Law Librarian Blog

LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey: Findings on Reasonableness of Annual Price Increases for Products and Services Offered by BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer

This was the "bang for your buck" section of LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey. In view of the current state of library economics, the issue is important to put it mildly. By format for each vendor's products and services, survey takers were asked to rate the reasonableness of annual price increases for the resources offered to their patrons. Click on image left for survey demographics. Part one of the survey's findings was published at Customer Services Findings for BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer

This component of the survey asked the following two questions:

1. In terms of the reasonableness of annual print continuation pricing for the value of the publications in your collection, how would you rate your vendors?

Well, it should come as no surprise to anyone in the law library community that almost 80% of the survey takers rated West's print continuation pricing relative to the value of West titles in their library collections as Very Poor or Poor. See Table 1. What is interesting is the degree of dissatisfaction with West's unreasonable print pricing practices. As indicated in Table 3 below, 43% rated West Print pricing Very Poor. That's more than four times the next highest response rate in the Very Poor category (10% for LexisNexis Print and Wolters Kluwer Print). If ever there was a vendor that has alienated its customers by its pricing practices, West is the one.

Average ratings ranged from 48.78% for BNA Print to 48.53% for LexisNexis Print and 40.46% for Wolters Kluwer Print. BNA Print received the highest Good or Excellent response rate at almost 23%.

2. In terms of the reasonableness of annual online service pricing for the value of the resources provided by your institution, how would you rate your vendors?

Almost 49% of the survey takers rated Westlaw's annual online pricing Very Poor or Poor followed fairly closely by Wolters Kluwer Online pricing which received a response rate of about 43% for Very Poor or Poor. See Table 2. Do note the candid comments survey takers wrote about Wolters Kluwer Online pricing in response to this question.

Once again, Westlaw received the highest Very Poor response rate at 18%. That is twice as high as LexisNexis Online's Very Poor response rate. See Table 3 below. However, I wouldn't recommend making too big a deal about this. Annual price increases for online services (but not initial licensing agreements) may be more market driven than print pricing with one catch, namely libraries locking themselves into multiple year Westlaw contracts for West's Print Package Plans -- a bad as in advantageous only to West idea if I ever saw one. Ever try to swap out even one print title you wanted to cancel for a similarly priced title during the term of your Westlaw contract? A 50% discount for a print title no longer needed in the collection is a 100% waste of money. No other vendor I have worked with has ever been this inflexible. Such is the "partnership" the law library community has with West.

For this question, LexisNexis Online was "best in class" with a 24% response rate for Good or Excellent. Do note in Table 3 below that LexisNexis Online also received the highest "Excellent" response rate at 10%. No other online vendor came even close to such high marks.

A Few Comments. I think the findings need no further commentary than to say that West gets "kudos" for maximizing its duopolist advantage. The Company's pricing practices are clearly viewed as being unreasonable for the value of West publications and services in the libraries of the survey takers.

However, law libraries share responsibility for allowing this situation to remain this way for so long. Law library collections and services are driven in no small part by institutional inertia. Once a product or service has been acquired, it tends to stay part of the mix of offerings to library patrons regardless of outrageous pricing practices. Legal publishers like West have "banked" on this institutional inertia but there comes a point in time when law libraries are forced by circumstances beyond their control to put an end to this madness. It's called economic necessity. Sure law libraries have dealt with budget cuts before but not to the extent they have been facing recently.

Welcome to the "Shed West" era. Why? I think it is fair to say law librarians view West as being hell-bent on squeezing every last penny out of library print budgets to preserve its 30-plus percent profit margin for as long as the Company can. Once there's nothing left, law librarians expect Westlaw's annual pricing rates to increase substantially. West has a very long road to travel to earn any lasting degree of goodwill with many if not most members of the law library community. How many law librarians actually believe goodwill is a component in the Company's strategic decision-making? The fact that our own professional association fails miserably to serve -- to even demonstrate having the will to serve -- as a strong and vocal consumer advocate for law libraries in this matter only exacerbates this situation.

If you view the world of competition as West vs. LexisNexis, LexisNexis certainly has an opportunity to escape the cutback axe for more of its products and services by moderating its annual price increases than West does. LexisNexis clearly provides better customer service than West which survey takers view as the worst provider of customer service in the legal publishing industry. See LLB's Customer Services Findings for BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer. Moderate price increases plus quality customer service matters. Goodwill matters. If you do not trust your vendor, find one you can for comparable products and services. 

When it come to goodwill and striving to maintain a constructive long-term relationship with the library community, LexisNexis and BNA appear to have the edge over Wolters Kluwer, damaged by the IntelliConnect fiasco and their online pricing practices, and West. In the words of one survey taker, "West's increases are unconscionable." To quote another, "There is no possible justification for the price increases from West."  And a third, "West seems to be 'churning' - publishing updates & replacement volumes more frequently than necessary." Still every vendor has its distractors. For more thoughts on the situation, the comments provided by the survey takers are republished below.

By the way, I firmly believe there are plenty of West employees ready, willing and wanting to address the economic realities law libraries are currently facing in a reasonable manner. But they are restrained (think BDSM) by corporate executives utterly focused on maximizing short-term gains.

Survey Findings.Table 3 displays law librarian survey responses for each specific vendor. The range for each vendor's specific rating -- Very Poor, Poor, Average, Good, Excellent -- is a percentage of that vendor's total responses by product format. On this basis, comparisons of the four vendors' print and online products ratings can be made.  Once again, I would like to thank everyone who participated in this survey. It's utterly unscientific but until AALL gets off its collective ass, at least it is something. [JH]

Comments to In terms of the reasonableness of annual print continuation pricing for the value of the publications in your collection, how would you rate your vendors?

West's increases are unconscionable. I wish we could dump every West product we own. I think lots of libraries are playing "chicken," waiting to see who will do mass cancellations first. Now that Harvard has cancelled so many West products I hope the rest of us will buck up and do the same.

There is no possible justification for the price increases from West.
   
West recently sent less than 50 pgs for $209.
   
AND it's time West stopped playing guessing games with its annual increases.  They know we work on our budgets in the Fall, and they know how many new volumes of the digests, codes, etc., they're going to release in the next 12 months.  But when I call my rep, he can't tell me solid #'s ... just ""budget for a 10-15% increase.

There's no way for us to be able to tell how much a West title may go up. It's just guesswork.

I need reliable numbers, even if they're not pretty.  That way I can generate a reasonably-accurate budget.  It really really sucks to get hit in the solar plexus with 25 volumes of FPD4 halfway through my budget cycle.  That's a bitter pill to swallow when I *know* that West knew those books were coming months ahead of time (after all, it's their own editorial staff doing the work).

Years ago, when Matthew Bender's pricing was out of control, the librarians protested, and MB converted to an annual subscription model with modest price increases.  C'mon West - get on board!

It's time for West to adopt annual subscription pricing for its large sets:  the reporters, the digests, state codes, etc.
   
West was once excellent on pricing. The price jumps on all their print products have been immense this year and we have been forced to cancel many items we really wanted to keep.  BNA has always been extremely expensive, so we only rarely purchase additional titles from BNA. 

Seriously, do we need additional comments here? West's pricing model, and to a lesser extent Lexis is based on increasing the price of the product to the point where we are forced to cancel them. Perhaps that is the model they are seeking, if so please just come out and say print is dead.

They all charge too much, but West seems to be "churning" - publishing updates & replacement volumes more frequently than necessary.  Wolters Kluwer charges waaaaay to much and their shipping fees seem unreasonable.
   
BNA supplementation (and the cost of new print treatises) is extremely expensive, and West is out of control.
   
I keep a spreadsheet of library invoices -- the managing partner's jaw dropped when I showed him the price increases over the last 3 years of each product.
   
No One seems to recognize "its the economy, stupid". Wolters--particularly their Aspen titles--continues to be especially greedy.   
 
In an economic downturn, no one's prices should be raised 10% or more.  Extremely abusive pricing this year was with Lexis Colorado Revised Statues.  How does 90% increase sound to you?  Needless to say, I'm steamed about it. 
  
Reasonableness is a vague term.  When continuation is more than getting a new publication, I would not call that reasonable. 
  
Wolters Kluwer sends supplements on some former RIA products that cost at least as much as buying the title new.

None of them are reasonable.

Comments to the question: In terms of the reasonableness of annual online service pricing for the value of the resources provided by your institution, how would you rate your vendors?

Hard to be confidently objective on this one, and I don't know how to answer it.  LexisNexis gets a "Good" from me because they didn't go up this year.  Wolters Kluwer gets "Very Poor" because their proposed price increase is several hundred percent of what we were paying when it was CCH, and we're not sure the use justifies even keeping the service, much less paying that much more for it.
   
We are being taken to the cleaners over our CCH online libraries.

The Wolters Kluwer online offerings have the worst platform of the three vendors and the hardest one to search. Even the new CCH Intelliconnect is not as user friendly as the other three. The Wolters Kluwer pricing is too high for the value.

Wolters Kluwer is pulling a fast one with the CCH databases - charging more for the CCH (now IntelliConnect)  while removing prime publications (like Loss on Securities) to create boutique databases that are very expensive. 
  
If you had a "very, very very poor" I would choose that for Wolters Kluwer which is intent on gouging the legal community by acquisition. But I suppose they had West for a role model.

Our LOISLaw prices and CCH online prices were increased dramatically.  CCH will not unbundle their subscriptions and charge a reasonable rate.

We have been unable to reach any agreement with Lexis for access to LexisNexis at a reasonable pay- for-what-you-use rate.

Discontiued L/N this year because billing was "all over the place" and the proposed renewal price was to high.

Only have Lexis, can't afford anything else.

As much as I appreciate the scope of resources on these products, the business model needs to change for Lexis and Westlaw to a "cafeteria plan" where we can select the content we need/want and not have to pay for the entire content set.  It is all just too expensive, particularly with client resistance to cost recovery.   
   
West and Lexis could charge us $100,000.00 a year for their product and in the end we would have to follow suit and pay it. Our students rely almost exclusively on these products so if I had to cut almost every print title I own to maintain these two services it would be in the best interest of the students to do so. What we are currently paying for WL/Lexis is so low, that is far below market value. The AMLAW 200 pay close to a million per year for these services. Most of our law schools have enough students and faculty to count as AMLAW 200 law firms.
   
BNA bases their online pricing on the number of law school students.  It's a very bad model for law schools.  None of the vendors understand the difference between a law school and law firms.

BNA actually told us they don't care what we paid last year. They priced their services and that's how they will charge.  Sometimes that had caused a 10 or 15% increase in a renewal. UNREASONABLE. They actually said they won't cut a price if it will impact their profit.
   
BNA is very expensive. West is fine for Westlaw, but their other online products are over priced.
   
BNA actually told us they don't care what we paid last year. They priced their services and that's how they will charge.  Sometimes that had caused a 10 or 15% increase in a renewal. UNREASONABLE. They actually said they won't cut a price if it will impact their profit margin.

I believe all print and online are entirely to costly what librarian wouldn't like to see prices go down instead of up.
   
All misjudge the market   

In some cases certain vendors seem to be gauging customers with their online contract rates.

Material is excellent.  Prices are too high.

I got e-Books coming out of my ears!

It seems like an hour doesn’t go by when I am not hearing something new about digital books – everything from new digitisations projects to new devices, and I am not even sure how usey e-books are/will be in a law school setting. (Usey is my own word that I use to combine notions of user-friendly interfaces with effective searching/results .  Used in a sentence for example:  Intelliconnect is not particularly usey.)

Within the last 7 days we learned from DigitalKoans that Columbia and Cornell are entering a joint partnership to digitize library collections. Meanwhile, downtown at NYU, the Chronicle reported that NYU will digitize all of Bobst, their undergraduate library (though, not really, see the real story at LJ.)

Also in the e-book digitzation news recently:  Google announced their new book store, Google Editions, which will be a vehicle to sell and distribute digitized books (from the google book scanning project and directly from publishers, or so it seems) that will be on an anything-but-a-Kindle platform. (Also, see earlier LLB post on Google Editions.) And we now learn that the long awaited B&N competitor to the Kindle and Sony e-Reader, called The Nook, will turn the industry on its head.

The Internet Archive is also taking a swipe at the Kindle market with what CNet identifies as a significant competitor to Amazon.  IA's BookServer service is desribed as:

“open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices.”  (Also, see JHs earlier LLB post on BookServer.)

In other words, BookServer will index the digital books and put you in touch with the producer of the product in an open environment.  I trust Brewster Kahle will put together better metadata than Google!

That’s a lot of effort going into digitizing books in the last week.

Well, are these digital books being used?

In public libraries, the reports are good.  An article in the NY Sunday Times Book Section this past weekend reports on happy library users and their e-books.  The article also discusses possible pricing models libraries might consider with respect to unfree e-literature.  But we are in academic libraries.  I'm wondering if our clientele are hankering for e-books for their schorlarship.

According to the Primary Research report, Library Use of E-books: 2008-2009 Edition, we aren’t really sure.

Primary Research reports that 77% of the respondents in the survey were academic or university libraries.  While expenditures for e-books went up across the board, over 80% of the respondents said that they do not keep track of usage statistics provided by the vendors.  I found this particular statistic astounding.  Here we are screaming for vendor statistics in law libraries, but e-book stats which are provided, aren’t even being used.  Odd.  (By the way, CCH provides pretty good usage statistics if you ask, even if their platform is not particularly usey.)  A review of the report can be accessed through Ingenta to glean further details if you don't want to splurge on the report itself.

It would be nice to see some hard data from law schools.  We just started an Oxford lease for commercial arbitration treatises.  I am going to try them out for 12 months and poll my student/faculty audience to see if they are actually "reading" them or just "searching them" for relevant passages.  If anyone else has some hard data on e-book usage in law schools, I'd love to see it. (VS)

While West "Salutes" Law Librarians During "These Tough Economic Times," Law Librarians' Economic Agendas Have Real Consequences

Salutes while protecting 30-plus percent profit margins, good luck with that corporate strategy during this Shed West era. Hopefully someday, I can write a positive blog post about West being reasonable and flexible during "these tough economic times"  for all of us. My own experience with downsizing our library's print collection and online resources has been that BNA, LexisNexis and Wolters Kluwer either are or are starting to "get it." Looking forward to West also "getting it" soon.

A View from Our Library. I know I can substantially reduce our West print spending; my "no brainer" West print cancellation list already represents a 28% reduction in West costs and that's without a closer examination of the collection. Some West cancellations have been executed already. Cancellation of other vendor titles have and will continue to be made but probably not to the extent of West cutbacks . Absent some pricing concessions, our West print costs may be reduced by 40 percent before mid-2010. Like everyone else, my factors include price inflation, usage, quality of competitor products on my library's shelves, and cost effective digital-only alternatives offered by other vendors because, well, our library can also live without Westlaw, if necessary.

A View from Ohio. Here in Ohio, county law library system reform legislation will increase county law library expenses substantially beginning Jan. 1, 2010 without any increase in funding. In my county, law library expenses will increase $250,000. That's more than 25% of our library's projected statutory receipts for 2010. It may sound like a lot but many other Ohio county law libraries are facing even worse situations. Several county law libraries in major metropolitan areas are in very dire straits. Plans to reduce the square footage of some by half or more are being developed along with very substantial collection cutbacks.

Across the state, county law library collections are being and will continue to be reduced to cut costs. The extent will only be mitigated some by vendors who demonstrate they recognize the reality of Ohio county law library economics now and realize that this is not going to be a short-term situation. Any vendor who sits back waiting to see what's going to happen in the Ohio county law library system before acting will see the consequences of its inaction. Local law library cancellations will collectively represent a historic state-wide hit to a vendor's bottom line. In the Buckeye state, we are living in interesting though painful times.

Across the Nation. What has your experience with our legal vendors been? If you haven't already participated in LLB's survey of legal resources vendors, BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer, the survey is still open. Over 150 responses since it was launched on Sept. 29. Details with link to the Survey Monkey questionnaire.

West's Campaign to Salute Law Librarians During "These Tough Economic Times" This Year. The below video was filmed on the floor of the exhibit hall at AALL's 2009 Annual Meeting. The dissociative identity disorder exhibited by West marketing so far this year is just another good reason to ban West from pitching its wares in Denver.

Ah well, only 3 months left in 2009. Meanwhile economics-driven law library restructuring will continue in 2010, 2011 and 2012. [JH]

What to Withdraw in the Wake of Digitization: Recommendations for Journal Collections

Ithaka S+R's What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization (Sept. 29, 2009) analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly from libraries today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future. From the Report's conclusion:

For journal collections that are available digitally, the online version provides for virtually all access needs, leaving print versions to serve a preservation role and therefore be required in far fewer numbers. Based on our analysis of community needs for print original materials, we see at least a medium-term need to maintain some level of access to print originals in the library community, although our analysis suggests in certain scenarios that long-term or perpetual preservation of many print materials may not be necessary. Consequently, certain print journals can be responsibly withdrawn today, and with concerted effort it should be possible to steadily increase the journals subject to withdrawal. On the other hand, we have also reviewed a number of situations, such as image-intensive titles and digitized version that are subject to inadequate digital preservation, in which the community will rely on print copies retained and preserved without system-wide coordination by hundreds of libraries that have long been the backbone of assured preservation and access.

While the Report does not address legal journals specifically, some of the recommended action steps are applicable. JSTOR is referred to frequently in the Report. For the law library community  one might readily turn to HeinOnline's Law Journals Library as an appropriate reference point. See also the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship reprinted in LLB's post, Law Librarian Group Calls for Ending Publication of Law Reviews in Print Format

Recommended Action Steps

Action steps for journals with immediate withdrawal potential

ONE: Libraries can responsibly withdraw the print versions of certain journals. Our analysis suggests that libraries can withdraw certain print versions, such as those JSTOR-digitized text-only journals that are held in two print repositories, without in any way posing risks to community preservation requirements.

Action steps to increase the withdrawal potential of other journals

TWO: A standard protocol should be developed for the public expression of print retention commitments. These commitments should have several features:

• First, the library or repository should explain precisely which materials will be retained.
• Second, the library or repository should acknowledge the present condition of these materials and fill in any volume-level gaps.
• Third, the library or repository should state the conditions under which it will maintain these materials as well as rules for usage.
• Fourth, the library or repository should state the time period for its commitment and when and how it will reevaluate this commitment.
• Fifth, the library or repository should incorporate plans for how to redistribute these materials to other interested parties should they no longer be willing or able to maintain the commitment in the future.

THREE: The holdings of existing print repository efforts should be analyzed collectively. Based on the information provided via the standard protocol, an analysis should be conducted of how many volume verified copies currently exist for any given journal volume. This exercise would help the community take stock of what additional steps might be required.

FOUR: A study should examine the level of assurance provided in the absence of page-verification. Adequate data do not yet exist to quantify the level of assurance of a preservation system that lacks page verification. Given the challenges to expanding page-verification, it may be hoped that adequate assurance can be provided at the volume level without too many copies being required. But, if page verification remains requisite, the community will have to identify models for page-verification, or modify its preservation requirements.

FIVE: Several large research libraries should commit to retain print collections. If any large research libraries were positioned to commit to retain collections that in any case they would be highly unlikely to withdraw (using the protocols from Recommendation TWO), these commitments could almost immediately address any needs for circulating print copies as a part of a hybrid solution. An aggressive effort to bulk up CRL’s distributed print archive is one possible direction, though other approaches might also be considered.

FIVE: A study should examine the extent to which there will be scholarly dependence on print versions of digitized materials. While studies have already found that there is very little bona fide scholarly need for access to print versions of most digitized materials, it is believed that image-intensive materials may constitute an important exception. Is this the key dividing line or are there others? Would a higher quality digitization process for image-intensive materials be unreasonably expensive relative to the marginal benefits? Are there other approaches that might empower image-intensive fields to make a more complete transition to the electronic environment?

SIX: Digitization should follow accepted standards, digitized materials should be deposited into sustainable digital preservation solutions, and publishers and vendors should provide greater transparency about such standards and practices. This will help the community to categorize the quality of and risk to collections, which is a prerequisite to gaining consensus around appropriate preservation approaches for each category. In addition, based on awareness of actual practices, the library community should encourage digitization programs wherever possible to utilize preservation-caliber scanning practices and to deposit the resulting digital files (including master image files) in preservation archives according to community standards. If digital editions are inadequate for long-term access to materials, then print journals take on far greater importance and correspondingly more complex print preservation systems may be required.

Building a system

SEVEN: The library community should convene around broader questions of print preservation. Will other organizations beyond JSTOR serve as the catalyst for preserving print titles of interest or will the burden fall to individual libraries or groups of them? What rationales and system requirements will be pursued? Will page verification be necessary or will another approach be pursued? Existing consortia and repositories must engage with the preservation-minded research libraries and determine how to gain confidence that a sufficient number of print copies of relevant materials will be preserved against community needs. The appropriate solution may involve some combination of centralized archives and coordinated distributed copies, but the current overlap-driven model cannot be relied on to adequately guarantee that community needs for print materials will be met.

EIGHT: Lightweight yet reliable mechanisms are needed for the automated exchange of information about preservation. As Recommendation TWO indicates, individual libraries and community initiatives will increasingly need to make explicit preservation commitments for print materials. It is increasingly a challenge, however, to share these commitments in an automated fashion that enables effective decisionmaking. What level of detail must be shared and can standard, automated protocols be designed to share these data? While the requirement for such a system is clear for print preservation commitments, such a system will be most valuable if linked with data about digital preservation commitments as well.

NINE: Best practices should be formulated to help libraries make effective local collections management decisions in the context of community-wide actions and priorities. In contemplating the preservation of print collections, or their withdrawal, libraries need to partner effectively with faculty members and understand their needs and concerns. Disciplinary needs and sensitivities emerge as particularly important considerations for libraries.

(Incorrect numbering in the original). [JH]

Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors: BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer

The little survey I am about to ask you to take is just an attempt to see where the law library community stands with respect to our relationships with our vendors, the big two, LexisNexis and West, and the not as big but eager to increase market share two, BNA and Wolters Kluwer. It is an overly simplistic and admitting unscientific survey but it offers a little something for everyone by asking participants to rate legal publishing vendors by customer service, pricing and contracting, products and services value, and the impact our collection development decisions may have on our patrons' current research practices.

Like previous LLB polls, this one is idiosyncratic in the sense that the questions asked address issues that pop into my always befuddled head. They may not be the best questions -- my blog widow says I'm an idiot most of the time -- but they are the result of what happens when you think out loud in the blogosphere. This survey is a follow-up to LLB's (1) April 2009 Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence? Results of the LLB Poll; (2) February 2009 Tough Times Ahead for Law Library Budgets poll results; and (3) recent email communications from some law librarians who prefer to response to blog posts directly to me instead of by adding comments to posts.

Responses need not be limited to one representative per institution. You may not have an opinion on every question but you probably have opinions for some and each question offers survey takers the opportunity to add their own narrative about the issue presented. Results will follow in about a month or so and republication of any comments will remain anonymous.

So here it is: LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors. [JH]

Sign of the Times: Getting Harder Every Day to Give Away Print Resources

From a recent law-lib message:

Last call (emphasis added) for the following sets of books for postage, all updated to May 2009.

USCA, has 2008 pocket parts

West's Federal Practice Digest 4th, 49 boxes, has 2008 pocket parts- (2009 pocket parts shipping this week)

McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York Annotated, has 2009 pocket parts

New Jersey Statutes Annotated, has 2008 pocket parts

If there are no takers for sets, we will send individual volumes from any set for $25/volume- postage included. (emphasis in the original)

Which also reminds me of an earlier offer to give away boxes upon boxes of bookends for postage several months ago. [JH]

Lexis or Westlaw No Longer a Blasphemous Question at BigLaw Firms

Librarians at 86 Am Law 200 firms completed American Lawyer's 2009 law library survey. Summary findings provided in Alan Cohen's Law Librarians Survey: No More Sacred Cows American Lawyer article include:

• 46% report budget cuts this year compared to 9% last year.

• 57% report staff cuts this year compared to 18% percent in 2008

• 31% report law firms have or intend to move to single vendor for online legal research this year compared to 12% last year  

Legal Resources Spending Cuts. Law librarians report that firms are deadly serious about cutting legal resource spending this year. "In the past we had budget cuts, but we were given targets," says an unidentified head librarian at a blue-chip New York firm. "They'd tell us to cut it 10-15 percent, and we'd come in around 7 or 8. You got yelled at, but you didn't lose your job. Now they are serious. It's no longer a target."  Robert Oaks, chief library and records officer at Latham & Watkins adds "we've been able to cut our print budget a bit over 12 percent and our electronic budget a little less than 10 percent."

Cohen reports that librarians have become tougher negotiators when it comes to renewing contracts with publishers—thanks in no small part to the metrics they get from new tracking software. "One library director who uses advanced tracking software says that he has not paid any increases in subscription costs this year. Pointing to the metrics, he told vendors that their products don't provide enough bang for the buck," writes Cohen who adds by way of recapping the survey's findings about law firm library collection development:

Put it all together—the cost-cutting, the metrics, and the idea that everything is open to review--and it's no shock that more firms are starting to ask a question that, up until now, seemed almost blasphemous: Lexis or Westlaw? Last year just 12 percent of firms said they intended to move to a single-vendor strategy. This year, 31 percent did. "In good times, we could all have Coke and Pepsi," says a library chief. "Now management is more willing to say that we'll make do with one."

One Bright Spot. "If there is one unqualified bright spot in this year's survey," writes Cohen, "it's the success--finally--that firms are having using technology to filter and organize vast amount of electronic content: documents, e-mail newsletters, blog feeds, and so on." [JH]

The Future of Westlaw and LexisNexis Pricing or How the "Radical Transformation of the Legal Publishing Marketplace" May Not Save Law Libraries Much Money

When I left library school for a mid-sized Chicago SEC law firm in 1980 I thought I arrived in legal research heaven. Don't worry about Lexis costs for research. Go ahead and use Dow Jones online to get the latest headline news on a hostile takeover. Have a court clerk express mail the pleading just filed. Ditto for an SEC filing from Charlie Simon's information brokerage in D.C. Time really was of the essence and the client was billed the cost of research and document retrieval. My colleagues in academic law libraries turned around research projects over the course of several days and even weeks. Law firm librarians turned around similar research assignments overnight or in 48 hours. They had information at their finger tips is as close to real time as was possible back them because of law firm cost recovery practices. And clients paid. The costs were deduced as business expenses. Bottom line: using these services saved time.

Web-based dissemination of some information we once acquired from information brokers and court clerks offer alternatives to, indeed replacements of, some fee-based information services we used a quarter of a century ago -- how many LLB readers know that the great service Charles E. Simon and Company once provided even existed? By the mid-to-late 1980s, clients were examining online legal research charges more closely and billing partners tended to shave them some. Cost recovery began to be limited by client receptivity to charge-backs. I point to when Lexis implemented a new pricing structure that increased costs as the moment when clients started to seriously question online search charge-backs. Remember when Lexis charged each time a user pushed the search button; one charge for a search, less for modifying that search by adding levels to the original search after reviewing the initial output. Most users only learned that starting over in the middle of a search session triggered the higher of the two charges again.

Westlaw and LexisNexis Flat-Rate Pricing Models. LexisNexis and Westlaw's per-minute/per-use pricing model "facilitated client cost-recovery and allowed publishers to use law firms as information wholesalers" as Peter Schwartz writes in The Reinvention of Legal Research: The Future Is Now for The Huffington Post. Their current flat-rate pricing model may reflect the consequences of client push-backs from law firm cost recovery charge-backs, but contrary to Schwartz's opinion that clients will not pay for research because information is a commodity now, cost recovery remains part of the law firm legal research landscape. As Mark Gediman writes in Cost Recovery…Such a deal, "I find myself constantly explaining/defending/justifying our cost recovery policy. Maybe I’ve been sampling the Kool-aid along the way, but I’ve come to realize that most firms that charge back for online services are actually saving their clients money." And let's not forget that the time-saving factor still applies.

About the self-characterized "radical transformation of the legal publishing marketplace" Schwartz writes

The large legal publishers are in trouble. If law firms can no longer pass through online research costs to clients, multi-billion dollar legal publishers such as West and Lexis can no longer support pricing models premised on law firm cost recovery. Because West and Lexis cost structures depend on this pricing model, they are beginning to experience painful margin squeezes, compounded by the entry into the legal research marketplace of both nimble, low-cost competitors and new rivals with deep pockets such as Bloomberg.

Maybe there is a threat to profit margins but you can't tell it from the financial reports of Westlaw and LexisNexis. Price increases for Westlaw and LexisNexis search services and packaging those services into plans offering something less than all databases coupled with so-called savings from discounted print titles seems to working fairly well for our duopolists. And if money couldn't be made, would competitors enter the marketplace?

Anyone trying to compete directly with Westlaw and LexisNexis has "a huge uphill battle to wage before they can compare themselves to the big two publishers" writes Greg Lambert in Information Wants To Be Free -- But, We'll Still Pay For "Authority" because "none have the general authority and respect - in the eyes of the courts - that the two big players have." Commenting on the Schwartz article, Lambert has the final word on why LexisNexis and Westlaw are here to stay (at least for now) for researching  primary legal information:

[L]et's remember what is the "end game" of legal research. When all is said and done, your final product should be something that is upheld by a court of law. Within the common law courts, this generally means that you must point to existing documents that support your claim. The whole idea behind such concepts as stare decisis is that the "law" is built upon existing law and decisions and is usually not changed except in extreme circumstances. When you have concepts like stare decisis, you need to be able to rely upon solid resources that have earned the trust of the courts. It may be true that information is liquid, but laws and the legal information behind those laws are much more like ice than they are like water.

The Future of Westlaw and LexisNexis Pricing. The real story isn't that Thomson West and LexisNexis are in trouble because of their current online pricing models and client receptivity to online cost recovery for case, statutory and regulatory research. The real story is that in this economy their pricing practices for print continuations are pushing law firm libraries (and most other law libraries) to cancel print title subscriptions for digital-only access. According to LLB's April 2009 informal poll, 76% responded that LexisNexis and Thomson West should be worried about the cancellation of print titles because many of their regularly updated titles are duplicated in their online services and another 18% responded that the digital-only option was being considered. See Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence? Results of the LLB Poll. See also LLB's February 2008 poll results, Tough Times Ahead for Law Library Budgets (82% responded that collections will be the hardest hit area during on-going budget cutbacks).

This is the real "radical transformation of the legal publishing marketplace" and we law librarians need to be worried about the future of Westlaw and LexisNexis pricing models in this respect -- watch out for higher annual price increases in their multi-year contracts. The days of "up to 5 percent per year" may be coming to an end. [JH]

Findings from Law Firm Research Instruction Needs Survey Also Useful for Collection Development Decisions

In Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 101 Law Library Journal 297 (2009), Patrick Meyer, Associate Library Director and Adjunct Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, reports on the findings of his 2007 survey of law firm librarians that was intended to identify the most important law firm research tasks and the proper format or formats in which those tasks should be performed so that advanced legal research courses could be designed to prepare new law firm attorneys. I subscribe to the notion that advanced legal research instruction should be format neutral. First you teach students the principles of legal research for specific research tasks by an analysis of access points and routes to legal resources based on a documentation analysis. Then you apply those principles in an integrated manner to print and online resources so students are equipped to perform research regardless of the setting they find themselves in after graduation from law school. However, it is also important to know which formats are preferred in law firms and Meyer provides some of this information in the form of opinion responses from law firm librarians.

Mayer's survey found the following about research tasks that should be performed by recommended format.

I believe most law librarians would agree with the responses as a set of best research practices by type of research task. The survey does not tell us what resources new attorneys are actually using for the above research tasks (or were trying to use before firm librarians pointed them in the right direction). That was beyond the survey's scope but the information might have been helpful for ALR instructors so they could address the set of bad research practices law firm librarians deal with when newly minted lawyers arrive on their doorsteps.

Oh well, since most new lawyers haven't taken an ALR course because most law schools deem the production of research-skilled students not sufficiently important to require ALR instruction, the legal academy leaves that job to law firm librarians anyway. Intuitively, most ALR instructors know what some of these bad practices are and they try to correct them in their courses but they probably don't know all of the bad practices because enrollment in ALR courses is limited to students who want to know how to perform research. Many who need to know how to perform research don't take a comprehensive ALR course. We'll have to wait 3 to 5 years to see if multiple-choice questions for testing research skills on the multi-state bar exam improves the situation by requiring a radical reform of the typical 1L legal writing and research program or, better, by requiring a comprehensive ALR course in order to prepare students to pass the bar exam's research component.

My one problem with the survey is that it was conducted in 2007, that is to say before law firm librarians faced budget cutbacks to their collections. This, of course, is not a criticism of Meyer's work. Some (many?) firm librarians are now facing decisions or have already had to make decisions that would lead them to qualify their best practice responses along this line: "new attorneys should use X in format Y to perform research task Z but our library had to cancel X because our firm could no longer afford it." In other words, some of the best research practices responses may now be wish lists that echo back to collection cuts as much as they reveal the poor research skills new attorneys have.

While the survey findings were intended to help ALR instructors design their courses, the data may also provide law librarians, and not just law firm librarians, with some authority to point to when attempting to justify the retention of print and online legal resources in the face of budget cuts to their collections. There is plenty more additional useful data than provided above, so I strongly recommend Meyer's LLJ article to both ALR instructors and collection development decision-makers. [JH]

Guide to Negotiating Vendor Contracts

A veteran of vendor negotiations for law firm online and print contracts, Elaine Billingslea Dockens offers a detailed guide for vendor representatives (VRs) and law librarians inexperienced in the ways of vendor contracting in Vendor Pitfalls in Negotiating Large Multi-Year Contracts - or How to Lose a Million Dollar Contract (LLRX). Dockens writes:

During negotiations my goal is to control expenses and look for discounts (and still keep a quality product). The goal of the VRs include obtaining or retaining our business and making a reasonable profit. When we both - firm and vendor - come to the table prepared to get the very best deal for our side, then everybody wins. However, if one of the parties arrives at the table ill prepared - we both lose. The vendor will probably lose the business they could have obtained or retained and the firm loses the chance to seriously consider the vendor in comparison to other vendors.

The article includes commentary on vendor representative tactics Dockens has witnessed over the years that substantially decreased the success of the VRs to obtain or retain her law firm's business. Reading this section was déjà vu all over again. [JH]

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) allows you to compare bilbiographic and full text databases.  There are sfour main functions on the site:

1. Compare Journal Title Lists
2. Compare key features of database platforms
3. Compare e-Book platforms
4. Compare charts and statistice (dashboards) of each database

So, for example, with respect to number 3, if you compare NetLibrary to ebrary, you will learn that ebrary lets you export citations to Endnote, while NetLibrary will not. However, ebrary allows you to search by LC Subject trees, while Netlibrary does not.  There are more than 70 categories that they compare in the e-Book platform section.  It is a great service when trying to compare usability of different platforms!

Similarly, their comparison of journal titles in databases quickly provide venn diagrams of overlaps in coverage.  For example, of ABI/Informs 3,984 titles, 1,796 also appear in Business Source Premier (which has a total of 12,978) titles.  If you are using an ERM, chances are that your ERM can do this for you as well.  For those of you not using an ERM, this is an very handy collection development aid that mimics some pricey proprietary software.

The site also informs you when the title list for each database was last updated, and lets you set up alerts for when those updates take place. Contributers are a little sparse but the big names of Proquest and Thomson Reuters are both there, along with others.  It would be nice to see this grow - wouldn't it be fun to compare Lexis to Westlaw? (VS)

2009 Edition of Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual Now Available

Ken Svengalis is every law librarian's best friend. While I buy Bowker's Law Books and Serials in Print once every ten years, I purchase Ken's Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual (Rhode Island LawPress) every year. I always look forward to reading Ken's analysis of legal publishing industry practices and pricing trends -- something AALL should be but isn't doing nearly as well as Ken.

The Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual is the best annual guide for law library collection development work available because of the detailed information provided for every listed title including historical pricing information for supplementation. In my opinion, The Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual is an excellent reference tool too. If you can't get the publication out of your director's or acquisition librarian's hands, reference librarians should insist on buying second copies of this publication for their reference book collection. [JH]

Here's a message from Ken Svengalis, Rhode Island LawPress:

I am pleased to announce the release of the 2009 (13th) edition of the "Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual."  It's the book Kevin Gerson, Director of the UCLA Law Library, recently described as "hands-down the most useful book on legal information ever written."

Under our current economic challenges, it has exactly the information your library needs to confront the rising costs of legal information.  Its genesis in 1996 was one law librarian's response to the challenges we faced then.  Those challenges have grown ever more urgent with each passing year. It contains, among other things, the most extensive annotated bibliography of the legal literature in print, and a buyer's guide useful to lawyers and librarians who are in either acquisition or cancellation mode.  Consider this:

Since the merger of Thomson and West in 1996, West's print supplementation costs have risen 304% (1995-2008), reflecting an average annual increase of at least 11.5%.  There was not the slightest diminution in the rate of increase for 2008, despite an economy which has brought law libraries from New Jersey to California to dire straights, and threats of closure in a number of states.  Moreover, the prices of most West Hornbooks were increased over the past year at rates exceeding anything in the history of that series (generally 35-45%).  These price increases have allowed West to achieve an industry-leading profit margin for 2008 of 32.1% on the backs of struggling law libraries.  Yet, ironically, West will want us to sit down with them at a variety of receptions, luncheons, and parties at the upcoming annual meeting and pretend that this is not happening.  The expense of hosting these functions represents an infinitesimal fraction of the profits they have made off struggling law libraries, most of whose librarians cannot afford to attend the annual meeting because their libraries are so strapped for funds.

In light of the current state of the economy and the perilous position of many law libraries across the country, the current cost and supplementation cost data will no doubt prove an invaluable resource to libraries.  Those of you who have been in the profession for many years will remember the former "FTC Guides for the Legal Publishing Industry."  Those guides required publishers to provide customers the last two years' supplementation costs in their promotional literature, a requirement that was often ignored.  With the demise of the FTC Guides, and the lack of an effective replacement, the availability of this supplementation cost data is virtually non-existent, unless one asks for it specifically.  This is where the "Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual" has stepped in to fill the breach.  After all, it's all about the supplementation.  West, for example, made 86% of its profits off supplementation in 2008 according to its 2008 annual report.  Getting a handle on supplementation costs is the primary way in which law libraries can confront these budgetary challenges.

We are now tracking the costs of more than 2,500 publications, including more than 1,700 legal treatises and hundreds of the leading state and federal publications.  The 2009 edition now includes supplementation costs as far back as 1993 and up to and including 2008.  The initial cost and supplementation costs for the years 2004-2008 are also featured in a 51-page spreadsheet in Appendix H, providing a convenient and time-saving means of conducting comparative product evaluations.  There are also reviews of more than 80 of the most significant new treatise titles published in 2008 and early 2009.  In addition to substantial new content, and a complete updating of all pricing data, the 2009 edition has also been substantially redesigned inside and out (see attached).

This is what the 1996 Thomson-West merger has wrought.  My 2009 edition has, among more than 80 others, a review of Gary Reback's new book "Free the Market" which provides a fascinating examination of the Thomson-West merger as well as expert analysis of the state of antitrust law in the United States from one of its leading practitioners.

Shipments to all standing order subscribers were made last week.  If you are uncertain if your library is on standing order, please e-mail us and we will confirm your status.

I also direct you to the PowerPoint of my presentation to the Association of Legal Administrators on May 19th in New Orleans. Go to: www.rilawpress.com.

We have responded to the current economy by pricing our 2009 edition the same as last year's edition--$149.00.  The 2009 "Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual" may be ordered on our web site (www.rilawpress.com), by email at rilawpress@comcast.net, or by calling our NEW order line  (860-535-0378).  We accept Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, or will invoice.  Additional copies shipped to the same address are only $130.00.  A companion CD-ROM is also priced at $149.00, or $80.00 when ordered in combination with the print edition.

E-Books: Understanding the Basics

Jane Lee, California Digital Library Assessment Analyst, covers e-book essentials in E-Books: Understanding the Basics. In her brief article, Lee observes that "the rise of e-books highlights the struggle to offer services that address the increasing demand for electronic resources while maintaining legacy collections. There will be questions and arguments about the future of books and the role that academic libraries must fulfill, but we must stay focused on the central question. Our materials and methods may change, but our mission remains the same. We exist to support scholarship – whatever form it takes." Hat tip to Digital Koans.

Mark Giangrande (DePaul) observes on Tech Law Prof Blog that the e-book market may open up some if Amazon moves away from linking its own content exclusively with its own reader. See Amazon May Open Up Kindle, e-Book Business To Other Formats. [JH]

Open Access Marches On

Signatories to Open Access Statement

The statement is signed by the directors of the University Press of Florida, University of Akron Press, University Press of New England, Athabasca University Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Calgary Press, University of Michigan Press, Rockefeller University Press, Penn State University Press, and University of Massachusetts Press. Mike Rossner of Rockefeller University Press said that the press directors issued the statement as they wanted "to align ourselves with the stances taken by many universities -- by faculties and administrators -- on scholarly communication." Quoted in Inside Higher Ed.

Open Access News blog reported on June 4th that ten university press directors signed a position statement in support of free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than twelve months after publication. The statement is further discussed on the Chronicle of Higher Education news blog. This announcement should remind you of the November 7, 2008 Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship that was signed by many law library directors and called for elimination of printed law journals and adoption of a stable, open access model for law journals.

The Press Directors’ position statement is somewhat contrary to the position of the American Association of University Presses, their 112-member national organization. Executive Director Charles Lowery’s nine page PDF explains the AAUP position which is argued with the assumption that the reason academic law libraries support open access is to help meet shrinking budget lines. I do not think this is the only reason why academic library directors support open access, but the essay is worth reading to review different approaches to journal deselection choices such as combining a cost-per-page with a cost-per-use strategy.

AAUP filed a letter of support for the Fair Copyright in Research Works bill (H.R. 6845) which was reintroduced into Congress this past September (and seems to have died in the Judiciary Committee) prohibiting federal agencies from requiring fund recipients to give up their copyright in order to receive federal monies.

The American Association of Publishers also supports bills like H.R. 6845. At the site of their affiliate, Professional Scholarly Publishing, you can find key talking points surrounding the Fair Copyright in Research Works bill, and reposted statements from other organizations concerning retention of copyright in funded scientific works. The AAP also lobbied President Obama on the same. You can find their letter to him and Vice President Biden at this site.

At least one of the signatories to the position statement, Rockefeller University Press Director Mike Rossner, already makes Rockefeller journals available six months after publication. He has not found this practice of delayed free posting contrary to their business model. This position diffuses much of the discussion levied against open access. Hopefully, we will see more concrete support of an open access model that will result in more collections such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and BioMed Central, or direct access to journals via their own web sites.

To inform yourselves more fully on the benefits of open access, I highly recommend the SPARC pages on this issue. (VS)

Reminder: Managing Electronic Titles and Materials This Afternoon

Richard Leiter and Brian Striman discuss the challenges of electronic titles in law libraries on their BlogTalkRadio program, The Law Librarian, today at 3:00 pm (Eastern). The call-in phone number for Managing Electronic Titles and Materials is 347-945-7183. Topics will include:

• How should electronic titles be cataloged?

• How should local cataloging records reflect remote subscription holdings?

• How should "holding" be defined with respect to electronic titles? Is the ABA definition adequate?

• If your library subscribes to all or a portion of HeinOnline, do you "hold" all those titles?

• Are OPACS the proper place to record access to electronic titles, or do we rely on vendor websites?

• How do you provide access to electronic holdings to non-institutional patrons? (Ie., members of the public)

• How do you keep track of electronic serials?

• How does access to electronic titles affect existing or future binding policies?

Should be very informative. If you can't listen to the live program, you will be able to download the podcast. [JH]

New Edition of Licensing Digital Content: A Practical Guide for Librarians Published

ALA has published the second edition of Licensing Digital Content: A Practical Guide for Librarians by Lesley Ellen Harris. Covering licensing issues for librarians in the US, Canada and around the world, the second edition of this popular one-stop resource covers the basics of digital licensing in a plain-language approach that demystifies the process. See also the book's blog. [JH]

Reminder: Registation Deadline for The Shared Electronic Resource Understanding Webinar is June 5

"The Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU): Can It Work in My Library" webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm (Eastern Time). The presenters, Karla Hahn, Assistant Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries and Judy Luther, President of Informed Strategies, who served together as co-chairs of the NISO Working Group that developed SERU, will discuss how libraries and publishers can forgo negotiating traditonal licensing agreements for e-resources in favor of using a set of “common understandings”. Topics to be covered in the webinar include:

• Learn about what SERU is and how SERU is used in practice.
• The legal implications of SERU.
• Is SERU feasible in the law library setting?

Registration must be complete by June 5 (5:00pm Central). Space is limited. [JH] 

An Endangered Species: The Sacred Cows of Academic Law Library Collections

In The Effect of Economics and Electronic Resources on the Traditional Law Library Print Collection, 101 LLJ 117 (2009), Amanda M. Runyon (Tarlton Law Library) surveyed academic law libraries directors to determine how expenditures on acquisitions and electronic resources changed between the 2002–03 and 2006–07 academic years and how academic law libraries are managing their print collections given the increasing electronic availability of the same legal resources. Note well the shift to canceling print titles duplicated online. Runyon concludes:

One can see from the results of this study that academic law library collections are on the brink of a major change, and indeed have begun to take a new shape over the past five years. Although further research using a larger sample is needed to confirm these results, what is clear is that right now academic law libraries of all sizes are feeling the squeeze in acquisitions funds. Despite the range of acquisitions expenditures reported by the responding libraries, a good number of libraries had already taken action by ceasing to update or canceling some of their print materials, and even more have considered cancellations. While microtrends in the data show that libraries that have had smaller increases in their acquisitions budgets may be the leaders in this paradigm shift, it is clear that even libraries that have received larger increases are not far behind. It is probable that what we consider the “sacred cows” of the law library collection will change drastically in the near future.

[JH]

Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence? Results of the LLB Poll

Faced with substantial budget cuts to law library collections and legal research policy changes, LLB launched an informal poll on April 13th [background] looking into what impact the current economy may have on LexisNexis and Thomson West print products and online legal research services and whether any impact would having lasting consequences. The results are now in and note the conflicted situation we are in. On the one hand, participants see a permanent shift to free and low cost online legal research services, presumably for primary legal materials. On the other hand, reliance on LexisNexis and West online services for secondary materials may trend upward, but at the expense of libraries canceling LexisNexis and West print title continuations that are duplicated online.

Is it too far-fetched to contemplate that their duopolistic pricing practices may end LexisNexis' and Westlaw's dominance of the market for online primary legal materials someday? Considering the content-rich, and better designed products offered by BNA and CCH in their web-based services, will libraries eliminate from their plans LexisNexis and West online secondary legal materials covered by BNA and CCH someday? Will legal publishers like BNA, CCH and Aspen-Loislaw see this as an opportunity to expand their online offerings into subject areas they may once thought they could not be competitive? Expand by offering competitive fundamental research tools like comprehensive and reliable online citation indexes for example?

Thanks to everyone who participated in this informal poll. While utterly unscientific, the results are thought-provoking. Maybe we are living in interesting times. [JH]

Will the current economic situtaion be "good" for free and low cost online legal research services -- do you see or expect to see patrons use them more frequently than in the past?

If yes, will the trend in usage be temporary or permanent once the economy improves -- should LexisNexis and Westlaw be worried?

Should LexisNexis and Thomson West be worried about the cancellation of print titles because many of their regularly updated titles are duplicated in their online services?

I work in [type of law library]

Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence?

BetaNews is reporting that 96 percent of participants in the latest Future of Open Source 2009 Survey said they think the economy's turbulence is "good" for open source. According to the report, open source software will be "most disruptive" over the next five years to IT sectors that include databases and operating systems. When asked to identify the sector most susceptible to disruption, 52% of respondents pointed to databases, 36% to OS, 28% to business intelligence, and 22% to Web content management.

Beyond Lexis & Westlaw. While the IT sector survey did't include online legal research, we have to wonder whether the current economic climate will be "good" for free and low cost legal research services. Previously LLB reported on academic law libraries placing more emphasis on this sector by publishing guides that focus on alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw for online legal research. See the excellent work produced by Georgetown and UCLA, for example.

An LLB poll conducted in September of last year found that the vast majority of law librarians neither use nor provide training in the use of some free services, namely PreCYdent, PLoL and/or AltLaw. The results, of course, may have more to say about the perceived quality of these services and the low-cost plans offered by LexisNexis and Westlaw to law schools. But the ABA Journal's summary of the 2008 Legal Technology Survey Report did report that the number of lawyers performing free online legal research has overtaken the number using fee-based services for the first time. (89% used free online legal research while 87% used fee-based research services) and that trend may increase because of the economics on online legal research.

LLB's recent informal poll on the financial situation law libraries are finding themselves in because of the dismal state of the US economy found that the brunt of budget cuts will be library collections. 82% of the respondents who are facing or expecting to face budget reducations reported that library collections will be "hardest hit" area of library operations. One assumes, rightly I believe, that print materials are more likely to face the axe than online resources but certainly in some libraries expensive online resources will not be exempt from cancellations, cutbacks in negotiated plans, or shifts to low cost or free online legal services as a matter of institutional research policy. See, e.g., Large Law Firm Sets New Online Research Policy: Use Loislaw First.

Faced with substantial budget cuts to library collections and legal research policy changes, we think it timely to ask if law librarians are seeing a shift to free and low cost legal research services at the expense of Lexis and Westlaw use. So will the current economic situation be "good" for free and low cost online legal research services -- do you see or expect to see patrons use them more frequently than in the past? And if so, will it be temporary or permanent once the economy improves -- should LexisNexis and Westlaw be worried?

Finally with substantial annual price increases for continuations in print and substantially less for online legal services, a related question: should LexisNexis and West be worried about the cancellation of print titles because many of their regularly updated print titles are duplicated in their online services.

Thanks in advance for taking a moment to participate in our poll. [JH]

Is the Economy's Turbulence "Good" for Free and Low Cost Online Legal Research Services
and "Bad" for LexisNexis and Thomson West Print Continuation Renewals?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research