Press Room

NEW YORK – September 13, 2012 – ALM has acquired RivalEdge, a Saratoga, Calif.-based company that has developed a unique online service for finding, filtering and delivering relevant news and information directly into the hands of attorneys every day.

RivalEdge uses “Big Data” techniques to process news and information for legal professionals. The service monitors thousands of online news sources, law firm Web sites and social media services daily. Its proprietary technology is then used to find articles, blog posts and social media mentions that are relevant to specific concepts of interest to attorneys and aggregate that information into highly personalized daily email alerts delivered to each end user. Topics covered may include competitive intelligence about other law firms, legal developments affecting clients and prospective clients, or industry news regarding specific practice areas.

“Our law firm customers need new ways to organize and consume the huge volume of news and information that floods their email inboxes every day, without the risk of missing a vital development that escaped their own best monitoring efforts,” said Bill Carter, president and chief executive officer of ALM, a leading provider of news, research and information for the U.S. legal market. “RivalEdge’s innovative technology will serve as the foundation for a ‘listening platform’ that will break new ground in the legal industry. Rather than receiving endless emails, alerts, newsletters and tweets from various sources of content — in different formats and at various times during the day — attorneys will be able to rely on ALM to deliver current information they need to stay on top of their practices, industries and competitors in a much more efficient way.”

According to Carter, RivalEdge will be part of the company’s ALM Legal Intelligence division, which offers detailed business information for and about the legal industry, focused on the top U.S. and international law firms.

“Our goal with developing this platform was to make it much easier and more efficient for attorneys to obtain the precise news and information they need in order to better pursue their business and marketing objectives,” said Srikanth (“Sri”) Chari, founder of RivalEdge. “The key differentiator is our taxonomy and concept map algorithms, which have been built over several years based on the search patterns of hundreds of beta users in the legal industry. We’re gratified that ALM sees the value in this technology and are excited to be associated with their elite brand in delivering the RivalEdge platform to law firms nationwide.”

RivalEdge is powered by advanced search technology that uses sophisticated algorithms in order to locate and parse articles that are of interest to users from both the open Web and from trusted sources. The service differs from most currently available products for finding and delivering online content – such as setting up alerts, receiving daily RSS feeds and subscribing to news monitoring services – because it seeks out relevant content based on the concepts involved, not just those that “hit” on the precise terms entered by the user. For example, rather than only returning articles that contain the words “intellectual property law” within them, RivalEdge technology can locate relevant articles regarding a recent copyright decision that will be of interest to IP lawyers – even if those precise search terms do not appear in the text of the documents.

In addition to the listening platform that ALM will be developing and offering as part of its ALM Legal Intelligence portfolio, there are already two products offered by RivalEdge. FirmWatch, which monitors law firm news, events, publications and social media posts, provides law firm partners and marketing professionals with daily news alerts summarizing the online activity of any law firm specified by the customer. LateralWatch, which tracks information about partners, associates and other professionals in law firms, provides law firm partners and recruiting professionals with weekly updates regarding lateral moves and headcount changes according to law firm and practice group.

For more information about RivalEdge or to schedule a live demonstration of the service, please go to www.rivaledge.com, call 866-866-8677 or email [email protected].

ALM and RivalEdge are both privately owned companies. No financial terms regarding the transaction were disclosed.

About ALM

ALM is the most trusted media, information and intelligence company supporting both the practice of and business of professionals in the legal, insurance, commercial real estate and financial services industries. ALM delivers leading data, intelligence, insights, events and audiences essential for growing businesses globally to over 7 million professionals. Please visit www.alm.com for more information, and visit www.alm.com/events/ to learn about our upcoming events. Please follow us on Twitter at @ALMGlobal_.