Law Librarian Blog

Two Memorial Day Addresses by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Source: Photo by SGT Parker, US Army, The Old Guard. Arlington National Cemetery's 2007 Flags In. Arlington National Cemetery

In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884):

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go some-whither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

The Soldier's Faith (1895):

Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts under foot. If you wait in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you down a gentle slope like that of Beacon Street, have seen the puff of the firing, have felt the burst of the spherical case-shot as it came toward you, have heard and seen the shrieking fragments go tearing through your company, and have known that the next or the next shot carries your fate; if you have advanced in line and have seen ahead of you the spot you must pass where the rifle bullets are striking; if you have ridden at night at a walk toward the blue line of fire at the dead angle of Spottsylvania, where for twenty-four hours the soldiers were fighting on the two sides of an earthwork, and in the morning the dead and dying lay piled in a row six deep, and as you rode you heard the bullets splashing in the mud and earth about you; if you have been in the picket-line at night in a black and unknown wood, have heard the splat of the bullets upon the trees, and as you moved have felt your foot slip upon a dead man's body; if you have had a blind fierce gallop against the enemy, with your blood up and a pace that left no time for fear --if, in short, as some, I hope many, who hear me, have known, you have known the vicissitudes of terror and triumph in war; you know that there is such a thing as the faith I spoke of. You know your own weakness and are modest; but you know that man has in him that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face anniliation for a blind belief.

...

As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.

Originally posted May 29, 2006. [JH]

IRS Wants Its Cut of Online Sales

A new tax law requiring the gross amount of payments by credit credit and other payment processing systems and third-party network transactions will be required to be reported annually to merchants and the IRS by way of a new IRS form, the 1099-K. This reporting requirement will start with 2011 tax returns for taypayers who sell more than $20,000 worth of goods and have more than 200 e-transactions. The headline for the Washington Post story captures the regulatory intent in a nutshell: IRS Wants a Cut of Online Sales on eBay, Craigslist. [JH]

Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs

Florida Securities Fraud Lawyer Blog
http://www.floridasecuritiesfraudlawyerblog.com
http://www.floridasecuritiesfraudlawyerblog.com/index.xml
Provides insight on securities fraud cases, news and reports in Florida. Published by McCabe Rabin, PA.

Chicago Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog
http://www.chicagomedicalmalpracticeattorneyblog.com
http://www.chicagomedicalmalpracticeattorneyblog.com/index.xml
Examines medical malpractice cases, reports and opinions in Illinois. Published by the Kreisman Law Offices.

Cincinnati Tax Problem Attorney Blog
http://www.cincinnatitaxproblemattorneyblog.com
http://www.cincinnatitaxproblemattorneyblog.com/index.xml
Reports on tax law cases, opinions and matters in Ohio. Published by Paul A. Nidich.

Phoenix Injury Lawyer Blog
http://www.phoenixinjurylawyerblog.com
http://www.phoenixinjurylawyerblog.com/index.xml
Reviews injury law cases, reports and news in Arizona. Published by Abels & Annes.

Louisiana Insurance Litigation Blog
http://www.louisianainsurancelitigation.com
http://www.louisianainsurancelitigation.com/index.xml
Analyzes insurance litigation opinions, news and cases in Louisiana. Published by the Thornhill Law Firm.

Washington DC Injury Attorney Blog
http://www.washingtondcinjuryattorneyblog.com
http://www.washingtondcinjuryattorneyblog.com/index.xml
Analyzes injury law news, cases and reports in Washington, DC. Published by Kenneth J. Annis & Associates.

Colorado Business and Family Lawyer Blog
http://www.colorado-onlinelawyer.com
http://www.colorado-onlinelawyer.com/index.xml
Covers business and family law opinions, matters and reports in Colorado. Published by The Law Office of Laurel Anne Markus, PC.

What's the Energy Consumption of a Google Search?

Simon Fodden, in his Slaw post, The Cost of Free Google Searches, has the answer along with some very interesting details about Google's efforts to keep energy costs down for the Company's million or so servers. He writes

"[T]hese are not just off-the-shelf servers such as you might find down the hall in the hot IT room: Google rolls its own, and has done pretty much from the start. ... Google servers run with efficient wiring on 12 volts throughout; and they’re supplied with backup power not via the usual centralized and wasteful “uninterruptible power supplies” but through individual batteries within each server.

BTW, did you know that Google servers are housed in standard shipping containers, 1160 servers per shipping container, and that the shipping containers are stored in hangers? See Fodden's post for more. [JH]

Researcher Infects Himself With Computer Virus

A quick read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about an English researcher who implanted a computer chip in his hand. [BA]

Friday Fun: I Google You, I Google Toast With Peanut Butter and Honey

Looks like the Orange County Library System wants Google's fiber network to come to Orlando, Florida. See Get Googling Orlando for their campaign. [JH]

NALP Takes a Hard Look at Its Class of 2009 Employment Data: Nearly 25% Employed in Temporary Positions, 10% are Part-Timers and Almost 30% are Employed in Positions That Don't Require a JD

At first glance the NALP Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2009 looks surprising good: 88.3% of Class of 2009 grads for whom employment status was known are employed. That is the second consecutive year the employment rate has declined and the lowest rate since the mid-1990s but on its face the survey findings are surprising. However, NALP Executive Director James Leipold explains that there are "dozens of reasons why the data that has been gathered will require special explanation and analysis to make sense of it" and his examination of the stats, to NALP's credit, paints a less than rosy picture.

Temp Jobs for Class of 2009. Nearly 25% of all jobs were reported as temporary. That figure includes clerkships and other temporary positions including:

• 41% of all public interest jobs
• 30% of all business jobs
• 8% of the private practice jobs
• 69% of the academic jobs

NALP also reports that 42% of reporting law schools provided on-campus post-graduate jobs for their students. No word on how many of these appointments were made to game US News employment data for teasing a better ranking.

Job Market Weakness. Some other markers of weakness in the job market for 2009 law school grads reported by NALP include:

• 10 percent of all reported jobs are part-time, up from 6 percent for the class of 2008
• 70.8% grads reporting that they held a job for which a JD was required, down from 74.7% of the Class of 2008
• 5% of the law firm job reported are working as solo practitioners, up from 3.3% for the Class of 2008
• 22% of the Class of 2009 who are employed are actively looking for work, compared to 16% of the previous class.

For details, see the NALP report.[JH]

Drafting the Next New Media Contract: Do's and Don'ts and Gotchas

Following up on LLB's earlier post, Time for Casebook Writers to Unite: Rethinking Author Contracts Because the eBook is Coming and for readers interested in the subject generally, Copyright Clearance Center's Chris Kenneally led a panel discussion about the do’s and don’ts and gotchas for new media contracts at the recent Digital Hollywood conference. Panelists included Cindy Charles, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, MediaNet; Alan Friel, Partner,Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP; John M. Gatti, Partner, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP; and Virginie L. Parant, partner, Artist Law Group. Podcast here, Transcript here. [JH] 

TR Legal's Unsolicited Shipments are "Viewed Favorably by Most Subscribers" If "Most" is Defined as 3.7 Percent: Findings of LLB Poll

In the land of 10,000 invoices, unsolicited shipments "are viewed favorably by most subscribers" according to Anne Ellis, TR Legal Senior Director of Librarian (Marketing) Relations. That's absolutely true if "most" is numerically defined as 3.7% which is the finding from last week's LLB poll on the issue. What sort of "new math" is this? It's TR Legal Marketing math, not law librarian math, which would define "most" (almost all really) as the 93.2% who do not view these shipments favorably.

I doubt TR Legal czars are so cocooned from the law library community plus their own sales force and customer service reps that they find this "OMG, how could we let this happen" shocking. The Company simply prefers to ignore our association's AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers and has its corporate policy spokesperson make statements like this one, giving TR Legal's Librarian Relations program ever-increasing credibility issues for working with the law library community. Let's call it "most" credible as defined by TR Legal math because Ellis did look into the empty shipping boxes matter a couple of months ago (bad glue).

Columbia House Legal Book Club. Does TR Legal's new opt-out by postcard system bring the Company into compliance with Section 3.1 of the Guide which states "Publishers should obtain the customer's consent prior to making a shipment or initiating a transaction, unless such shipment is part of a standing order or subscription to which the customer has previously consented." I, for one, don't think so. 80% of survey respondents strongly agree and another 16.4% agree with the statement that "Instead of opt-out by returning a postcard, product literature for a new title without having to take action to not receive the new title is what TR Legal should do." That's 96.4% who simply want new product literature without any strings attached, without involuntarily becoming members of the "Columbia House Legal Book Club" (see comment to survey post). It's fair to say if law librarians want to buy a new TR Legal title, they (1) know how to order it and (2) want to choose when they will order it. (Personally, I would continue by saying that I also want my account rep to get a sales commission when I order a new title.)

Who Decides What's Important to Law Library Collections? Apparently, TR Legal thinks its new titles are so important to our collections, they transcend fair business practices and customer preferences on how to conduct business. "To be clear," writes Ellis, "companion products contain content that supplements our customers’ subscriptions and are deemed important to the collection." To be clear Anne, law librarians, not TR Legal, will decide what is important to our collections, print and online. No collection development policy I have ever read gives your company any input in this matter. TR Legal's "Columbia House Legal Book Club" approach to unsolicited shipments is simply unacceptable. It's time to respond to CRIV's cease and desist request with an unequivocal "yes."

Changing "No" to "Yes." Remember the Ellis statement on why TR Legal refused to participate in AALL's Price Index for Legal Publications last August? It came up in the context of TR Legal being banned from sponsoring our annual meeting in 2008 and 2009. TR Legal changed that policy within a couple of months and hopefully Ellis had something to do with getting it changed. Perhaps we'll see a big "No Longer the Columbia House Legal Book Club" banner in the Exhibit Hall in July. If not, CRIV should consider recommending banning the Company from sponsoring annual meetings again. My hunch is unsolicited shipments aren't the only complaints law librarians have. Unsolicited "pay trial" delivery of WLN to the desktops of researchers comes immediately to mind.

Thanks again Rob Myers, CRIV vice-chair and incoming chair of the Committee, for trying. Thanks LLB readers for participating in this utterly unscientific LLB poll. Results displayed below. [JH]

Unsolicited companion products contain content that supplements our customers subscriptions and are deemed important to the collection. These are viewed favorably.

Instead of opt-out by returning a postcard, product literature for a new title without having to take action to not receive the new title is what TR Legal should do.

Two Sisters: Westlaw and Lexis

The most inspired blog post on the state of WEXIS affairs has just been written by Jason Wilson. I am speechless. I am not worthy of reading his blog. I am picking up the tab in Denver. I am hoping the two sisters are working the Jones McClure booth in the exhibit hall. [JH]

Law School Computing, Then and Now, Sort Of

There is a recent article in Inside Higher Ed that examines the proposition that the educational market is not important, or as important as it once was to tech companies.  That's not to say that vendors don't like selling equipment or software to schools as much as how the relationship between vendors and educational institutions have changed.  The article brought back memories of those heady days in the mid-1980s when law schools were able to negotiate substantial discounts or equipment donations from vendors.  Law schools were vendor proving grounds for tech installations, and symbiotically, specific law schools could claim the mantle of technology leader.  Not so much on that last point today.  Every school is a technology leader, if by leader we mean mainstream technology consumer.  Every school typically has a lab, wireless networking, wired classrooms, and an infrastructure that supports student computing.  Tech support is tech support, but the standard front end is more or less defined by external expectations.  

A second article several appeared few days later in the Chicago Tribune.  The Illinois Institute of Technology announced that it was giving "free" iPads to all freshman in the fall semester.  IIT, the article stated, will pay Apple $250,000 for the technology.  That's 5,000 iPads at commercial rates.  Doubtless that IIT got a bulk discount from Apple and the number of units is higher.  That bulk purchase deal would be more or less the same for a commercial buyer these days.  Apple isn't testing the iPad at IIT.  The company is getting a bulk sale from an university it would have cozied up to  25 years ago.  Why the change?

The fact is that computing standards weren't set back then, making the educational market a battleground for companies to create critical mass for their products.  Law schools were courted by all kinds of marketers with the idea of creating installations that were used to market to law firms.  Imagine ads reading "X number of law schools chose Wordstar as their word processor.  Shouldn't you be using Wordstar?"  Who can forget dot commands?  Actually, a lot of people, which is why law schools have gone from proving grounds to just another customer.  Standardization means no one has to fight over product variations.  No one is battling over whether to install token ring instead of ethernet.  Whatever battles go on today, they are not being fought much at the consumer level.  

Students back then first came into contact with personal computers at a school, not at home.  Those PCs did not have hard drives.  They were equipped with only 16kb of memory, and cost some $2,400 each.  I still have one of those original IBM PCs in my basement along with a monochromatic (amber, that is) Amdek monitor.  The word "display" came much later when we all got more sophisticated and computing support got more complex.  Compaq was an IBM clone running DOS and pushing against IBM for sales, though as I remember, even more expensive.  Their marketing at the time should have been "IBM quality at Apple prices."  Personal computing is a background fact of life now and those early comparisons no longer apply, except the characterization of Apple prices.  Now basic student computing devices cost less that a typical semester's book list.  

Consider how much the market has changed in that schools will standardize on a platform such as the Apple iPad as a matter of simplifying their own support costs AND paying someone to provide the hardware.  Schools will now buy basic computing functionality from vendors (apps, email) as it's cheaper to outsource that stuff.  And look at West's approach to WestlawNext.  One would think that law schools were the natural place to try out the new interface.  Selected firms and individuals got to shape the product.  The only academic test now for the product is a brief period to check the roll-out to students en masse.  It's sad in a way, that schools have come so far in their level of technical skill in managing computing that they have become just another customer, whether for hardware, software, or information.  [MG]

TR Legal's New Panacea for the Shed West Era: Marketing Pushes Multi-Year Print Commitments and Not Just to Law Libraries

The always informative purveyor of marketing "facts," TR's Legal Current blog seems to imply that law libraries are moving to Library Maintenance Agreements to reduce West Print Spend. From Law libraries turning to Library Maintenance Agreements:

One place many law libraries with large expenditures on print resources have turned to manage their collections is West’s Library Maintenance Agreement (LMA) program. LMA’s provide libraries with streamlined billing plans that can help organizations save money, cut administrative hassle and simplify the library budgeting process.

Really? More likely many have scrapped their LMAs in this Shed West Era. See Betsy McKenzie's West pokes itself in the eye again. In a move to remedy print cancellations, TR Legal is trying to "herd," in McKenzie's characterization, law libraries into LMAs.

You did see the recent WSJ story, Thomson Reuters Profit Falls on Weak Subscriptions, right?

Thomson Reuters Corp. reported a 33% decline in first-quarter profit as it continued to suffer the effects of subscription cancellations during the depths of last year's economic swoon.

See also LLB's earlier post, Let's Speed Up Cash Flow for Print: West's New Billing System Moving from Monthly to Weekly Invoicing.

Do note, LexisNexis is about to start pitching multi-year print commitments, at least to academic law libraries. Click on image, right, for the announcement to attend a meeting in Denver. No specifics yet available but a big hat tip to Cornell's Pat Court for posting the announcement to law-lib. Like many academic law libraries, she notes that she will not be attending because "our cuts really preclude getting us locked into a multi-year agreement."

It will be interesting to compare TR Legal's LMAs and LexisNexis' MAPs but that will have to wait for another day. This post is about TR Legal Marketing's pushing multi-year print commitments to non-law library institutional buyers

TR Legal's Multi-Year Offers to Non-Law Library Buyers. TR Legal's push to market multi-year commitments extends well beyond law libraries. Here in Ohio, county law libraries are now responsible for coordinating the acquisition of legal materials county-wide since Jan. 1, 2010. This new situation has given me the opportunity to see how legal publishers pitch their wares outside of a law library setting. It's been an interesting experience. Titles thought to have been canceled in 2009 are oftentimes still on vendors' books as active. I'm not blaming TR Legal or LexisNexis customer service reps for that; professionals, that would be us law librarians, ought not leave it up to well-meaning and otherwise competent administrators in county offices and courts to deal with the oftentimes arcane ways and means of purchasing and cancelling in the legal publishing industry.

For small West accounts now under my management, ones that don't qualify under the LMA programs's $40K/yr threshold, I've recently received a multi-year proposal for one county agency account with an annual West Print Spend around 12K. Herding has started; I took a pass. Maybe later as in after the economy improves and our County cuts $4 million or about 5% of its budget by mid-year. Most forecasters, by the way, predict the economy won't improve before 2012. We too are "preclud[ed from] getting us locked into a multi-year agreement."

More interesting is an unsolicited multi-year offer sent by way of a form letter with boilerplate contract for a single judge's account. The judge's account consists of two Ohio official case reporters, that's right, two reporters. TR Legal herding to reduce print revenue bleeding is reaching down deep into the print continuation database when it goes this far.

The offer to the individual judge is called an "Assured Print Pricing Service." It offers by way of an order form either a 24 or 36 month minimum term billed at a set rate monthly with costs capped at 6 percent per year during the term of the agreement. The order form's cover letter offers under a bold, all caps heading:

LIMITED TIME OFFER - 50% OFF!
Agree to this 36-months, predictable pricing agreement no later than June 30, 2010 and we'll credit your current print invoice 50% (Your invoice must include at least one title from the enclosed order to be eligible for the 50% credit.)

Oh boy, such a deal. TR Legal still can't wrap its head around a one year subscription model.

Off course, if account charges go unpaid 30 days after due, the amount due and payable for the remaining Term "shall become immediately due and payable at the sole option of West" with interest and any collection fees. Understandable, even acceptable in principle, since a contract is a contract is a contract. But public agency contracts are subject to budget appropriations which is why TR Legal is on a de facto annual subscription model for the federal government. For an nanosecond, I thought about striking out Minnesota and inserting Ohio in the governing law and jurisdiction clause to see if West would accept this one modification but ... . 

Terms of TR Legal's Assured Pricing Offer for This Little Account. The offer raises a number of questions. Monthly charges for the first year under the terms of the offer are $74/month or $888/year for Ohio St.3d  and Ohio App3d and Ohio Misc.2d which are published in combined volumes. Our account reconciliation report for this judge's account for all of 2009 indicates print spend was $480 and only for bound volumes. Whoa, that an 85% increase under the "Assured Pricing Plan."

Year to year the number of print volumes varies but not much -- a volume more one year, a volume less another. A quick look at our shelves tells us 8 print volumes were published in 2009, 10 in 2008 and 9 in 2007 by bibliographic, not billing, date. The AR report indicates 11 volumes were paid for in 2009 and three during the first four months of 2010. TR Legal adds no editorial content to the official opinions so each volume is relatively inexpensive. In mid-2009 the price per volume increased from $43.00 to $44.75. Whoa, that's a 4% annual increase instead of the 6% annual increase under the "Assured Pricing Plan."

We looked a little deeper into the account reconciliation from January 1, 2009 to May 20, 2010 to see if TR Legal slipped in separate weekly advance sheet charges (list price for individual advance sheets at $15 per weekly issue) in the judge's account and the answer is "nope.".

Is TR Legal including advance sheet charges that haven't been billed to this account separately since Jan. 2009 by characterizing each title as "full service?" Looks like it might be since the Assured Print Pricing order form states ""Subscription service may consist of updates and/or supplements to the service, including but not limited to: Pocket parts, pamphlets, replacement or ancillary volumes, loose-leaf pages and other related supplemental materials." We''ll be watching to see if volume frequency increases more than 9-11 per year, pricing increases this summer by more than last year's 4%, and if advance sheets start being billed under this standing order account.

For the moment, let's assume 10 bound volumes per year with a mid-year annual increase of 4% to compare this account's projected on-going print spend as a standing order with the offered 3-year option under TR Legal's Assured Pricing Plan. We'll use July 2010-June 2011 as our first calender year and assume per volume pricing will have increased from the current $44.75 rate to $46.54.

After the multi-year term:

 "Subscriber ... requests that West ... [be] further billed during the 12 months after the Minimum Term with a 15% increase of the Monthly Assured Pricing Charges for the most recent 12 months of the Minimum Term and thereafter at then-current Assured Print Pricing rates. After the Minimum Term, such subscription services may be cancelled by West or cancelled upon written request by Subscriber."  

Meaning after 3 years, there's an automatic 15% bump up to $1,147,42. Under our assumed 4% per year roll-up scenario 2013-2014 print volume costs would be $523.52. "Thereafter at then-current Assured Print Pricing rates," means the next go-around may have higher or lower than the currently offered 6% annual increases if one buys into another multi-year agreement.

What's really "assured" here is that after 3 years, print spend will have increased 29% percent, from $888 to $1,147,42. If one opts for a two-year plan, print spend will have increased almost 22%, from $888 to $1,082.47. Either way, such a deal. But remember, if one agrees to this plan by June 30th, TR Legal will credit "your current print invoice 50%" which for this account would be a savings of between $22.38 and $44.75 depending on whether one or two print volumes have been shipped. And about those advance sheets... .

Bottom Line: A Word of Caution to Non-Law Librarian Purchasers. When one gets a form letter and boilerplate contract from TR Legal's "Strategic Marketing" department/division/whatever for a multi-year print commitment, be wary of whose strategy is being executed by tactics such as this one. It's about a guaranteed revenue stream for TR Legal during this Shed West Era. It's about assuring a 32-33% profit margin.

TR Legal is kicking its print-side marketing tactics up a notch. On the online side, WestlawNext marketing is reminiscent of selling Pez dispensers as a candy delivery system, if you are old enough to remember that. [JH]

EPA's Envirofact Database and EnviroMapper

A hat tip to beSpacific for calling attention to the EPA recently adding to its Envirofact public database more than 6,300 chemicals and 3,800 chemical facilities regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) which provides the EPA with authority to require reporting, record-keeping and testing requirements, and restrictions relating to chemical substances and/or mixtures. TSCA resources here.

Scientific Stuff in Plain English. Also of interest is the EPA's EnviroMapper for Envirofacts, "a single point of access to select U.S. EPA environmental data. This Web site provides access to several EPA databases to provide you with information about environmental activities that may affect air, water, and land anywhere in the United States. With Envirofacts, you can learn more about these environmental activities in your area or you can generate maps of environmental information." Just enter an address, zip, city, county, waterbody, etc." If concerned with the output, comment to this post. I'll try to persuade the brainiac in the family, that would be my blog widow, to comment-back with "scientific stuff" in plain English. [JH]

Oh, It's Just a "Pay Trial" to WestlawNext (Unsolicited? Apparently the Answer is "Yes")

See our earlier post which republishes Tamara Avevedo's law-lib listserv announcement. Anne Ellis responded to it today on law-lib. Bottom line, TR Legal is calling this a "pay trial" for WLN now. The Company's efforts are not an "end-around law librarians," although the only way Tamara learned about this "pay trial" was by clicking on a link that was sending her to WLN.  

Hi, Tamara

I read your post and thought I’d write a short comment to try to set the record straight on a couple points. I hope I can clear this up. 
 
We are not turning WestlawNext on for all accounts on June 1. I’m sorry you heard otherwise. We will continue to work with librarians and together we will manage trials and access to WestlawNext for their firms.
 
The link you described does indeed take users to a pay trial for WestlawNext. This is one of several opportunities we have created for end users to see the new service.
 
We’re really excited about WestlawNext and what it offers legal researchers, but please don’t interpret our efforts to showcase the new service as an attempt to do an end-around to librarians. We will continue to work with firms and their librarians on the best approach for trialing WestlawNext, account by account.
 
I hope this is helpful. Thanks again, Tamara.
 
Anne Ellis
Senior Director, Librarian Relations
Thomson Reuters, Legal

Did anyone with contracting authority approve the "pay trial" at the institutional buyer's end? If the law firm librarians who have commented to Ellis' post on law-lib is any indication, the answer is a resounding "no." It's a form of advertising with the institution picking up the tab; Classic Westlaw is being used to promote WLN at the firm's expense. This is utterly unacceptable. To quote from one law-lib-er's comment:

You may be excited about WestlawNext [Anne], but our goal is to get legal research done--not respond to ads in the middle of our client work.

Some law-lib-ers mention that they learned about this now so-called "pay trial" when the messaging first appeared on Classic Westlaw. Others that they noticed it thanks to Tamara's heads-up warning. Sounds to me like we know who doesn't know law librarians' names -- TR Legal's Librarian (Marketing) Relations program. 

E-mail Your Rep, Your Rep's District Manager, His Boss, The Boss Above His Boss, the TR Legal Czar if You Know His Name. My earlier commentary on this stunt remains by and large applicable. This appears to be happening only in the private sector for the moment. At least at my little county law library, I haven't seen the  "Search WestlawNext Now: Improve your research efficiency by 64% with WestlawNext. Your organization has access to the advanced search engine and improved design of Westlaw Next. Go there now and begin increasing your productivity!" message yet, and can't login into WLN under my OnePass account. However I've informed my rep and his district manager in no uncertain terms that WLN access is to be prohibited under our accounts; that no click-thru for fee-based "trial" access via messaging is to be allowed, and that no free temporary WLN access is to be offered to any account holder unless by me.

"Hi, I'm a law library director and my name is Joe. I am responsible for Westlaw contracting. fiscal management and payments." TR Legal, I think, needs to hear this from the law library community because I doubt our professional association is going to lift a finger to put one on a keyboard to send a public message to the Company.

And Damn It All to Hell. I had a post that said something sort of positive about TR Legal but that got pushed aside for this. Maybe latter this week, but not tomorrow or Thursday for that matter. [JH]

Kicking Up WestlawNext Deployment to "11:" Can't Sell It by Way of Licensing, Then Just Push the Damn Thing to Westlaw Account Holders

Guess what, apparently you don't need a WestlawNext license for your users to rack up WLN charges. That's the word. according to Tamara Avevedo's law-lib listserv post yesterday. She spoke with a Company rep who informed her that everyone with classic Westlaw access would also have access to WestlawNext with their One Pass ID starting on June 1st.

Apparently something like this "gem" of a message will appear:

 "Search WestlawNext Now: Improve your research efficiency by 64% with WestlawNext. Your organization has access to the advanced search engine and improved design of Westlaw Next. Go there now and begin increasing your productivity!".

64%, Really? Click on the "Search WestlawNext Now" link, which I have intentionally omitted, and a researcher will be warned that he or she is about to rack up extra charges if continuing but how can one resist the urge to improve "research efficiency by 64%." The researcher's own search intelligence apparently no longer matters. WLN's cross-database SE will spit out everything you will need; you will be smarter than you ever hoped to be. Classic Westlaw is bad, really bad, so click now.

By the way TR Legal, 64 percent, really? Not 60% or 65%, 64%! I guess now we know why the "immodest premuim" offered to Lisa Solomon for using WLN's search algorithm was 68%. Perhaps AALL should spend some ad revenue dollars to commission a completely as in utterly untainted study by independent information scientists to reality check this advertising claim. By completely independent, I do not mean a team of, oh I don't know, Bob Berring's law students, or anyone else in any way associated with either AALL or TR Legal. We'll probably have to contract out the study to India (as long as it isn't a firm in Mumbai). But I digress ... .

Shiny New SE Use Just "Auxiliary" Now. Acevedo writes that her rep informed her that TR Legal is treating "WestlawNext usage as "auxiliary" and [will] charge as such." Ah, no WestlawNext upgrade agreements ... having a tough time selling WLN?

Acevedo adds:

I was also told that subscribing to WestlawNext would be no different than adding a database and would be done with an LOU [Letter of Understanding]. That's weird because at every other turn, I had been told it is a seperate contract.

Moreover, she was told "there is no way that [blocking WestlawNext] can be done because the two products [classic Westlaw and WLN] link in together." Even someone like myself who hasn't written code in 30 years knows that's utter bull without divine intervention. Did the hand of god write this script? Perhaps the rep meant linked together for billing. Well, we know who wrote that script.

TR Legal has moved from unsolicited shipments of print materials to unsolicited delivery of WLN. I must have missed the postcard. Don't you like being "told" in the one-way street that is TR Legal's "partnership" with the law library community? "Your organization has access" to WLN whether you want it or not unless you take action to stop it.

Wake Up AALL. If all, some, even one iota of this is accurate, this is utterly unacceptable. Remember this information was supplied by a rep. All things considered, one is inclined to think TR Legal might kick up WLN deployment to 11, meaning Acevedo's rep is most likely dead on about TR Legal's new private sector tactics. There's no opportunity to wait and compare WLN with "New Lexis" under this deployment scheme.

If AALL doesn't make an immediate and very public response to the Company's shiny new "auxiliary" ploy for grabbing unlicensed WLN usage charges, then we know who our association is sleeping with for the sake of ad dollars. Don't expect anything from CRIV; the Committee's well-meaning members' collective hands have been tied behind their backs by the Association (more about that later).

Meanwhile we can wait to see how TR Legal's Senior Director of Librarian (Marketing) Relations spins this boner with one of the Company's marketing-approved patented "Dear Colleague"  messages. It might start with "I' would like to address some misunderstanding about WestlawNext... ."  It might end with "the rep who spoke to Tamara Avevedo is now working in the shipping department to ensure that empty boxes aren't being mailed to our customers."

Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another. Is it time to boycott TR Legal by stop paying Westlaw monthly invoices if WLN charges appear on them without a "letter of understanding" or that whatchamacallit thing, a license? Clicking after a warning just doesn't cut it. Acevedo demanded that "gem" of a message be removed and it was. Sounds to me like it was a wise move that others should take.

Frankly, I thought that after 30 years I had seen everything. Apparently not. "Thank you, sir, may I have another" has now gone too far. I imagine the Buckeyes in Dayton are besides themselves with glee over this. And rightly so. Just about every move TR Legal makes is an example of what not to do when migrating a very expensive online legal search service to a new platform.

Just in case Acevedo's law-lib listserv message "disappears" from AALL's law-lib archive, here is the complete text. DOJ and state AGs might want to take notice. Thanks for the heads up, Tamara. [JH]

Good morning,

I am writing this message to give a heads up for those who may not be aware of what Thomson Reuters is now doing with WestlawNext.  I attended a First Look session in Eagan this past March and was told there that our attorneys would not have access unless we agreed to let them have access.  On Friday I spoke with a representative and was informed that everyone with Westlaw.com access would also have access to WestlawNext with their One Pass ID starting on June 1st.

Last week our users logged on and saw this "gem":

 "Search WestlawNext Now: Improve your research efficiency by 64% with WestlawNext. Your organization has access to the advanced search engine and improved design of Westlaw Next. Go there now and begin increasing your productivity!".  (emphases added)

At my request, they have removed the "gem".

Clicking on that link took the user seamlessly into WestlawNext.  Great huh?  I guess it is if you do not mind your attorneys knocking around in WestlawNext without a contract.   Once I attempted to run a search, I did receive a message that WestlawNext was not included in our Westlaw.com subscription and there would be extra charges if I choose to continue, etc.  It is great that they have warnings, but I believe this is different than going outside of our contract from within Westlaw.com.  After speaking to my local rep, I was informed that my thinking was not correct.  They will treat WestlawNext usage as "auxiliary" and charge as such.  I was also told that subscribing to WestlawNext would be no different than adding a database and would be done with an LOU [Letter of Understanding].  That's weird because at every other turn, I had been told it is a seperate contract.

After expressing that I would like all access to WestlawNext blocked, I was told there is no way that it can be done because the two products link in together.

Now that the "gem" is gone, I realize it is unlikely that any of my attorneys will stumble upon the fact that they have access but, at this point, it's really more about the principle.  I really wish they would pick a story and stick to it.

CALI Conference 2010: Reboot Legal Education

The only conference I've ever attended that has something going on all day, every day, of interest, without huge gaping holes of emptiness in the program like, well AALL, is CALI's annual conference. Maybe its just that I'm not all that techie, certainly not an "early adapter," but I like to learn about what's going on from speakers actively engaged in moving forward and from attendees afterwards. Looks like the 20th annual CALI conference is no different. See Beta version .93 of CALICon10 Agenda. This year's conference in being held at Rutgers University School of Law, Camden, Thursday-Saturday, June 24-26, 2010. I won't be attending this year but, hopefully, you will be.

No, it is not as close to Atlantic City casinos as CALI's UNLV conference was to Las Vegas casinos for after-session activities a few of years back but is a one-hour commute really a serious obstacle to hurdle?

20-years! Congratulations CALI.

Oh, BTW, will AALL ever schedule an annual meeting in Las Vegas, the "family-friendly" capital of conventions in the US of A, if not the planet? My hunch is attendance would be record-breaking. Looks like 2017 is open. Future annual meeting sites here. [JH]

WestlawNext Plan for Law Schools Coming Into View

Some of the WestlawNext plan for academics is starting to make its way to the market.  The buzz is West will give all school faculty, librarians, and staff access to WestlawNext some time in July. Students will get access by the beginning of the spring semester at the latest.  The roll-out should not require the law schools to do anything.  By that I'm assuming all the OnePass IDs that are out there will work.  The date to convert all existing Westlaw number/letter access codes to OnePass is June 1.  I wonder if schools will have the option of not accepting the new product.  Some schools may want to transition to the new product on their own schedule.  Will the legal research and writing programs be ready to switch to the new interface?  This isn't a one-sided arrangement, after all.

Schools may apply to West for a pre-release trial access to WestlawNext for students in fall.  The trial will test the roll-out for problems before it goes live to all schools.  The pre-release trial is limited and schools must apply via email to West by June 1.  Note the short deadline.  If anyone wants to contribute the email address in the comments, feel free.  

There is apparently no plan to raise prices for access in the current academic year, though there is nothing out there about contracts that follow.  A most interesting strategy.  Once law school librarians, faculty, staff, and especially students start using WestlawNext, it is going to be awfully hard to drop it later when there are price increases.  Nonetheless, West will compete with itself and Lexis as long as old classic Westlaw is out there.  [MG] 

First Look at "New Lexis:" Just Wait to Compare WestlawNext with "New Lexis" Because When a Company is in Second Place, It Tends to Try Harder

And it sounds like LexisNexis has learned a thing or two from TR Legal's WestlawNext marketing fiasco. Check out Toby Brown's Lexis Strikes Back: The New Lexis post for his brief review. Two snips about "New Lexis" from his post: 

This product will come out in a phased roll-out starting in the Fall. The product will be rolled out by market segment and each iteration will be slightly different to meet the needs of that market segment. This obviously recognizes the fact that a 30 year old solo practitioner will have different practice needs than a BigLaw partner. Score one for Lexis.

The BIG question is always pricing. Although they couldn't give me numbers yet (understandable) they did say 'predictability' will be the theme. The team actual read Greg's Open Letter [to "New Lexis.com" - Learn from WestlawNext Mistakes] posted here on 3 Geeks. Just like law firm clients, lawyers don't like surprises when it comes to a bill. So their service will be priced on a subscription basis instead of per search.

Emphasis added.

No Need to Rush: Just Wait to Compare WestlawNext and "New Lexis." When you only have one-third of the very expensive online legal search market, a vendor tends to be more responsive to online legal information buyers and consumers needs. Obviously, it is too soon to say how much more responsive but we are moving beyond "tabs and sidebars" competition in world of WEXIS online. Taking into consideration LexisNexis' print pricing moderation during the current economy vis a vis TR Legal's bleed your print budget dry approach and WestlawNext's pricing for a service not fully ready for prime time yet (see, e.g., Harrington's review and TR Legal Vice President, WestlawNext Product Development, Mike Dahn's comment), it is well worth holding off on a WestlawNext license until institutional buyers can chck out "New Lexis" and evaluate both online search services at the same time. [JH]

Reminder: Topics for Today's Law Librarian Conversations Program Are Cost Effective Legal Research and Professional Librarian: An Oxymoron?

Along with the regular Law Librarian Conversations team, guests include Ryan Deschamp, author of the provocative challenge reported on LLB here, and Todd Venie. The program will start at 2:00 PM Central. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/437272426 [JH]

New and Updated Research Guides from GlobaLex

New research guides published by GlobaLex:

A Research Guide and a Bibliography for Korean Legal Resources in English by Jootaek (Juice) Lee

Global Warming: A Comparative Guide to the E.U. and the U.S. and Their Approaches to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol by Deborah Paulus-Jagric

Updated guides:

Essential Issues of the Chilean Legal System By Sergio Endress Gómez;  Update by Fernando J.Fernández-Acevedo and Radoslav Depolo

Canon Law Research Guide by Don Ford

European Union: A Guide to Tracing Working Documents by Patrick Overy

[JH]