Legal Research

Greg Lambert of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog reports that one national firm has ordered any associate "that utilizes or intends to utilize Westlaw" to attend a mandatory Westlaw training session.  The impetus for this mandatory training?  The firm's leaders stated that "it has come to our attention that we are charging off considerable Westlaw costs due to Westlaw searches that can be run more efficiently using best practices promoted by the Firm." 

During law school, it's easy to forget that using research systems like Westlaw and Lexis cost a lot of money in the real world. The Zief librarians try to emphasize this point as much as possible during our Westlaw and Lexis training sessions, and we incorporate lessons about cost-conscious research strategies into our curricula in both of our classes, Advanced Legal Research and California Legal Research. We also encourage students to attend the on-campus training sessions that our Westlaw and Lexis campus representatives teach. But we know that learning about online research cost containment often gets pushed to the bottom of busy law students' "to do" lists. If you're starting a new job or internship, here are a few tips to follow to help ensure that you do not make any missteps when it comes to online research costs:

1) Find out who handles the Lexis and Westlaw contracts at your workplace and ask that person to meet with you when you begin your job so that you understand your workplace's Lexis and Westlaw contracts.  Sometimes, these discussions will be worked into your orientation, but smaller workplaces might neglect to cover this topic on your first day. In larger workplaces, there will usually be a librarian in charge of online research contracts.  But in smaller workplaces, it might be a paralegal, secretary, or one of the firm partners.  You'll need to ask this person what type of contract your workplace has with Lexis or Westlaw.  Will you have both transactional and hourly IDs?  If so, when should you use the different types of IDs?

2) Ask the person in charge of Lexis or Westlaw how and when clients are billed for your online research.  If you don't understand how clients are billed for online research, chances are that you might make some costly mistakes that will make the billing partner, or worse, the client unhappy. 

3) Ask the person in charge of Lexis or Westlaw for the contact information for the Westlaw or Lexis representatives assigned to your workplace.  Most workplaces will have a Westlaw and Lexis contact that you can talk to about research problems.  Often, the representatives will even run the search for you for free to make sure it works before you run it on your workplace account.

4) If you are lucky enough to have librarians at your workplace, talk to them frequently and regularly about cost-efficient research strategies for your various research projects.  If you don't have a librarian at your workplace, call one of the Zief librarians for an appointment. Talking to a librarian at the beginning of your research can often prevent hours of flailing around with nothing much to show for it at the end.  Talking to a librarian is especially important if you suspect that your research involves a new, developing area of the law or a particularly murky area of the law.  If you don't find what your supervisor wanted you to find, he or she will want to know exactly what your research strategy was and where you looked for the information.  If you haven't documented your research strategy well or if you haven't checked some of the appropriate resources, chances are your supervisor will be very suspicious of your conclusion that there isn't anything out there on your topic.

5) During law school, maintain the ability to search both Westlaw and Lexis efficiently. These systems are expensive, and lots of workplaces no longer subscribe to both Lexis and Westlaw.  When I left law school and went to a medium-sized law firm in SF, I was only allowed to use Lexis, which was extremely scary for me since I had only used Westlaw for the past two years.  Don't assume that you'll have a choice when you leave law school -- stay up-to-date with both systems!