I started writing elaborately here to answer your question behind this post, the relevancy of the Martindale-Hubbell offerin, and then I remembered Dave Danielson’s reply to a similar post in ‘What About Clients’ a few months ago:

http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/2009/05/redux_martindal.html

If you have not read this post and comment I wholeheartedly recommend you do, as it touches the key issue of your post. If you read the comment you will see that many of ‘alternative solutions’ are based on Martindale-Hubbell services, and that also, as a service we are all tuned to hear and respond to the audience’s changing needs so that we can develop our products more where needed, keep as is where needed (interestingly you mentioned nothing is like the old books for Law Digest), and enhance where needed.

As a side note, I was surprised Martindale-Hubbell Connected was not mentioned. Connected, which we formally launched this March, builds an online professional network and offers community tools on top of the pools of information and content of the martindale.com site. I invite you to join and explore.