Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Law Firm Competitive Intelligence Resources 45-60

Competitive Intelligence for Transactional Lawyers Venture Capital Yahoo! – Venture Capital. Offers venture capital news. As I’ve discussed in a prior tip, you can even set-up a customized news feed to target a specific venture...

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Competitive Intelligence for Transactional Lawyers

Venture Capital

• Yahoo! – Venture Capital. Offers venture capital news. As I’ve discussed in a prior tip, you can even set-up a customized news feed to target a specific venture capital firm. For example, here’s an RSS news feed for Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
• MoneyTree Survey Report. PricewaterhouseCoopers compiles a quarterly study of venture capital investment activity in the United States.
• BusinessWeek Online – Deal Flow. BusinessWeek blog on venture capital and startups. Also available by RSS.

Mergers & Acquisitions

• Yahoo! – Mergers & Acquisitions. M&A news feed.
• CNNMoney – M&A Databank. Features reports on recent M&A deals, including transaction details and information on the target and acquiror.
• BNET – Mergers and Acquisitions. Features RSS feed of mergers and acquisitions updates.
  BNET also provides an RSS feed for mergers and acquisitions white papers.
• Onecle – Mergers Agreements. Features mergers and acquisitions agreements that were disclosed in SEC filings.

Initial Public Offerings

• MSN Money – IPO Center Offers IPO filings, highlights and news.
• Yahoo! IPOs Features latest IPO pricings, filings, withdrawals and news.
• Hoover’s Online – IPO Central Features IPO filings, calendar and more.

Think Globally, Act Globally

Despite the election-year demagoguery over outsourcing and Benedict Arnold CEOs, the wave of globalization has continued unabated. As companies continue to augment their existing workforce with lower-cost help from overseas, law firms are frequently needed to help their clients deal with legal, business and compliance issues in an international marketplace. Here are some resources to help you keep in touch with your overseas branches or clients.

• Yahoo! – International News. Features financial news.
• CNN/Money – World Business. Features international business news. CNN.com – Business News also offers international business news with different stories than the CNN/Money web site. Here’s an RSS feed for CNNMoney – News/International
• Yahoo! – European Business & Economy. Features an RSS feed of European business news.
  
• BBC News – Business. Features international business news, as well as an RSS feed.
  
• International Herald Tribune – Business. Features international business news, as well as an RSS feed.
  

WaRSSington DC

A few years ago, the Supreme Court finally joined the other branches of the US Government with their own web site, which was a big breakthrough for that conservative institution. Nowadays, government web sites are more or less taken for granted. The latest technological push is towards implementing RSS feeds for press releases or other government announcements. Can’t wait until the Supreme Court starts offering an RSS feed for court opinions. Until then, here are some teasers to whet your appetite.

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration Features RSS News Feeds from the FDA on criminal investigations, enforcement reports, safety alerts, health fraud, recalls and food safety.
• U.S. District Court – Eastern District of New York This court offers an RSS feed for judgments, orders and complaints. I hope this is a preview of things to come for all courts. However, you need a PACER account to view the underlying documents. Also, for some reason, this feed isn’t working with My Yahoo right now.

For more US Government RSS feeds, be sure to read Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites, in which he recently introduced us to FirstGov’s U.S. Government RSS Library. Thanks for the tip!

This completes the Justia Free Sixty. I hope this resource was useful for all of you. We will be creating a new law firm competitive intelligence web site that includes all of these resources, as well as other useful sites that didn’t make the original list.