A growing patchwork of national and international privacy laws is not only bringing new urgency to businesses' compliance efforts, it's also changing the way legal research platforms operate.

Whereas players in the legal research arena have traditionally focused on tracking regulations and court cases, the rapidity with which privacy and other compliance challenges are elevating the level of risk is likely pushing these tech companies to focus on solving problems that haven't been posed yet.

Mark West, vice president of knowledge services and business excellence at Integreon, indicated that the company invests a tremendous amount of time and energy in tracking legislation as it evolves state-by-state.

"Our focus has gone from being more a static research request that comes in as a question—can you once every six months or can you periodically compare the differences in the laws between different states—to now it's far more about the moment when [a new regulation] hits," West said.

To be sure, Integreon isn't the only legal research company angling to be on the cusp of privacy regulations as they develop. Earlier this month, Fastcase and Ross announced a partnership focused on content, research and development. Fastcase CEO Ed Walters had expressed an interest in more fully developing the platforms' capabilities around regulatory alerts.

"I think that's a great frontier for legal research. It's more proactive, it follows industries, not queries and there's so much regulatory activity across different states and the federal government. Intelligent tools [that can] help people track the developing regulations will be really important for lawyers," Walters told Legaltech News.

But is there an underlying need in the marketplace to support those ambitions? It doesn't seem like questions related to privacy regulations will be slowing down at the law firm or corporate level any time soon.

Ed McAndrew, a partner at DLA Piper, said that both clients and their law firms are struggling with many of the same issues when it comes to privacy compliance. One of the biggest challenges is that approved regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act keep changing.

"That law is literally not even in effect yet and there's another ballot initiative pending. The regulations haven't been finalized," McAndrew said.

However that doesn't necessarily mean that a legal research company is the the sole outlet for that information. DLA Piper, for example, makes use of court databases and other publicly available information as needed.

But research companies still may be shifting away from the more reactive stance they have traditionally occupied, which hinged on supplying an answer to a question asked while a company was already in crisis.

West positioned the value-add of a company like Integreon as preventative. Businesses want to be able to demonstrate to a regulator that they did everything in their power to either protect against or mitigate the damage of a breach. The sooner they can get started, the better.

"There's been a real fusion of legal research and business research coming together on that side," West said.