Comments on: Monopolizing the Law

By: » Search Result Lists are Dead To Me VoxPopuLII

» Search Result Lists are Dead To Me VoxPopuLII — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:26:53 +0000

[...] get frustrated, complain, and, perhaps eventually, try a different vendor. Though with our current two-party system, there is little real choice for legal professionals who have sophisticated legal research needs [...]

By: The History of CALR: Part 1: More on Thomson West and Flite Takes Flight

The History of CALR: Part 1: More on Thomson West and Flite Takes Flight — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:18:17 +0000

[...] random look back at the early days of computer-assisted legal research (CALR). It stems from a post here earlier in the week about a terrific new book by noted antitrust lawyer (and Stanford Law School alumnus) Gary L. [...]

By: The History of CALR, Part 1: More on Thomson West and FLITE Takes Flight « Legal Research Plus

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:13:57 +0000

By: Paul Lomio

Paul Lomio — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:53:46 +0000

West’s, along with other publishers’, inflationary practices are indefensible, at least at the law school level. My budget has never gone up by 7%. All I can do is cut, cut, cut to keep up. Every month when I receive the West invoice, it’s “what can I cancel here?” It’s never “what should we be adding?” I am buying much less on speculation — especially products from publishers who have notorious inflationary rates — and much more on demand.

By: BTM

BTM — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:46:00 +0000

David, I don’t doubt that overall costs have gone up, but what I do doubt is the cost per user has gone up, particularly in comparison to 10 years ago when only the largest law firms had Westlaw/lexis access. How many solo law firms had Westlaw/Lexis access even 5 years ago compared to now?

I realize that there have been increases in the cost for these various services, but I also think both services have vastly improved their offerings, in particular the electronic resources. Remember how annoying it was to use either service even 6 or 7 years ago? They are much more polished, have many more tools to do various kinds of research activities thus a 7% increase in cost isn’t that outrageous, especially when you consider how many more law students and lawyers there are today.

By: David

David — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:22:37 +0000

Please speak with some law librarians about your figures — they are wildly inaccurate. Libraries are drowning right now due to the costs of serials (both print and electronic) and the ever increasing costs of database subscriptions. While it is true that many libraries are reducing their print collection development budgets, this is because their costs elsewhere have risen so quickly.

By: BTM

BTM — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:35:24 +0000

Its not really a monopoly, especially with Lexis, Hein and Aspen as strong competitors. What this article doesn’t take into account is the fact that print revenues from all publishers are suffering huge losses in the last 5 years. Many libraries, whether public or private, have just decided that with the Internet and online researching, its not worthwhile to keep print subscriptions. Part of the reason the print prices have gone up to some extent is because subscription rates have fallen greatly. Edison (or someone) once said “We will make electricity so abundant and and affordable that only the rich can afford to have candles” (that is a paraphrase of the quote). I think we are seeing a similar effect here. Electronic research is so affordable now, only law firms that want to maintain their prestige levels keep up their subscriptions to all the case books, etc.

Also, keep in mind that the online services are much much more affordable then then were 10 years ago. There is a reason why only a handful of the largest law firms in the country used to have Westlaw/Lexis subscriptions and now even the smallest solo firm can easily afford one. Yes, subscription rates go up, but that 7% figure doesn’t point out that the reason why rates are often raised at law firms and law schools is because there are increasing number of users, which costs more bandwidth and IT expenses.