A survey of electronic research alternatives to lexisnexis and westlaw in law firms

Law Library Journal

Volumn 103, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 71-89

  Justiss, Laura K ^a  

^a Southern Methodist University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79952918048     PISSN: 00239283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Our spring lecture series includes topics such as "Painless Legal Research Refresher" and "Legal Research Beyond Borders: An Overview of International and Foreign Legal Research Techniques and Sources."
2. Students who had previously been (or were currently) employed at law firms as paralegals or administrative assistants or who had already completed a summer clerkship were occasional excep-tions.
3. Of course, some of these sources were available on LexisNexis and Westlaw. However, others, particularly licensed content such as Dun 8c Bradstreet reports, were not (and are not as of this writing) available on the academic subscription.
4. At that primitive time, law students had not yet universally concluded that everything not on LexisNexis or Westlaw is available on Google.
5. See, e.g., Lara I. Swierczewski, Tax Research Update: Part I: The Players and How They Play, LEGAL INFO. ALERT, Oct. 2009, at 1 (providing an overview of tax research sources).
6. Sonnet Erin Brown, Update XXVI: What's New on LexisNexis, Westlaw, LoisLaw, Fastcase, and HeinOnline (pts. 1 & 2), LEGAL INFO. ALERT, July/Aug. 2009, at 1, LEGAL INFO. ALERT, Sept. 2009, at 1.
7. Over the past eight years, LiveEDGAR has been owned by Global Securities, Inc., and then Thomson West. It is now integrated with the Westlaw Business subscription.
8. See William G. Harrington, A Brief History of Computer-Assisted Legal Research, 77 LAW LlBR. J. 543, 552-55 (1984-1985) (discussing the introduction of LexisNexis and later Westlaw into law firms in the 1970s).
9. Retail pricing refers to non-flat-rate pricing. Pricing is obtained annually from the LexisNexis Transactional and Hourly Pricing Guide and Westlaw's Pricing Guide for Private Price Plans that I receive upon request from our account representatives. The vendors have thus far permitted me to disclose pricing to the students for selected databases with the understanding that this information will not be included in the "Webliography" or disseminated in any manner outside of the actual pre-sentation.
10. Ronda Muir & Tanja Diklic, The Profit and Loss Equation for Associates, ROBIN ROLFE RESOURCES (Sept. 22, 2010), http://www. robinrolferesources.com/index.php?option=com-content&task=view&id= 46&Itemid=91 (defining billing realization as "the percentage of billable hours that are actually billed to the client").
11. Press Release, Wolters Kluwer Concludes Tender Offer for Loislaw.com (Jan. 31,2001), http://www.wolterskluwer.com/WK/Press/Corporate+Headlines/2001/ PR-31-01-2001-T1200CET.htm.
12. Joe Hodnicki, Large Law Firm Sets New Online Research Policy: Use Loislaw First, LAW LIBRARIAN BLOG (Feb. 11, 2009), http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/ law-librarian-blog/2009/02/large-law-firm.html (citing a no-longer-available posting to the blog Above the Law).
13. See Patrick Meyer, Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 101 LAW LIBR. J. 297,317-18,2009.
14. LAW LIBR. J. 17,1165-67 (discussing the results of his research regarding databases to which new attorneys have access and databases in which they are expected to be proficient).
15. The survey questions are reprinted in the appendix. All survey results are on file with the author.
16. Zoomerang is a Web 2.0 survey software product, offering three levels of features and func-tionality: free, Pro, and Premium. Product Feature Comparison, ZOOMERANG, http://www.zoomerang .com/pricing/ (last visited Nov. 4,2010). I purchased the Pro version, as it enabled a larger number of survey responses than the free version and offered other helpful features and benefits.
17. A law library director in a large Dallas law firm had advised me the previous year that more firms in Dallas were opting for flat-rate contracts with both LexisNexis and Westlaw, rather than attempting to leverage firm usage with one over the other. I wanted to learn the extent, if any, to which this was a national trend.
18. Wolters Kluwer IntelliConnect was referred to in the survey as "Wolters Kluwer CCH Internet Research (IntelliConnect)" despite the fact that "CCH" no longer appears in any of the IntelliConnect databases. The product was renamed "IntelliConnect" to distinguish the redesigned platform from the previous Internet Research Network version, but the print loose-leaf versions of these products still bear the CCH label. In light of all of these labeling changes, I wanted to make certain the product was easily identifiable in the survey.
19. See Sarah Gotschall, Teaching Cost-Effective Research Skills: Have We Overemphasized Its Importance?, 29 LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q. 149,154 (2010) (considering the possibility that surveys of law firm librarians overstate the importance of cost-effective legal research to smaller firms because of the disproportionate number of large firms represented in survey results due to the fact that small firms rarely employ librarians). I confess that I knowingly sacrificed a more representative sample in order to obtain information that would be useful to law librarians rather than to law firms of all sizes.
20. Loislaw was first marketed to law firms as Law Office Information Systems (LOIS) on CD-ROM in 1995, whereas the web interface for Bloomberg Law was launched only in the fourth quarter of 2009.
21. See Peter W. Martin, Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and Access to Authoritative Case Law, 99 LAW LIBR. J. 329, 357-58, 2007.
22. LAW LIBR. J. 19, 11 67-70.
23. Elie Mystal, Bloomberg to Compete with Lexis and Westlaw, ABOVE THE LAW (Oct. 6, 2009, 12:02 P.M.), http://abovetb.elaw.com/2009/10/bloomberg-to- compete-with-lexis-and-westlaw.
24. Consortium, CASEMAKER, http://www.casemaker.us/consortium.aspx (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
25. Pricing and Sign-Up, FASTCASE, http://www.fastcase.com/subscription/ (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
26. See generally Warner J. Miller, Trial Court Docket Research Tools, LEGAL INFO. ALERT, Jul./Aug. 2007, at 1 (discussing the development of web-based court docket search and retrieval services and comparing the content and features of CourtLink and CourtExpress).
27. Search, COURTLINK LEARNING CENTER, http://courtlinklearning.lexisnexis. com/?cat=2 (last visited Nov. 4, 2010) (click on "Strategic Profiles" for additional information); Westlaw Court Express, WEST, http://west.thomson. com/westlaw/litigator/court-express/default.aspx (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
28. Miller, supra note 21, at 8.
29. See About Us, COURTHOUSE NEWS SERV., http://www.courthousenews.com/ aboutus.html (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
30. About, COURTTRAX, http://www.courttrax.com/about/ (last visited Nov. 4,2010).
31. Respondent location information was not requested as part of the survey, so it is not possible to know what percentage of respondents work in each geographic region.
32. The HeinOnline "core" collection includes the ever-increasing law journals collection, as well as primary sources such as the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and federal legislative history sources. Customers can purchase additional modules on foreign and international law, historical legal collections, and much more. HeinOnline Overview, http://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/ HOLBrochure.pdf (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
33. See, e.g., Joe Hodnicki, IntelliConnect, Still Some UI Issues but Improvements Being Made: Wolter [sic] Kluwer Responds to User Complaints, LAW LIBRARIAN BLOG (June 8, 2010), http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law-librarian- blog/2010/06/intelliconnect-still-some-ui-issues-but-improvements-being-made- wolter-kluwers-responds-to-user-com.html.
34. LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey: Findings on Reasonableness of Annual Price Increases for Products and Services Offered by BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer, LAW LIBRARIAN BLOG tbl.2 (Nov. 9, 2009), http://lawprofessors.tvpepad.com/law-librarian-blog/2009/ll/llbs-rate- your-legal-resources-vendors-survey-findings-for-reasonableness-of-annual-price- increases-html.
35. Carole Levitt, Investigating Merlin and Accurint, LEGAL INFO. ALERT, June 2005, at I
36. Accurint for Legal Professionals, LEXISNEXIS, http://accurint.com/legal. html (last visited Nov. 17, 2010); Telephone Interview with Kristina Grammatico, Dir. for Pub. Relations, LexisNexis (Nov. 12, 2010).
37. E-mail from Michael Morton, Regional Academic Manager, Rocky Mountain-Plains Region, LexisNexis, to author (Nov. 16, 2010,17:18 CST) (on file with author).
38. See Frequently Asked Questions, MERLIN INFO. SERVS., https://www. merlindata.com/faqs.asp (last visited Nov. 4,2010), for a description of Merlin's databases, coverage, and pricing.
39. See Demo and Current Database Offerings, PUBLICDATA.COM, http://demo.publicdata.com/ pdmain.php/Logon/home (last visited Nov. 4, 2010), for database coverage details.
40. Information about CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information) is on its web site (cisti.nrc.gc.ca).
41. Dialog's Intellectual Property Content, Dialog, http://www.dialog.com/ products/guide/ip.shtml (last visited Nov. 4, 2010).
42. Joe Hodnicki, Should LexisNexis and Thomson West be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence? Results of the LLB Poll, LAW LIBRARIAN BLOG, Apr. 20, 2009, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law-librarian-blog/2009/04/should- lexisnexis-and-thomson-west-be-worried-about-the-economys-turbulence-results-of- the-Ub-poll.html.
43. Jill Schachner Chanen, Wired! Innovation, Competition, Lower-Cost Alternatives: The Battle for Your Legal Research Dollars Heats Up, A.B.A. J., Feb. 2010, at 34, 35, 38.
44. In May and June 2010, Wolters Kluwer representatives advised law school customers that Loislaw would no longer be provided at no charge. The price quoted for the SMU Dedman School of Law was $3000 per year for the primary source materials and $3500 for the "treatise bundle," a lengthy list of Aspen treatises, of which only eight were owned in print by the library. In a related telephone conversation with the author, SMU's sales representative specifically cited the Locke Lord research policy as justification for a fee-based academic subscription to Loislaw. Telephone interview with Chris Egeland, CCH Account Representative, Wolters Kluwer Law & Bus. (June 2010).
45. Id.
46. Alan Cohen, More Bang for Fewer Bucks, AM. LAW. July/Aug. 2010, at 41,42.
47. Alan Cohen, No More Sacred Cows, AM. LAW., Sept. 2009, at 53, 55.