A survey of electronic research alternatives to lexis and westlaw in law firms

A Survey of Electronic Research Alternatives to Lexis
and Westlaw in Law Firms

Laura K. Justiss*

Abstract
Mrs. Justiss conducted a survey of law firm librarians in 2010 that

identified electronic research database alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw

and ranked them by subscription frequency. The survey included

research databases for primary source alternatives; court docket and

case information services; secondary sources for topical legal research

and legal periodicals; financial, business and news sources; public

records; and non-legal and legal-related sources, including intellectual

property databases. The survey also generated information regarding

suggested or mandated legal research policies in law firms for the use of

alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw and examined their applicability to

billable and non-billable research. Lastly, it examined the prevalence in

firms of flat rate pricing agreements with Lexis, Westlaw or both.

*© Laura K. Justiss, 2010
**Collection Development Librarian, SMU Dedman School of Law. The author
would like to thank the membership of the Dallas Association of Law Librarians,
especially Kathy Clement, Library Services Manager, Munsch, Hardt, Kopf &
Harr; Ann Jeter, Manager of Information Services, Jackson Walker, LLP; Jane
Reynolds, formerly Manager of Library Services at Jenkens & Gilchrist; and Terri
DiCenzo, formerly Dallas Manager of Library Services, Jones Day. Their insights
and assistance in testing the survey questions were invaluable in the preparation
of this article.

1

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1649471

Introduction
Since 2002 I have provided an annual presentation for our law students

entitled “Beyond Lexis and Westlaw: Discover Other Databases Lawyers Use in

Practice.” The lecture is one of a series of presentations offered by our reference

librarians on legal research topics to assist students in the transition from law

school to law practice.1

Moving to a law school library after eight years of law firm librarianship, I

was naively surprised to learn that most law students had little, if any, awareness

of the electronic services other than Lexis and Westlaw routinely used by

practicing attorneys.2 Of the alternative research databases I had used in my

former life as a law firm librarian, only PACER was available in the law school in

2000. There were no court docket services for state courts, such as CourtLink or

CourtExpress; no financial or business research databases, such as LiveEDGAR

or Dun & Bradstreet; no public records databases (other than those available on

Lexis and Westlaw); and no intellectual property, engineering or technology

research databases, such as Dialog.3 Thus students seldom had the opportunity

to learn of the existence of such alternatives, let alone why or how a lawyer might

use them in practice.

1
SMU Dedman School of Law’s “Research Pro” spring lecture series includes such
topics as “Painless Legal Research Refresher,” and “Legal Research Beyond Borders:
An Overview of International and Foreign Legal Research Techniques and Sources.”
2
Students who had previously been (or were currently) employed at law firms as
paralegals or administrative assistants or who had already completed a summer clerkship
were the occasional exception.
3
Of course, some of these sources were available on Lexis and Westlaw. However,
others, particularly licensed content such as Dun & Bradstreet reports, were not (and are
not as of this writing) available on the academic subscription.

2


The challenges inherent in preparing a presentation on alternative

research databases were considerable. Would I be able to obtain current,

meaningful information on databases I couldn’t access myself anymore? If so,

would I then be able to get law students’ buy-in that everything they would ever

need wasn’t available on Lexis and Westlaw?4

To deal with the first issue, I searched the law library literature, including

the excellent annual CALR updates and other electronic resource reviews in

Legal Information Alert.5 I then contacted the vendors for information on content

and pricing that was not available on their websites. Several enthusiastically

provided me with the necessary information, including instructional screen shots,

promotional literature and pricing descriptions. LiveEDGAR and later Bloomberg

Law were especially helpful, giving me complimentary access so that I could

provide a live demonstration of some of the content and features of these

sophisticated databases.6

In addition, members of the Dallas Association of Law Librarians (DALL)

generously shared information regarding the electronic service alternatives their

attorneys were using; those they had recently purchased or were considering;

4
At that primitive time, law students had not yet universally concluded that everything (if
not on Lexis or Westlaw) was available on Google.
5
Recent examples include: Lara I. Swierczewski, Tax Research Update: The Players
and How They Play, Legal Information Alert, Oct. 2009, at 1; Sonnet Erin Brown, Update
XXVI: What's New on LexisNexis, Westlaw, LoisLaw, Fastcase, HeinOnline, and
VersusLaw, Part 1, Legal Information Alert, Aug. 2009,at 1; Sonnet Erin Brown, Update
XXVI: What's New on LexisNexis, Westlaw, LoisLaw, Fastcase, HeinOnline, and
VersusLaw, Part 2, Legal Information Alert, Sept. 2009,at 1;
6
Over the preceding eight years, LiveEDGAR was owned by Global Securities, Inc. and
then Thomson West. It is now integrated with the Westlaw Business subscription.

3


and those they had ceased to use. In short, they provided me with an annual

reality check.

With this information I created a “Webliography” of alternative databases

in five categories, which have since expanded to six: 1) Primary Source

Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw; 2) Court Docket and Case Information

Services; 3) Secondary Sources for Topical Legal Research, Legal Periodicals,

etc.; 4) Financial, Business and News; 5) Public Records; and 6) Non-Legal and

Legal-Related, including Patents and Trademarks, Science, Technology,

Medicine, etc.7 Predictably, this list has grown longer each year.

The presentation currently includes two major components: 1) an

overview of the role of electronic research in law firm economics, noting that its

billing and recovery were historically, if not ideally, driven by Lexis and Westlaw;

and 2) a review of the six major categories of research services, demonstrating

one or two examples in each category.8

The first component also includes examples of law firm retail pricing for

both Lexis and Westlaw, including transactional and hourly pricing, eliciting the

predictable sticker shock.9 I then focus on the importance of quality, accuracy

7
Copy on file with the author.
8
See William G. Harrington, A Brief History of Computer-Assisted Legal Research, 77 L.
Libr. J. 543, 552-55 (1984-85, for a review of the early days of Lexis and Westlaw in law
firms in the early and mid-1970s, respectively.
9
Retail pricing refers to non-flat rate pricing. Pricing was obtained annually from the
LexisNexis Transactional & Hourly Pricing Guide and Westlaw’s Pricing Guide for Private
Price Plans. The vendors permitted me to disclose prices for selected databases with the
understanding that this information would not be included in the Webliography. The
PowerPoint slide presentation handout excluded the slides with this information. It was
disclosed only in the lecture to demonstrate the value of flat-rate pricing.

4

and efficiency as factors in a firm’s willingness to pay a steep price for

information, noting also that all three factors can potentially impact an associate’s

billing realization rate, especially during the early years of one’s career when

associates are often assigned more research than senior level people. This

discussion provides a natural segue to a discussion of alternative electronic

services.

In 2009, while updating my presentation, I learned that Locke Lord Bissell

& Liddell, a large law firm in Dallas, Texas, had established legal research

guidelines limiting the use of Lexis and Westlaw under certain conditions in favor

of the far less costly LoisLaw, a primary source online product purchased in 2001

by Wolters Kluwer.10 The policy in the firm’s memo stated:

All non-billable legal research involving case law, statutes or
regulations at both the state and federal level should first be
performed using LoisLaw.
LoisLaw should also be used for billable research where
appropriate, resulting in a much lower cost to the client.
If additional research is required on Lexis or Westlaw that
research must be billed to a client/matter.11

10
Press Release, Wolters Kluwer Concludes Tender Offer for LoisLaw.com (Jan. 31,
2001) at http://www.wolterskluwer.com/WK/Press/Corporate+Headlines/2001/PR-31-01-
2001-T1200CET.htm.
11
See Large Law Firm Sets New Online Research Policy: Use Loislaw First
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/02/large-law-firm.html,
(February 11, 2009) (citing posting of Kashmir Hill to Above the Law
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/02/locke_lord_bissell_swapping_le.php#more (February 9,
2009 2:52 PM), the latter which was no longer available on the Above the Law blog as of
this writing.

5

Never had I read or heard of any large law firm’s mandating the use of a

primary source alternative, such as LoisLaw, VersusLaw or FastCase, over Lexis

and Westlaw, the industry gold standards for electronic legal research. Would

large law firms actually deign to consider the silver or the bronze? If so, did this

signal the beginning of The End of Lexis’ and Westlaw’s dominance in the online

legal research market? I decided I needed a snapshot of the national picture,

both for Lexis and Westlaw and for the increasing number of alternative research

databases that appeared to be encroaching on the CALR (computer-assisted

legal research) giants’ turf.

This article describes the results of a survey of electronic research

database alternatives that was submitted to the American Association of Law

Libraries (AALL) Private Law Librarians’ Special Interest Section discussion

group in January 2010. My goals were threefold:

1) to identify products purchased most frequently in law practice; 2) to determine

whether institutional policies for Lexis and Westlaw usage were an emerging

trend, or if the policy at Locke Lord was an anomaly; and 3) to measure the

prevalence of flat rate contracts with Lexis and Westlaw in law firms large

enough to have professional library staff. In short, I wanted to get a sense of

how law librarians were distributing their materials budgets among Lexis,

Westlaw and other online databases.

6

2010 Law Firm Survey

As the purpose of the survey was to provide law librarians with

information regarding general trends in electronic resource investments by law

firms, the questions were designed to yield quantitative information regarding

selected fee-based electronic services in firms with professional library staff. The

survey did not address issues regarding training or research proficiencies as

these have been ably addressed in the recent past.12

The electronic survey included 11 multiple choice questions and one

open-ended question.13 I used Zoomerang to design and distribute it.14

Questions 1 – 6

Questions 1 – 6 addressed electronic services for each of the source

categories covered in my annual presentation, as discussed above. Each

question included an “Other” choice to add services not listed, as well as a

“None” choice.

Questions 7 and 8

12
See Patrick Meyer, Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 10
Law Libr. J. 297, 317-18 (2009) (discussing the results of his research regarding
databases to which new attorneys have access and databases in which they are
expected to be proficient).
13
See infra appendix A for the survey questions. (Survey results are on file with the
author.)
14
Zoomerang is a Web 2.0 survey software product, available at
http://www.zoomerang.com, offering three levels of features and functionality: 1) free
version; 2) “”Pro” version; and 3) “Premium” version. I purchased the Pro version as it
enabled a larger number of survey responses than the free version and offered other
helpful features and benefits, as well.

7

Questions 7 and 8 inquired about written or verbal policies regarding the

use of database alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw and whether they applied to

billable, non-billable or all research. I was most interested to learn whether other

firms were following the lead of Locke Lord by establishing institutional limits on

the use of Lexis and Westlaw.

Question 9

Question 9 sought to determine how many firms had preferred provider

agreements with Lexis, Westlaw or both as a cost containment strategy.15

Question 10

Question 10 sought to determine the size of respondent law firms. The

question was formulated to include users in branch offices of large firms where a

single license covered more than one location.

Question 11

Question 11 sought to identify the position and title of respondent. In

retrospect, I realize I crafted this question poorly and should have simply asked

for the “position,” rather than the “position and title” of the respondent. A large

number of respondents responded “Other,” rather than “Librarian,” as their

position descriptions were those of librarians, but their titles were predictably

more specific as to their particular role within the library.

15
A law library director in a large Dallas law firm had advised me the previous year that
more firms in Dallas were opting for flat rate contracts with both Lexis and Westlaw,
rather than attempting to leverage firm usage with one over the other. I wanted to learn
the extent, if any, to which this was a national trend.

8

Question 12

Question 12 was the only open-ended question and was optional. It

solicited additional comments to explain or amplify answers to the preceding

questions.

The survey was distributed to law firm librarians via the AALL Private Law

Librarians Special Interest Section discussion group (PLL-SIS).

The selection of sources for questions 1 – 6 was based on a review of the

law library literature and my own examination of databases available from major

legal publishers, such as BNA, LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer, HeinOnline and

Thomson Reuters, as well as e-mail and telephone discussions with librarians in

medium-to-large Dallas law firms. 16

Rather than trying to include every possible fee-based electronic source,

an unrealistic goal at best, I focused primarily, though not exclusively, on

established legal publishers that have made their print products accessible

electronically, as noted above. My objective was to distribute a survey that would

generate useful information for the greatest number of librarians while not being

so burdensome as to preclude a meaningful response rate.

16
Wolters Kluwer IntelliConnect was referred to in the survey as “Wolters Kluwer CCH
Internet Research (IntelliConnect)” despite the fact that “CCH” no longer appears in any
of the IntelliConnect databases. The product was renamed “IntelliConnect” to distinguish
the redesigned platform from the previous Internet Research Network version, but the
print loose-leaf versions of these products still bear the CCH label. In light of all of these
labeling changes, I wanted to make certain the product was easily identifiable in the
survey.

9

Survey Results

The survey yielded 229 visits and 167 responses, including 162 complete

responses. Incomplete responses were not tallied by Zoomerang. All but three

of the responses were from professional librarians. The exceptions included two

paralegals and one information technology staff member.

With respect to firm size, 69% of the respondents were employed by firms

with more than 125 attorneys and 15% by firms with 75 – 125 attorneys. Firms

with 51-75 attorneys accounted for only 8% of the responses, and only two firms,

or 1%, had 1-25 attorneys, underscoring the sample bias favoring large law firms

in law firm librarian surveys.17

The results regarding alternative databases to Lexis and Westlaw are

summarized below in Tables 1 – 6.

Primary Source Alternatives

Primary source services listed in Table 1, from highest to lowest rank by

percentage, were fairly evenly distributed among the respondents, except for

VersusLaw with only one subscriber. Interestingly, Bloomberg Law, a

comparative newcomer to the legal market, and LoisLaw differed by only one

17
See Sarah Gotschall, Teaching Cost-Effective Research Skills: Have We
Overemphasized the Importance of Its Importance?, 29 Legal Reference Services Q.
149, 154 (2010) (noting the disconnect between the importance of cost effective legal
research skills as portrayed in the law librarian literature and the feedback from law
students that cost-effective research skills did not appear to be a priority for their
supervising attorneys). I confess that I knowingly sacrificed a more representative
sample in order to obtain information that would be useful to law librarians rather than to
law firms of all sizes.

10

percentage point, with LoisLaw garnering 17% of responses and Bloomberg Law

16%.18 As Bloomberg Law’s web-based platform is less than a year old, the fact

that it is nipping at the heels of the ten year old LoisLaw suggests its potential as

a major competitor for Lexis and Westlaw in the foreseeable future.19

Casemaker and Fast Case were tied at 13% of respondents. Casemaker

is free to state bar members in states that participate in the Casemaker

Consortium, about 27 as of this writing.20 Similarly, FastCase is available at no

charge to bar members in 17 participating states, but is also available via fee-

based subscription.21

Nearly 60% of responding firms subscribed to at least one of the

alternative databases for primary law research. However, a larger number of

firms than subscribed to any single alternative database, at forty percent,

eschewed any of these, presumably relying on Lexis and Westlaw, as well as

commercial secondary source reporters, such as Wolters Kluwer IntelliConnect,

BNA and RIA, the latter three of which were added in the “Other” category for

18
LoisLaw was first marketed in law firms as Law Office Information Systems (LOIS) on
CD-ROM in 1995, whereas the web interface for Bloomberg Law was launched only in
the fourth quarter of 2009. See Peter W. Martin, Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and
Access to Authoritative Case Law, 99 L. Libr. J. 329, 357-58 (2007) for a discussion of
the evolution of LoisLaw; and Elie Mystal, Bloomberg to Compete with Lexis and
Westlaw, posted to Above the Law at http://abovethelaw.com/2009/10/bloomberg-to-
compete-with-lexis-and-westlaw/ (Oct. 6, 2009), regarding the rollout of Bloomberg Law
in law firms.
19
Mystal, supra note 18.
20
See http://www.casemaker.us/ for participating states.
21
See http://www.fastcase.com/ for pricing and other subscription information.

11

Question 1 and then were covered again in Question 3 regarding secondary

sources for topical legal research.

With respect to primary law research, however, it is safe to say that

Lexis’s and Westlaw’s exclusive grasp in law firms has been significantly

weakened by improving content from free and low cost bar-funded sources, as

well as by commercial competitors such LoisLaw and the boldly advancing

Bloomberg Law.

Table 1

Primary Source Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw

Database No. of Survey % of Respondents

Respondents

LoisLaw 26 17%

Bloomberg Law 25 16%

Fast Case 21 13%

Casemaker 21 13%

VersusLaw 1 1%

None 62 40%

Other 27 17%

12

Court Docket and Case Information

The survey results for court docket and case information services, listed

in Table 2, differed markedly from the primary law alternative research

databases. Most of the court docket and filing information services have been in

the legal marketplace for as long or longer than the above-referenced primary

source alternatives and yielded a much stronger showing in law firms.22 All but

one firm subscribed to at least two of these services. Not surprisingly, PACER,

the oldest and least expensive federal court docket and E-filing source, was

selected by 99% of respondents.

Lexis’s CourtLink and Westlaw’s CourtExpress were welcome additions

to the docket and case information services. They provided not only all of the

information available on PACER, but also much needed state court information,

including full text documents, and value-added enhancements such as keyword

searching, filing alerts, case tracking and custom reports not available on

PACER.23

Both products were originally launched by privately owned companies

and subsequently acquired by Lexis and Westlaw in 2001 and 2005

22
See generally Warner J. Miller, Trial Court Docket Research Tools, Legal Information
Alert, Jul.-Aug. 2007, at 1 (discussing the development of web-based court docket search
and retrieval services and comparing the content and features of CourtLink and
CourtExpress).
23
See LexisNexis CourtLink product description, including Strategic Profiles,
http://courtlinklearning.lexisnexis.com/?page_id=18 (last visited on July 15, 2010; and
http://west.thomson.com/westlaw/litigator/court-express/default.aspx. for Thomson
West’s CourtExpress product description, including Litigation Monitor reports (last visited
on July 15, 2010).

13

respectively.24 Interestingly, however, CourtLink’s market share at 80% was

nearly twice that of CourtExpress at 46%. The two services, both which link to

their parent company database content, offer varying features and benefits and

are by no means interchangeable.

Courthouse News Service, a current awareness service, does not provide

court docket information but produces in-depth reports on new filings in multiple

state, federal and county jurisdictions, as well as Canada.25 As such, it does not

really compete directly with CourtLink and CourtExpress, but instead fills a very

specialized market niche with a high quality product for litigation and bankruptcy

practitioners. Nevertheless, it still ranked significantly higher at 68% than

CourtExpress.

I included Bloomberg Law in this question primarily to see whether any

surveyed firms were using its court dockets product, which is not yet competitive

with CourtLink and CourtExpress in either content or a feature-by-feature

comparison. As noted above, however, Bloomberg Law is still very new and will

likely see significant enhanced content and features in coming months and

years.26

Regarding the “Other” category, respondents added Courttrax,

CourtsOnline, Open Online and JIMS, which serve specific states or regions. For

example, Courttrax includes all federal and bankruptcy courts, but its state court

24
Miller, supra note 22, at 1, 8.
25
See Courthouse News service and products,
http://www.courthousenews.com/subinfo.html (last visited on July 15, 2010).
26
Mystal, supra note 18.

14

coverage is limited to Oregon, Utah, Nevada and Arizona.27 I expressly limited

the survey to court docket and information services that were national in scope

so as not to skew the results if more responses were received from one part of

the country than another.

Table 2

Court Docket and Case Information Services

Database No. of % of Respondents

Respondents

PACER 160 99%

CourtLink 130 80%

Courthouse News 110 68%
Service
CourtExpress 74 46%


None 1 1%

Other 30 19%

Secondary Sources for Topical Legal Research, Legal Periodicals, etc

Question 3 addressed the secondary services that law firms were using to

support specific practice areas, such as tax and securities, as well as alternatives

to Lexis and Westlaw for legal periodicals. I was admittedly unsure how best to

27
See Courttrax products description, http://www.courttrax.com/about/ (last visited on
July 15, 2010).

15

categorize HeinOnline for the purposes of the survey or even whether to include

it at all. However, because of the large volume of titles and diverse content

available on the HeinOnline service, I felt it was a fair contender for the law firm

library’s budget dollar and as such had a potentially prominent place as an

alternative to Lexis and Westlaw.28

The results, summarized in Table 3, certainly highlighted the commercial

success of BNA’s evolution from print to digital content, especially considering its

high subscription costs. The surprise, however, was the comparatively low

ranking of Wolters Kluwer’s IntelliConnect product. RIA Checkpoint offers only

tax and tax-related content, compared with Wolters Kluwer that transferred its

vast CCH loose-leaf service content in nearly all areas of tax and business-

related law to a digital format. However, RIA was selected by 75% of

respondents versus 68% for IntelliConnect.

A number of factors could account for this result. Perhaps some firms

have eschewed the Wolters Kluwer IntelliConnect digital platform in favor of the

CCH print loose-leafs or are accessing this content through their Westlaw

subscriptions. Another possibility, given the reviews and comments on the

IntelliConnect product in the law librarian community, is that librarians and their

28
HeinOnline, http://heinonline.org/ (last visited on July 15, 2010). The HeinOnline “core”
collection includes the ever-increasing Law Library Journals collection, as well as
primary sources, such as the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, Federal
legislative history sources, etc. Customers can purchase additional modules on foreign
and international law, historical legal collections and much more.

16

users have gravitated to BNA, RIA Checkpoint, Lexis, and Westlaw for tax and

business law content.29

In a recent survey of law librarians regarding the reasonableness of legal

publishers’ annual price increases, Wolters Kluwer received the second largest

percentage of “Very Poor or Poor” ratings at 42.86%, just beneath West’s

48.94% rating. LexisNexis garnered the largest percentage of “Good or

Excellent” ratings at 23.70%, while Wolters Kluwer received the lowest rating at

10.29%.30 Whatever the reason, whether perceived product quality issues,

pricing policies and structures or marketing strategies, BNA and RIA CheckPoint

have clearly subsumed Wolters Kluwer’s market share for this content.

Another surprise was the popularity of HeinOnline in law firms at 72%. In

its early with digital access to law review content preceding Lexis and Westlaw

coverage. Later, as law firms reduced office space dedicated to print collections,

the ever-increasing breadth of HeinOnline’s historical and now more current print
29
See http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/, including:
1) The Witches Brew that is Wolters Kluwer's IntelliConnect,
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/10/the-witches-brew-that-is-
intelliconnect.html (Oct. 26, 2009); 2) 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,
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/11/llbs-rate-your-legal-
resources-vendors-survey-findings-for-reasonableness-of-annual-price-increases-.html
(Nov. 9, 2009); and 3) IntelliConnect, Still Some UI Issues but Improvements Being
Made: Wolter Kluwer Responds to User Complaints,
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2010/06/intelliconnect-still-some-ui-
issues-but-improvements-being-made-wolter-kluwers-responds-to-user-com.html (June
8, 2010).
30
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, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/11/llbs-rate-
your-legal-resources-vendors-survey-findings-for-reasonableness-of-annual-price-
increases-.html (Nov. 9, 2009), Table 2.

17

publications has made it a very sound business choice. It is a particularly smart

choice for materials that might otherwise be retrieved on Lexis or Westlaw at a

higher unit cost, such as law review articles, legislative materials and superseded

federal regulations, to name only a few.

Twenty-four responses were received in the “Other” category. The

standout was Law360 newsletters, which accounted for one third of the additions

to this category.

Table 3

Secondary Sources for Topical Legal Research, Legal Periodicals, etc.


Respondents

BNA Newsletters & Reporters 138 85%

RIA CheckPoint 122 75%

HeinOnline 116 72%

WK CCH Internet Research 110 68%
(IntelliConnect)
None 6 4%

Other 28 17%

Financial, Business & News Information (including SEC Filings, Public and
Private Company Information)

18

Selecting the services listed in Question 4 was the most challenging

judgment call, not only for purposes of the survey, but also for inclusion in my

annual lecture and Webliography, primarily because there were so many of them.

I chose to focus on those with an ongoing presence in the law librarian literature

that were also consistently included in the recent feedback from DALL members.

The responses were consistent with my expectations and yielded no

surprises. The three top ranking databases have long been important tools in the

law firm research arsenal: Dun & Bradstreet Company Reports, Westlaw

Business: LiveEDGAR, and D & B Hoover’s at 62%, 58% and 53%

respectively.31 Of the remaining services listed in the question only Capital IQ

garnered more than 20% of respondent subscribers.

Of the 27 “Other” responses, only two services were listed more than

once. Two firms listed Bloomberg Financial (not Bloomberg Law), and two

others added Dialog (one expressly for Dun & Bradstreet Reports).

31
Dun & Bradstreet, a 167 year old company, first produced an electronic credit report in
1972. D & B Evolution over Time, Dun & Bradstreet,
http://www.dnb.com/us/about/company_story/dnbhistory.html# (last visited July 15,
2010); Global Securities Information, Inc. began marketing its LiveEDGAR databases to
law firms in the 1990s and was subsequently purchased by Thomson Corporation in
2005. Press Release, Global Securities Info (July 22, 2005);
http://learn.westlawbusiness.com/NEWSROOM/press_releases/072205_ThomsonAcGSI
.html (last visited on July 15, 2010); Hoover’s, originally founded as a book publisher in
1990, later developed its online company report database and was subsequently
acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 2003. Hoover's SEC filing 15-12G, 3 March 2003. Nina
Platt, Hoover's Online: Affordable, Accurate, Company Information, July 22, 1997,
http://www.llrx.com/extras/hoovers.htm.

19

Table 4

Financial, Business & News Information (including SEC Filings, Public
and Private Company Information)


Respondents

Dun & Bradstreet Company 97 62%
Reports
Westlaw Business: 91 58%
LiveEDGAR
D & B Hoover’s 83 53%

Wizard 10K (Morningstar 50 32%
Document Research)
Securities Mosaic 49 31%

Capital IQ 32 21%

OneSource 29 19%


Skyminder 14 9%

None 19 12%

Other 27 17%

Public Records

The responses to Question 5 clearly demonstrated that Accurint had the

dominant market share for public records databases in the survey sample.

Launched by Lexis in 2001, Accurint resides on a separate platform, unrelated to

20

the LexisNexis database, and is marketed as an economical source for

information on businesses and individuals.32

I was somewhat surprised that Merlin’s market share was so low, given

its ease of use, retrospective coverage of corporate information and modest

pricing.33 However, even PublicData.com, which lacks comprehensive state

coverage in most categories, had a higher profile than Merlin. 34

Twenty-four respondents selected the “None” response. It is not unlikely

that they accounted for at least some of the 19 “Other” responses, which

included Lexis public records (eight), Westlaw public records (five) and selected

state-specific databases, such as REJIS for the state of Missouri.

32
Carole Levitt, Investigating Merlin and Accurint, Legal Information Alert, June 1, 2005,
at 1; Accurint for Legal Professions, http://accurint.com/legal.html (last visited on July 15,
2010).
33
See Merlin Information Services, Frequently Asked Questions,
https://www.merlindata.com/databases.asp, (last visited on July 15, 2010) for a
description of Merlin’s databases, coverage and pricing.
34
See Publicdata.com, Demo and Current Database Offerings,
http://demo.publicdata.com/pdmain.php/Logon/home (last visited on July 125, 2010) for
product details.

21

Table 5

Public Records

Respondents
Accurint 119 77%

AutoTrackXP 38 25%

PublicData.com 8 5%

Merlin Information Services 4 3%

Courthouse Direct 2 1%

None 24 15%

Other 28 17%

Non-legal land Legal-Related: Patents and Trademarks, Science,
Technology, Medicine, etc.
Question 6 was the catch-all category for non-legal and legal-related

databases, excluding business and finance, and largely consisted of patent and

trademark databases. Not surprisingly, Dialog, the oldest and most established

product on the list, was the major player by a wide margin at 59%.35

Among the services in Question 6, only Dialog, CISTI and Infotrieve

provide non-intellectual property information, such as scientific, medical and

35
Dialog was created in the 1960s by engineers at Lockheed Corporation. Since then a
series of corporate owners transformed it from a DOS-based service used in law firms
primarily by librarians (and nearly impenetrable by end users) to a Web-accessible
platform, owned by Proquest. The History of Dialog,
http://www.dialog.com/about/history/transcript.shtml (last visited on July 125, 2010).
Dialog and the Invention of Online Information Services, http://www.dialog.com/about/
(last visited July 15, 2010).

22

technical sources. Thus it was not surprising that two of them ranked at or near

the top of the list. CISTI provides not only document services for North American

journals, but also interlibrary loans of books and conference proceedings.36

With respect to patent and trademark databases, Thomson Delphion,

which furnishes full text patents that link from the Derwent World Patents Index,

and MicroPatent were clearly a strong presence in firms with an intellectual

property practice. Of course, Dialog offers both domestic and foreign patents

and trademarks, as well as U.S. Copyright information.37

Nearly all the services listed in the “Other” category were intellectual

property databases, including: Thomson Innovation (four respondents), CT

CorSearch (three); Lexis Total Patent (three), and Thomson’s CompuMark

services (three).

36
See generally CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information),
http://cisti.nrc.gc.ca
37
See generally, Dialog, http://Dialog.com.

23

Table 6

Non-legal land Legal-Related: Patents and Trademarks, Science,
Technology, Medicine, etc.

Respondents
Dialog 87 59%

Thomson Delphion 47 32%

MicroPatent 43 29%

CISTI (Canada Institute for 34 23%
Scientific and Technical
Information)
Derwent World Patents Index 28 19%
(Thomson Reuters(
Esp@cenet 16 11%

InfoTrieve.com 11 7%

Questel Orbit or Questel 9 6%
QPAT
Minesoft PatBase 6 4%

None 37 25%

Other 21 14%

Questions 7 through 9 dealt with issues pertaining to containment and

recovery of online research costs. The responses are summarized in the

correspondingly numbered Tables 7 through 9.

Only 33 firms, 20% of the survey sample in Table 7, reported having an

institutional policy for the use of alternative databases for legal research. While

24

this number was likely higher than it would have been before the financial crisis

of 2008, it was still lower than I expected, given the attention received by Locke

Lord Bissell & Liddell’s research guidelines memo.38

Subsequent commentary in law librarian postings suggested that the

adoption of such a policy by a large high profile law firm would open the door for

companies such as BNA, Wolters Kluwer IntelliConnect and Loislaw to compete

with Lexis and Westlaw on a broader scale.39 One year later The American Bar

Association Journal published an article noting that increased competition from

such products as Bloomberg Law, Google’s case law, and products such as

Fastcase threatened the market share dominance of Lexis and Westlaw.40

Notably, Wolters Kluwer apparently interpreted the Locke Lord policy

broadly as a portent sufficient to justify charging law schools for Loislaw, a

product which had previously been provided at no charge.41 Kluwer’s stated

rationale was that Locke’s policy signaled an emerging trend in law firms favoring

38
See e.g., Law Librarian Blog, supra note 11, at
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/02/large-law-firm.html.
39
Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence?
Results of the LLB Poll (Apr. 20, 2009),
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/04/should-lexisnexis-and-
thomson-west-be-worried-about-the-economys-turbulence-results-of-the-llb-poll.html.
40
Jill Schachner Chanen, Innovation, Competition, Lower-cost Alternatives: The Battle for
Your Legal Research Dollars Heats up, Feb. 2010, at 35.
41
In May and June 2010, Wolters Kluwer representatives advised law school customers
that Loislaw would no longer be provided at no charge. The price quoted for SMU
Dedman School of Law was $3,000.00 per year for the primary source materials and
$3,500.00 for the “treatise bundle,“ a lengthy list of Aspen treatises of which only eight
were owned in print by the library. In a related telephone conversation with the author,
SMU’s sales representative specifically cited the Locke Lord research policy as
justification for a fee-based academic subscription to LoisLaw.

25

low cost primary source alternatives such as Loislaw, thereby requiring law

schools to make it available to students.42 While Locke’s highly publicized memo

may ultimately turn out to have been a harbinger of more draconian standards for

Lexis and Westlaw usage in firms, the survey responses did not support that

conclusion.

Table 7

Firm Policy, Written or Verbal, Mandating or Encouraging Use of Database
Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw.

Policy in # of Respondents % of Respondents
Place
Yes 33 20%

No 129 80%

Table 8 summarizes the responses regarding the application of a law

firm’s legal research policy, if any, to billable and non-billable research. Of the 33

firms with such a policy the vast majority, 73% applied it to all online research,

not only non-billable work. Only eight firms, 3%, limited the policy to non-billable

research.

42
Id.

26

Table 8

Application of Firm Policy, if any, to Billable and Non-Billable Research

# Respondents % Respondents

Billable 1 3%

Non-Billable 8 24%

All 24 73%

Table 9 summarizes the responses regarding law firms’ flat rate contracts

with Lexis and Westlaw. The results showed that a modest majority of firms,

39%, had flat rate contracts with both vendors. As nearly 70% of the survey

sample consisted of firms with more than 125 attorneys, the largest firms may

well have generated this result.43

Westlaw as a sole preferred provider came in second at 33%, and Lexis

trailed at 17%. Only 12% had no flat rate contract with either provider.

Of course, these results did not address whether firms had chosen to

eliminate one provider over another, regardless of whether a preferred provider

agreement was in place. However, 35% of Am Law 200 recently firms reported

43
An E-mail from a national consultant, who represents law firms in Lexis and Westlaw
contract negotiations, to author (July 9, 2010, 09:10:00 CDT) (on file with author), stated
“With some of the large firms, higher than 200+ attorneys, the trend is to have a flat fee
with both suppliers.” The consultant requested anonymity because of the sub rosa nature
of his contractual relationship with client law firms.

27

that they were considering moving to a a single vendor for electronic legal

research in the next five years, up from 31% in 2009 and only 12% in 2008.44

Table 9

Preferred Provider (flat rate) Agreements

# Respondents % Respondents

Lexis 26 17%

Westlaw 49 32%

Both 59 39%

Neither 19 12%

Conclusions

As the survey sample was heavily weighted towards large law firms, the

results were necessarily more relevant to firms of 125 or more attorneys than to

small-to-medium size firms. That said, the responses strongly suggested that

Lexis and Westlaw are facing competitors of increasing strength, such as

Bloomberg Law, which will not be easily overcome either by corporate acquisition

or better capitalized marketing strategies. In addition, the sheer number of

competitively priced database alternatives has reduced the market value of Lexis

44
Alan Cohen, Law Librarian Survey: More Bang for Fewer Bucks, Am. Law. July/Aug.
2010, at 41,42; Alan Cohen, Law Librarian Survey: No More Sacred Cows, Am. Lawyer,
Sept. 2009, at 51, 53.

28

and Westlaw as “one-stop shopping” resources, even if some of the alternatives

are owned or licensed by entities affiliated with Lexis or Westlaw.

On the other hand, Lexis and particularly Westlaw clearly remain the

dominant players in large firms, with the majority leveraging their usage via flat

rate subscriptions with one or both providers. Accordingly, most respondent

firms have not yet instituted policies requiring the use of alternative databases for

research that would normally be done on Lexis or Westlaw. However, with the

example set by Locke Lord, as well as others that were counted but not identified

in this survey, similar institutional research policies may well emerge as a cost

containment strategy that is likely to appeal to clients.

For law librarians attempting to extract as much value as possible from

increasingly limited budgets, I believe these results are, at least preliminarily,

good news. While the warp speed advances in research technology can tax

even the most progressive and cutting-edge among us, the democratization and

flattening of the online legal research marketplace, highlighted by these results,

promise to yield a better value to the legal profession than the de facto market

control of Lexis and Westlaw that has been in place for decades.

29

Appendix A

Electronic Database Alternatives to Lexis &
Westlaw

Electronic Database Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw

Page 1 - Question 1 - Choice - Multiple Answers (Bullets)
Primary Source Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw

Does the firm subscribe to one or more of the following service?; Please check all that
apply; If your firm subscribes to any services not listed, please add them under "Other."

 Bloomberg Law
 CaseMaker (if available in your state)
 Fast Case
 LoisLaw
 VersusLaw
 None
 Other - Please list any additional services to which the firm subscribes.

Court Docket & Case Information Services

Does the firm subscribe to one or more of the following services? Please check all that
apply. If your firm subscribes to any services not listed, please add them under "Other."

 Bloomberg Law
 CourtExpress
 Courthouse News Service
 CourtLink
 PACER
 None

30

Question 3 - Choice - Multiple Answers (Bullets)
Secondary Sources for Topical Legal Research, Legal Periodicals, etc.

Does your firm subscribe to one or more of the following secondary source electronic
services? Please check all that apply.

 BNA topical newsletters and reporters.
 HeinOnline
 RIA CheckPoint
 Wolters Kluwer CCH Internet Research (IntelliConnect)
 None
 Other. Please list any additional services to which the firm subscribes.

Financial, Business & News Information (including SEC Filings, Public &; Private
Company Information)

apply.If your firm subscribes to any services not listed, please add them under "Other."

 Bloomberg Law
 Capital IQ
 D & B Hoover's;
 Dun & Bradstreet Company Reports
 Morningstar Document Research:  Wizard10K&;
 OneSource
 Securities Mosaic
 Skyminder
 Westlaw Business:  LiveEDGAR
 None

Public Records


 Accurint
 AutoTrackXP; (Recently acquired by Lexis)

31

 CourthouseDirect
 Merlin Information Services
 PublicData.com
 None

Non-Legal and Legal-Related: Patents and Trademarks, Science, Technology,
Medicine, etc.


 CISTI (Canada Intitute for Scientific and Technical Information)
 Derwent World Patents Index (Thomson Reuters) 
 Dialog
 Esp@cenet
 InfoTrieve.com
 MicroPatent
 Minesoft PatBase
 Questel (aka Questel Orbit or Questel QPAT)
 Thomson Delphion
 None

Page 1 - Question 7 - Yes or No
Does your firm have a policy in place, whether written or verbal, encouraging or
mandating the use of database alternatives to Lexis or Westlaw?

 Yes
 No

Page 1 - Question 8 - Choice - One Answer (Drop Down)
If you answered yes to question no. 7 above, does the policy apply to:

 Billable research only.
 Non-billable research only.
 All research.

32

Question 9 - Choice - One Answer (Drop Down)
Preferred Provider Agreements.
Does your firm have a preferred provider agreement (flat rate contract) with:

 Lexis
 Westlaw
 Both
 Neither

Law Firm Size - The choices below refer to the total number of attorneys in your law firm
who have access to the databases listed in the questions above. For example, if the
firm's main office has access to a database, but branch offices do not, select the firm size
of the main office.
If one or more branch offices have access, select the firm size that corresponds with the
aggregate number.
If the subscription license is limited to the librarian(s) or other individual (for ex., no site
license), please select the firm size that corresponds to the number of attorneys in the
office or offices for whom the librarian(s) or other individual provides research services.

 1 - 25 Attorneys
 51-75 Attorneys
 More than 125 Attorneys

Position and Title of Respondent

 Librarian
 Information Technology Staff
 Paralegal
 Other, please specify your job title.

Page 1 - Question 12 - Open Ended - Comments Box
Please add any additional comments that will help to explain or amplify any of your
responses above. (Optional)

33

A survey of electronic research alternatives to lexis and westlaw in law firms

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