Goodby Westlaw

A recent blog post here is consistent with my Thomson-West and Weslaw experience.   The writer reached the same conclusion I did a few months ago when I canceled my Westlaw subscription.  West's model for decades was to charge a premium for material in the public domain (cases and statutes), be creating the only way to locate relevant information within those materials (key numbers).  In the information age, those public domain materials are readily available cheaply or free from many other sources, like thelaw.net, Casemaker, Google, and others, not to mention from the issuing court itself.  In response to cheap and free competition, West and Lexis started trying to offer value added services and expand the footprint of what they did, by adding lawyer directories, website services, case management, billing, and practice management software to their offerings, all offered at a premium monthly subscription price.  Their pricing model, in my view, is geared toward the big firm model, who can pass large research costs on to clients.  Their secondary sources are good, but again are too expensive.  While the initial purchase may be reasonable, the automatic update, which is usually nothing more than adding editorial comment from the most recent additions to their digest, are way overpriced.  The majority of lawyers in this country do not practice in the big firm model, however, and West, as nearly as I can tell, has abandoned the solo and small firm practitioner.  Also, more and more lawyers are seeing the wisdom of the flat fee model or other alternatives to the billable hour, making research cost even that much more important, since any incremental costs come right off the bottom line.  Then, to top it all off, they offer these premium services at premium rates that far exceed the value they represent, and bill them from multiple billing sources that make it difficult if not impossible to determine what is being charged.  I dropped my remaining West services several months ago, have not missed them, and have not regretted the decision. 

Comments

[Cari Campbell]

Another unhappy Westlaw customer concurs!