Answer Maven

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of another Babes, Beer and Baseball outing.  This time around, one of my friends is a new law school student.  So she’s in the 1L Legal Research course and her question to me was:  “What do you like for research, Westlaw or Lexis?”

I of course, gave her the answer I have the young associates I trained at the law firm.  Personally I like X for cases and Y for News and Industry.  Now long-time users of both products can probably deduce the orientation of X&Y.  Since, I’m not working to endorse either product over the other I will not reveal my preferences.

What I find interesting was my friends horror at the incentives used in law school to sway students one way or the other.  I told her that this was a critical time for the vendors in my opinion:  If they can gain loyalty now, the soon-to-be attorney will likely use that product throughout his entire career.  Sure the training in law firms and on-the-job will influence a user somewhat, but chances are that once you become endeared to Tiffany, you will want all your jewelry from there and settling for less is hard to do.

I think it is critical to approach the use of computer assisted legal research tools with an understanding of the strengths and history of the products.   How did the providers make their inroads into the market?  What products are their signature products and why?  Lexis owns Shepard’s the bible of citation checking.  Certainly Keycite has developed into a strong contender, but the historical product is now a part of the LexisNexis family.  West monetized case-law in print.   You can probably bet that case-law on Westlaw is a maximum strength product.

Law school students have a unique opportunity to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each product.  They should take their training time as time to carefully evaluate products, against their own expectations and requirements.  Learning the ins and outs of the products used in firms beyond Westlaw and Lexis is just as critical to future success as using the big guns.

CCH Wolters Kluwer offers their range of products electronically.  Many of the tax practitioners I have worked with in the past knew the strengths of the major tax research products.  If CCH and other publishers could leverage those print strengths in the electronic environments, they could gain traction in the electronic product market.  Having the electronic product be as dependable and accurate as the print, as flexible in browsing and as relevant as the print was the only way that computer dependent young associates were allowed to break away from the paper.

Incentives in law school to gain users is a given.  I don’t know that loyalty to one product over another is necessarily bought, but what I do know is that people get comfortable and good enough is enough.  Electronic legal research systems are complex and probably woefully underutilized based upon their costs.  However, they will continue to be underutilized until the attorneys and law students using them understand that the information contained is complex and that there are multiple methods of pulling relevant data out.

There are always debates about how law schools could and should update their legal research courses.  I don’t pretend to offer a solution beyond the wild notion of joint teaching.  How that would play out, I don’t know but it begs to be explored.  We must get beyond incentives as the best method of gaining loyalty to products, in fact we should strive against loyalty and work towards choosing the right product, with the right strength for the research issue at hand.

Constance Ard September 1, 2009