Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Legal Research Wars
So, there are basically two companies which you can do legal research through. Lexis or Westlaw. Once you are an attorney they charge you ridiculous fees in order to for you to access that which should be freely available to everyone (it is freely available just in hard copies, I think it should be freely available online). In order to get you hooked on their services they let you use them for free while you are in law school, give away a ton of free stuff and bend over backwards to help you.
I think that each service has its own pluses and minuses and I jump back and forth depending on what I need done. Today I wanted to use Lexis just to print out four simple cases for my sexual harrassment seminar. I wanted Lexis because it prints out on both sides and I hate wasting paper. However, there was a problem with the printing for some reason. I was cool with that, I just figured I would use Westlaw.
EXCEPT, there is this crazy lady here who works for Lexis who wanted me to pick up there magic red phone (no shitting you there really is a red phone here that dials straight to Lexis headquarters) in order to figure out what was wrong with my print job. This is my day off from work (granted I still have school) and I just don't want to deal with people or explaining shit to people when there is a readily available alternative option.
THEN she actually follows me to the other end of the computer lab to question me further and is now across the room on the red phone watching me. It is crazy, very very crazy. To my end I am sitting here thinking, no matter how much free stuff they give me, in the end when I am an attorney, I am still going to use Lexis to research some things and Westlaw to research others. And no amount of pens, balloons, coffee mugs OR crazy ladies on red phones is gonna change that.
So, there are basically two companies which you can do legal research through. Lexis or Westlaw. Once you are an attorney they charge you ridiculous fees in order to for you to access that which should be freely available to everyone (it is freely available just in hard copies, I think it should be freely available online). In order to get you hooked on their services they let you use them for free while you are in law school, give away a ton of free stuff and bend over backwards to help you.
I think that each service has its own pluses and minuses and I jump back and forth depending on what I need done. Today I wanted to use Lexis just to print out four simple cases for my sexual harrassment seminar. I wanted Lexis because it prints out on both sides and I hate wasting paper. However, there was a problem with the printing for some reason. I was cool with that, I just figured I would use Westlaw.
EXCEPT, there is this crazy lady here who works for Lexis who wanted me to pick up there magic red phone (no shitting you there really is a red phone here that dials straight to Lexis headquarters) in order to figure out what was wrong with my print job. This is my day off from work (granted I still have school) and I just don't want to deal with people or explaining shit to people when there is a readily available alternative option.
THEN she actually follows me to the other end of the computer lab to question me further and is now across the room on the red phone watching me. It is crazy, very very crazy. To my end I am sitting here thinking, no matter how much free stuff they give me, in the end when I am an attorney, I am still going to use Lexis to research some things and Westlaw to research others. And no amount of pens, balloons, coffee mugs OR crazy ladies on red phones is gonna change that.
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