold CourtLink into Lexis Advance could be seen as a play towards efficiency by allowing users to engage multiple functions under a single system, although Olson pointed out that LexisNexis has been steadily integrating more of its products with the legal research platform for some time now.

This holds especially true for data analytics and visualization technology that came with LexisNexis’ acquisitions of Ravel Law or Lex Machina. To be sure, with the integration, CourtLink users will now be able to search the case histories of attorneys, judges or law firms associated with a particular docket using Lex Machina analytics.

Despite all of the new bells and whistles, the ultimate test for the revamped CourtLink might still come down to whether or not users experience a smoother ride than before.

“We knew that the difficulty of using the product was effecting the breadth of use, and we hope to get a much sort of broader audience now,” Olson said.