The 3 Geeks and a Law Blog pointed me to a story in the Spokane, Washington newspaper Spokesman-Review. I won’t rehash what he 3 Geeks blog item “Spokane County Law Library Needs Bailout for Westlaw Bills” opines, but the Spokesman-Review story by reporter John Craig, “Spokane County law library falls behind on bills,” is disturbing to me on several levels.
The story quotes the librarian as saying that her Westlaw fees “are three times as much as the company was charging Pierce County . . . for the ‘exact same’ service.” I do not know the details, but I can see how a reader might be led to believe that this poor county law library is being gouged by a huge monopolistic corporation.
What is also disturbing to me is the report that the library is averaging $ 12,000 a month for Westlaw service, while its annual budget is only $ 220,000. The library’s total labor costs are reported to be $ 78,236, which means that the county is paying Westlaw roughly twice what it’s paying its staff. At the Stanford Law Library the total we spend for our staff is roughly twice what we spend for all materials (online and print), and that seems right to me — it’s the staff that is our most valuable resource.
The third disturbing element to the story is the suggestion that perhaps the county law library is a “relic” and should be shuttered for more “cost effective approaches” such as having public libraries (and not specialized law libraries) serve the legal information needs of the public. To me this is short-sighted on so many levels that I could go on and on for pages about why this is a bad direction.
If this story does not help build a case for Law.gov, I don’t know what would.
Many states have discontinued publishing official state reports and rely upon West instead. Appendix D of Fundamentals of Legal Research, 9th Edition, by Steven M. Barkan, Roy M. Mersky and Donald J. Dunn, includes a table “States That Have Discontinued Publishing Official State Reports” (excerpted below) showing what states have adopted West’s National Reporter System as the official publisher.
Washington is not one of these states. It appears that Washington is one of the more progressive states in providing decisional law to the public for free. The Washington State Court website contains free opinions from the last 90 days, and then links to www.legalWA.org ; the LegalWA site links directly to the Municipal Research Services Center of Washington, a nonprofit dedicated to providing free legal resources for Washington where case law from 1854 forward can be found.
There is definitely a place for expensive LexisNexis and Westlaw bills — in the high stakes world of Biglaw litigation (with clients to bill back) for certain, but in a county public law library? There has got to be a better way.
Here’s an excerpt from that table I mentioned above:
B. STATES THAT HAVE DISCONTINUED PUBLISHING OFFICIAL STATE REPORTS.
Except for Louisiana, all states have discontinued their official reports have adopted West’s National Reporter System, or an offprint of the National Reporter System, as official. Alaska has used the Pacific Reporter as its official reporter since it became a state.
[Copied below are the states listed in this table, next to the "Year of Last Case"]
Alabama 1976
Ala. App. 1976
Colorado 1980
Colo. App. 1980
Delaware 1966
Florida 1948
Indiana 1981
Ind. App. 1979
Iowa 1968
Kentucky 1951
Louisiana 1972
Maine 1965
Minnesota 1977
Mississippi 1966
Missouri 1956
Mo. App. 1952
North Dakota 1953
Oklahoma 1953
Okla. Crim. 1953
Rhode Island 1980
South Dakota 1976
Tennessee 1971
Tenn. App. 1972
Tenn. Crim. App. 1970
Texas 1962
Tex. Crim. App. 1963
Utah 2d 1974
Wyoming 1959
