TechLawyerBlog

Rant about Accurint and Lexis

I just received a notice from Lexis regarding new pricing on my Accruint account, and it reminded me what we all lost when Lexis bought the service a couple of years ago.  When I first started using Accurint about 5 years ago, the basic people search was $.25, and a complete report was around $5. At those prices, my office conducted searches liberally.  Lexis purchased the company and overnight the pricing saw a 600% increase,with no detectable improvement in service or information.  At $1.50 per search, it is still reasonably priced, but we are now much more judicious about the searches we run.  A full report runs closer to $20.  My fear is that we will see comparable price increases with the other products that Lexis is acquiring.  So far, we have heard trial balloons floated for both Case Map and TimeMatters for monthly subscription based pricing, rather than the current licensing for the programs.  And, since being acquired, TimeMatters has begun annual program “updates” that offer little improvement.  Before becoming part of the LexisNexis family, TimeMatters only offered updates when there was reason to, and they those updates were always substantial.  Now they seem to offer updates annually, with very subtle changes offered, just to rotate people off legacy support – the very reason I left TimeSlips in favor of BillingMatters.  I hope we will not see the same upgrade practices from Case Map, but fear the worst. 

More Voice Helps

One of the best add-on products for Dragon Naturally Speaking is a software program called KnowBrainer.  This program adds literally hundreds of commands and macros to DNS.  I have only scratched the surface of this program, but the relatively few features that I do use more than justify its price.  For me, the greatest benefit from the program are its placement of the cursor at the end of the sentence on which I am working following a correction, and its automatic listing feature.  Once I correct or replace a word using the “correct” command, or the “select” command, the cursor is returned to the end of my sentence, saving me the additional voice command of “go to end of line”.  Whenever I am adding a numbered list to my dictation, I merely speak the “list” command followed by the applicable number, and the program automatically adds numerals and tabs for my listing.  These are great time savers to me, and have greatly improved my enjoyment of DNS the past few years.  KnowBrainer also operates the best listserv for DNS I have found, with lots of lawyers actively participating in the discussions.