Eric Turkewitz at New York Personal Injury Law writes that there’s a new kid in town when it comes to computerized legal research, Alt Law. While not yet ready for a showdown with the old timers, Lexis and Westlaw, the idea that free options are becoming a reality certainly changes the landscape in legal research.
Does this mean that the Lexis and Westlaw are shaking in their boots? I doubt it. For those of us who used to use those archaic things called “lawbooks”, we’ve been down this road before. In the olden days, lawyers had libraries. Libraries were filled with these things called books. Each month they would come, and somebody would put them on a shelf in the library in sequence. This wasn’t all that difficult, because each book had a number on it. The numbers saved us a lot of time.
Once a year, they would send out a big box full of pocket parts. These were updates that went into this little sleeve in the back of the book. You pulled out last year’s pocket part and put in this year’s pocket part. This was not one of the more pleasant jobs in the office. Plus, you ended up with a lot of worthless paper, even though it cost a lot of money only a year ago to buy them.
There are two things to bear in mind about these numbered books. First, they were not cheap. They represented a huge out of pocket expense, paid monthly as each new book would arrive, and once you started down “Library Road,” you couldn’t stop because that would leave you without the latest and greatest caselaw and would render your library worthless. When the books have numbers on them, it’s pretty easy to tell if there are a few missing here and there.
Second, they ate up an ever increasing amount of real estate in your office. When you built your library, it was only so big. But the books kept coming. And coming. And imaginative ways were developed to place the books so that they didn’t take up as much space (such as putting every fifth book behind the others), but stop gap measures only worked for so long. Eventually, room ran out and you had to do something. Just toss them? Are you nuts? They cost a fortune, and it would tantamount to fiscal suicide to throw lawbooks away.
But then one day, a letter came touting something called a “CD”. The law on “CD” was the savior to the ever-expanding law library. The only problem at the time was that typical computers did not have CD drives (we were still using the big old floppies back then, and maybe had a diskettes drive if we were cutting edge). So Westlaw was giving away free external CD drives if you subscribed to the CDs.
Not to be outdone, Lexis pioneered its own dedicated user interface over some new-fangled thing called the “internet”. All you needed was a contraption called a “modem”, which they were happy to give you for free if you subscribed. It was slow, but it was erratic. Ah, cutting edge technology.
All the while, dinosaurs (like me) kept buying the books, because we just couldn’t let go of that damn library that we have been paying for month after month since we opened our doors. Worse yet, West (this was before it was commonly referred to as Westlaw, which is really the computerized stepchild of West Publishing) not only refused to cut the CD subscribers a break on the book prices, but actually increased the price of the books. They wanted to drive subscribers away from books into the CDs, which was FAR more profitable for them (like a gazillion-fold).
Ultimately, they pried the books from the grasp of that handful of lawyers who simply refused to see the future coming. Books were dead. Long live computers. Libraries became conference rooms. Books became a backdrop for the benefit of clients, who wouldn’t know whether the latest New York Supplement 2d was book number 783 or 1049.
We tried to sell these books, but no one wanted them. We tried to donate these books, but no one wanted them. Overnight, they were worthless.
It’s been a long time since Lexis and Westlaw became the norm. Our abilities at searching the database, and finding the law we’re looking for, varies, so it can often take an additional 30 or 40 nanoseconds to come up with the right decision. Flipping back and forth between decisions isn’t what it used to be, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. Old dogs learn new tricks everyday, especially when they have no choice.
But lawyers born in the computer age will never know the joys of carrying a dozen bound volumes, all open to the right page, and spreading them around the conference table so that you can compare the language used by Judge Breitel against the prose of Sol Wachtler. The feel of paper in your hand as you leaf through the decision to find the perfect quote will never be replaced by the touch of the mouse as you scroll through a case.
The explanation of Alt Law, that the law belongs to everyone and we should not have to pay for access, is compelling. It is our law, not Westlaw’s or Lexis’. What right do they have to sell us back what we have given them? But the mechanism of our access to the law was never ours, through its many permutations. I don’t know if Alt Law, or any other newcomers, will be able to provide lawyers with the tools to do research that Westlaw and Lexis do. But I do know that no computer research will ever be as satisfying as spreading out those dozen books on a desk and seeing the fruit of your labor laid out before you.
Does this mean that the Lexis and Westlaw are shaking in their boots? I doubt it. For those of us who used to use those archaic things called “lawbooks”, we’ve been down this road before. In the olden days, lawyers had libraries. Libraries were filled with these things called books. Each month they would come, and somebody would put them on a shelf in the library in sequence. This wasn’t all that difficult, because each book had a number on it. The numbers saved us a lot of time.
Once a year, they would send out a big box full of pocket parts. These were updates that went into this little sleeve in the back of the book. You pulled out last year’s pocket part and put in this year’s pocket part. This was not one of the more pleasant jobs in the office. Plus, you ended up with a lot of worthless paper, even though it cost a lot of money only a year ago to buy them.
There are two things to bear in mind about these numbered books. First, they were not cheap. They represented a huge out of pocket expense, paid monthly as each new book would arrive, and once you started down “Library Road,” you couldn’t stop because that would leave you without the latest and greatest caselaw and would render your library worthless. When the books have numbers on them, it’s pretty easy to tell if there are a few missing here and there.
Second, they ate up an ever increasing amount of real estate in your office. When you built your library, it was only so big. But the books kept coming. And coming. And imaginative ways were developed to place the books so that they didn’t take up as much space (such as putting every fifth book behind the others), but stop gap measures only worked for so long. Eventually, room ran out and you had to do something. Just toss them? Are you nuts? They cost a fortune, and it would tantamount to fiscal suicide to throw lawbooks away.
But then one day, a letter came touting something called a “CD”. The law on “CD” was the savior to the ever-expanding law library. The only problem at the time was that typical computers did not have CD drives (we were still using the big old floppies back then, and maybe had a diskettes drive if we were cutting edge). So Westlaw was giving away free external CD drives if you subscribed to the CDs.
Not to be outdone, Lexis pioneered its own dedicated user interface over some new-fangled thing called the “internet”. All you needed was a contraption called a “modem”, which they were happy to give you for free if you subscribed. It was slow, but it was erratic. Ah, cutting edge technology.
All the while, dinosaurs (like me) kept buying the books, because we just couldn’t let go of that damn library that we have been paying for month after month since we opened our doors. Worse yet, West (this was before it was commonly referred to as Westlaw, which is really the computerized stepchild of West Publishing) not only refused to cut the CD subscribers a break on the book prices, but actually increased the price of the books. They wanted to drive subscribers away from books into the CDs, which was FAR more profitable for them (like a gazillion-fold).
Ultimately, they pried the books from the grasp of that handful of lawyers who simply refused to see the future coming. Books were dead. Long live computers. Libraries became conference rooms. Books became a backdrop for the benefit of clients, who wouldn’t know whether the latest New York Supplement 2d was book number 783 or 1049.
We tried to sell these books, but no one wanted them. We tried to donate these books, but no one wanted them. Overnight, they were worthless.
It’s been a long time since Lexis and Westlaw became the norm. Our abilities at searching the database, and finding the law we’re looking for, varies, so it can often take an additional 30 or 40 nanoseconds to come up with the right decision. Flipping back and forth between decisions isn’t what it used to be, but humans are nothing if not adaptable. Old dogs learn new tricks everyday, especially when they have no choice.
But lawyers born in the computer age will never know the joys of carrying a dozen bound volumes, all open to the right page, and spreading them around the conference table so that you can compare the language used by Judge Breitel against the prose of Sol Wachtler. The feel of paper in your hand as you leaf through the decision to find the perfect quote will never be replaced by the touch of the mouse as you scroll through a case.
The explanation of Alt Law, that the law belongs to everyone and we should not have to pay for access, is compelling. It is our law, not Westlaw’s or Lexis’. What right do they have to sell us back what we have given them? But the mechanism of our access to the law was never ours, through its many permutations. I don’t know if Alt Law, or any other newcomers, will be able to provide lawyers with the tools to do research that Westlaw and Lexis do. But I do know that no computer research will ever be as satisfying as spreading out those dozen books on a desk and seeing the fruit of your labor laid out before you.
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Who is summarizing cases for Alt Law?
More importantly, who is setting the standards and editing to see that they are met?
Is this going to be like Wikipedia, editable by anyone, and just maybe the other side in your case is busy at night revising your precedents out of existence?
That’s an excellent point. About 10 years ago, I was with Westlaw. I quote language from a decision, only to have my face slapped by the appellate court. I found that the quote in West was wrong. They had left out a word that changed the quote completely.
I called West to scream at them and found out that they had the computer data input in, I believe, Malaysia by people who understood no English so they would not be impacted by content, but just repeat the keystrokes. Accidents happen, I was told. I left West for Lexis as a result, because “accidents happen” was not an acceptable answer.
The integrity of the content is critical. Frankly, I can live without summarizing, since I go straight to the body rather than rely on summaries. But I must be able to count on the body being 100% accurate, no excuses.