A complement to law firm updates and legal advice

USI Consulting Group's Legal & Compliance department monitors legislative and regulatory changes that affect employee benefit programs. The Group’s professionals analyze the potential impact of these changes and provide recommendations, all guidance that could help law departments respond to new developments (See my post of Sept. 5, 2005 on Countrywide and its efforts to track such developments.). The Group produces a monthly client newsletter, called Benefits InfoSource, and periodic updates.

What interests me is this netherworld: not a law firm, but more than a legal research firm. One can imagine all kinds of organizations that track legal developments, especially in heavily regulated fields, and provide practice guidance and interpretation, yet don’t practice law. Blogs exhibit some of this unclear quality of being professionally polymorphous. Offshore vendors could inexpensively go a long way with this kind of an offering. Law departments should seek out this additional layer of information and counsel.