I took a look at the state case law coverage from four of the low-cost legal research providers (Fastcase, Loislaw, Casemaker and Google Scholar) to see who has the most coverage.  When I started this project, I assumed that Loislaw would be the hands down winner.  After all, they have the huge backing of Wolters Kluwer for a few years now, and you’d hope that they’d want to compete with Westlaw, LexisNexis and now Bloomberglaw.  However, I quickly learned that I was wrong in my assumption.  Turns out that the low-cost legal research provider that has the most state case law coverage, based on years of coverage, is Casemaker.

Here’s how I broke down the research:

  • Looked at coverage for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia
  • Established the year that the each state published its first official state court decision (highest court)
  • Reviewed the scope of coverage for each research provider
  • Graphed who had the best pre-1950, pre-1920 and pre-1899 coverage
  • Graphed who had the most states where there was complete coverage of all decisions
  • Finally graphed the overall percentage of state case law decisions for all 50 states and the District of Columbia
In all categories but one, Casemaker had more coverage than Fastcase, Loislaw or Google Scholar.  Loislaw had five more states with pre-1950 coverage than Casemaker, but the further back you go the better Casemaker starts to look.  Casemaker had over twice as many pre-1920 states than Loislaw (28 vs. 13); Casemaker had four times as many states with pre-1899 coverage than Loislaw (28 vs. 7); and Casemaker had over twice as many states with complete case law coverage (11 vs. 5).  Fastcase and Google Scholar ran a distant third and fourth place with Fastcase only having 10 states with pre-1950 coverage, and Google Scholar having zero.  The overall percentage of case law coverage for all states and the District of Columbia also went to Casemaker (68%).  
In a market where content is king, this study suggests that of the low-cost providers, Casemaker is the king.  

Based on comments received and related blog posts I thought I would clarify my Convergence post. References to “convergence” can touch on two separate issues:

  1. Limiting the number of ‘panel’ firms will you entertain bids from?
  2. Limiting the number of firms you want to manage?

When it comes to #2, I agree that a smaller group of providers is easier and more cost effective to manage. This is especially the case when using the billable hour. In-house counsel who spend their time pouring over time entries making sure they are getting ‘value’ do better with a smaller universe of timekeepers. They get familiar and comfortable with the style and method of the timekeepers involved. So they become more efficient and effective at managing the outside counsel involved. (Of course this begs the question: Why spend your time reviewing time entries?)

When it comes to #1, and this is where my original post comes from, I think in-house counsel should not be converging in a buyers’ market. The RFPs I have seen lately are not about adding competent providers to the list – they are about narrowing the list of firms. These RFPs state something to the effect of, “We are reaching out to the firms we know and trust to respond to this RFP. In this process will we cut the number of panel firms down to …”

First off they are spending significant resources going through the RFP process. Second, the result is fewer firms “they know and trust” bidding for their work.

Huh???

I would suggest in-house counsel let ALL the acceptable firms bid for your work. In a buyers’ market, price and value will narrow the number of winners down for you (meeting #2 above) and this will all be done … for free.

If you were to listen to folks on Twitter on Tuesday, it looks as if AmLaw 100 firms are all going belly up any day now. GC’s are bolting for smaller firms that will listen to their individual needs. BigLaw firms are the last of the buggy whip makers and will no longer be needed in an environment that demands a lighter, faster and even virtual law firm. Obviously those 5000+ layoffs and 5% decrease in corporate spend on legal costs will be the death knell for BigLaw. Apparently, BigLaw’s problem is that it is not run like a company and that the Partnership model creates 150 individual bosses that all think they are majority owners in the firm. The coup de grâce is the fact that BigLaw has no community, no culture, no life, no sense of humor… basically BigLaw is a machine that is slow, deaf, expensive and does nothing by suck the souls right out of anyone that has ever gotten within 50 feet of one of its art laden reception areas.

It is a good thing that I have access to my firm’s Records Department so I can start stockpiling boxes to put all my personal belongings into when the firm folds like all of those other BigLaw firms have folded since the recession hit in September of 2008. Oh, wait… have any BigLaw firms collapsed since Heller Erhman or Thelen Reid — both of which were headed south before the economic collapse. As for not behaving like a business, let’s take a look at that. Sure, BigLaw laid off thousands of attorneys and thousands of staff members, but so did most corporations once the economy tanked. The same people that were complaining that BigLaw was bloated and paid their first year associates too much, were some of the same people that started complaining that it was unfair for BigLaw to cut attorneys and staff, reduce associate salaries, and break out of lock-step promotions. If anything, I’d have to say that the current economy woes have caused BigLaw to act more like a business than it ever has. Like it or not, all that trimming of attorneys and staff, and cutting of expenses has resulted in increases in most BigLaw’s profits per partner. In corporate speak, they call that watching the bottom line. Yes, it sucks when that bottom line means you are laid off, or your budget is cut, but that is business… and right now, almost every business has to do some sucky things to make sure it survives this recession.

As for BigLaw firms having ‘culture’ or ‘personality’, most of us that work at these firms understand that we got culture and personality up to our eyeballs. Like a large city, the personalities tend to be segmented by location or groups within the whole, and culminate into a larger personality. New York has a personality; Los Angeles has a personality; Debevoise and Plimpton has a personality; Latham & Watkins has a personality… for God’s sakes, look at Morrison Foerster’s website again, coupled with the fact that they proudly call themselves “MoFo” and tell me that they do not have a personality!! Firms have personality, and even a sense of humor (MoFo’s is pretty apparent.) One recent example is that I mentioned that Bracewell & Giuliani had a “Master of Everything” position listed on its directory. Apparently, that little bit of information has made the rounds among the senior partners at B&G in the form of a string of email jokes with partners asking who this person is, and why he or she is not working for directly for them!

BigLaw has even jumped into the once verboten area of social media by creating Twitter accounts for the firm as a whole, and with individuals and practice groups also jumping in. According to Kevin O’Keefe, the BigLaw blogging universe expanded to nearly half the AmLaw 200 firms blogging, which is an increase of 149% in the past 30 months. Law firms have Facebook fan pages, and are using LinkedIn as a business resource. Granted, they have a long way to go, and some are still pessimistic about how social media tools can actually increase business opportunities, but hey… I bet there are a lot of small to medium sized firms that think the same thing.

I love it just as much as the next person when Above the Law picks on BigLaw firms where partners say dumb things like “if you’re not in the office, you’re not really working.” (I personally like it when ATL links to 3 Geeks and our readership jumps through the roof, too!!) BigLaw is an easy target, and can make itself an even easier target because of the fact that there are just so many partners (“owners”) that the chance of one of them saying something dumb today is astronomically high! At a BigLaw leadership conference, it would be hard to swing a cat without hitting some partner that has said or written something that would make great fodder on Above the Law. It does not mean they are stupid… it mainly means they are human.

BigLaw has its issues… trust me, it has issues. I would have to say that after years (maybe decades) of becoming bloated and slow many firms are finally doing something about it. I have even complained that that BigLaw firms are not doing enough to adjust to a “buyer’s market” and a change in the way they do business. However, I do not think that anyone can honestly say that BigLaw plans to go right back to business as usual once the economy turns around. Those days are gone, and everyone (yes, even BigLaw partners) knows that. It might take some a bit more time to adjust for the new legal economy, but I am betting that most will make the change. There is going to be enough discussion on Alternative Fees and other billing models to keep Toby in blog posts for years. There will still be some BigLaw firms that continue to lay off associates, trim the partnership ranks, reduce incoming first-year associates, and kill practice groups that do not make money… that is just business in a down economy. There will probably be mergers of big firms once the economy picks up again, and we may even see a failure or two of some BigLaw firms if the economy doesn’t turn around in the next 9-12 months. However, I think that there will still be BigLaw firms, and there will be demand for what BigLaw firms do. Therefore, if you think that BigLaw is nothing but buggy whip makers, then I think you are really not seeing the big picture of where BigLaw is heading.


In an attempt to out do the “X for Dummies” approach, Greg and I are going to use the “Whadya Stupid or Somethin?” brand and see what we can make of it.

This week I saw one too many RFPs stating something along the lines of, “in order to better control our costs, we are going to trim the number of outside firms we use.” Like my ranting post on the term “Loss Leader,” this was the proverbial last straw.

And like my Loss Leader post, I’d like to go back to Econ 101 thinking. In a market that has made a dramatic and lasting shift towards a buyers’ market, that also happens to be aligned with the biggest recession of the past 100 years, what’s the best buyers’ strategy?

  1. Take advantage of these market forces and get sellers bidding against each other along the lines of the good ole supply and demand graph? or
  2. Stifle that competitive force, cut out most of the sellers in the market and realize greater leverage with fewer providers.

The correct answer is 1. By definition, in a buyers’ market you already have that same leverage with every provider. Why would you want to eliminate competent competitors from bidding on your business, putting downward pressure on prices (a.k.a. your costs)?

My best guess: GCs (and their consultants) checked the ‘convergence cycle’ calendar and it said it was time to converge. I think they must have missed the “Spring Forward” announcements over the weekend.

I finally found something on WestlawNext pricing from a Thomson Reuters document called “WestlawNext: Pricing Guide for Commercial Plans“.  The pricing seems a wee-bit steep on my initial view, especially if you take the per minute charge and multiply them by 60 to get the hourly charges (like I did in the chart below.)  How about $3,300.00 and hour to view appellate court briefs?  Or, $3,400.00 to get a 50 state survey??
NOTE:  According to the document, this pricing was fixed back on  February 8, 2010 (that would be the launch date.)  The pricing is subject to change on a 30-day notice. This is generic pricing, and your individual contracts may not be the same as listed in this document.

Remember, these are WestlawNext pricing, this is a separate billing model from your existing Westlaw.com pricing guide.  Also, remember that WestlawNext gives you results from all of the WestlawNext databases, regardless of if those are in your contract. The good news is that you get a great results list that is comprehensive.  The bad news is if one of your users clicks on one of those results and views the document that is out of contract, the ancillary charges below kick in.  Whoa to the first-year associate that clicks on a 50-State Survey and reads it online for an hour or two!!  (Read the ‘red bolded‘ section below the chart to see how these ancillary charges work.)  Remember to educate your users on the new pricing of WestlawNext (especially on the out of contract charges!!)

Ancillary Charges to View Documents on WestlawNext

 Content Category   Content Examples   Per Minute   Per Hour   Transactional   Document   Line
 Cases   state and federal cases   $13.33  $799.80  $13.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Statutes and Court Rules–State   state statutory compilations   $18.33 $1,099.80  $16.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Statutes and Court Rules–Federal   USCA®   $20.00 $1,200.00  $25.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Regulations–State   state administrative compilations   $15.00 $900.00  $16.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Regulations–Federal   Code of Federal Regulations   $20.00 $1,200.00  $25.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Administrative Decisions and Guidance–State   state attorney general opinions, state workers’ compensation decisions   $15.00 $900.00  $20.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Administrative Decisions and Guidance–Federal   decisions of the Board of Veterans’ Affairs,N.L.R.B., and E.E.O.C.   $18.33 $1,099.80  $25.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Administrative Decisions   and Guidance–RIA   RIA’s State and Local Taxes   $41.67 $2,500.20  $46.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Briefs   appellate court briefs   $55.00 $3,300.00  $85.00   $30.25   $.05 
 Secondary Sources–Journals and Law Reviews, Practice Guides, andJury Instructions   Law reviews, state jury instructions, practice guides    $33.33 $1,999.80  $30.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Secondary Sources–Premium State and Specialty Titles   Rutter Group publications, Florida Jurisprudence 2d, Business Transactions Solution   $38.33 $2,299.80  $42.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Secondary Sources–Premium National Titles   ALR®, C.J.S.®, American Jurisprudence 2d   $41.67 $2,500.20  $46.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Secondary Sources–Surveys   50-State Surveys   $       56.67  $3,400.20  $250.00   $30.25   $.05 
 Jury Verdicts and Settlements   summaries of jury verdicts and settlements   $       38.33 $2,299.80  $35.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Pleadings, Motions, and Memoranda   trial court filings   $53.33 $3,199.80  $75.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Trial Court Orders   court orders issued by state trial courts   $53.33 $3,199.80  $75.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Proposed and Pending Legislation   state session laws, text of current bills   $15.00 $900.00  $16.00   $16.50   $.05 
 Proposed and Pending Regulations   Federal Register, state administrative registers,text of pending regulations   $15.00 $900.00  $16.00   $16.50   $.05 
 News Sources–Basic   abstracts, archived publications   $11.67 $700.20  $10.00   $16.50   $.05 
 News Sources–General and Specialty Publications   newswires, regional newspapers, trade journals   $26.67 $1,600.20  $32.00   $16.50   $.05 
 News Sources–Premium   New York Times, Guardian, Euromoney   $30.00 $1,800.00  $36.00   $16.50   $.05 

Here is the summary from the document explaining the “Chargeable Events”:

Chargeable Events

Summary

On WestlawNext, there are three broad categories of chargeable events:

• searching for documents

• viewing documents

• offline delivery of documents

The monthly fee you pay for your WestlawNext subscription covers searching for documents on WestlawNext, including searching content not included in your plan. A search of all core legal content, therefore, is included in your monthly fee, even though it may retrieve results from content not included in your plan.

The monthly fee also covers viewing documents and offline delivery of documents from content that is included in your plan. It does not cover viewing documents and offline delivery of documents from content that is not included in your plan. When you view or deliver documents offline from content not included in your plan, ancillary charges apply and you will be billed at the applicable rate for that content (see the ancillary charges chart).

When you click a link on WestlawNext to access content on Westlaw (e.g., Public Records), your WestlawNext session is suspended and current Westlaw pricing rules apply.

Documents in Folders

Documents in folders may be accessed at no charge for 12 months after the initial chargeable view.

• For users who have selected transactional billing, the initial chargeable view occurs the first time a document is viewed (within or outside of the folder).

• For users who have selected hourly billing, the initial chargeable view occurs the first time a document is viewed within the folder.

It is charged at the applicable transactional display charge for the document. Hourly billing (including communications charges) is suspended while browsing folders.

Documents in folders viewed after 12 months will incur the WestlawNext transactional display charge for the document then in effect.

Let me start this post off with saying that I love living in Houston, with its long Summers and mild Winters (and my wife loves the humidity… something about not needing as much moisturizer.)  But the State of Texas sometimes drives me nuts with some of the silly things that goes on here.  The two latest crazy things that happened over the past couple of weeks are just a taste of some of the craziness that happens in the Lone Star state.  First of all Judge Kevin Fine took it upon himself to try to overturn one of the things Texas prides itself on being the best at — executing people.  A few days later, Judge Fine stepped back from the ruling and is allowing the attorneys to file briefs on the matter, but it is still a touchy subject with the Texas Attorney General.  The second thing that made me roll my eyes was the politically appointed Texas State School Board of Education passed new state social studies standards that were so politically biased, that it should make even the most conservative blush with embarrassment. The thing that ties these two events together??  Putting politics where it just doesn’t belong by electing judges and appointing political hacks as the overseers of our public education textbooks.

Now I’m no stranger to election of judges.  I lived in Oklahoma for 16 years before coming to Houston in 2002. Oklahoma (or Texas ‘North’ as it seems to want to be) also elects its judges, and is very proud of the fact that, per capita, it executes more people than Texas.  I remember the first time I saw a billboard listing the name of a judicial candidate and announcing that he was a staunch conservative or she was a lock ’em up and throw away the key judge (apparently, none of them run under the heading of ‘Elect Me!!  I’m a Bleeding Heart Liberal that believes the best way to fight America’s meth problem if through treatment and education!’)  I thought then that electing judges and having them have to campaign and raise money from the very people that were going to try cases in front of them smacked of craziness at the very least and a serious conflict of interest at most.

A lot of people have told me that putting judges on the bench for life, or having them affirmed every six years can also lead to the same political bias, but I have to say that having a judge run for election every two, four or six years just exacerbates the whole political bias and creates a situation where a judge cannot be seen as lenient for fear that he or she will get voted out the next election as being too soft on crime.  Another side of the election system is what happened here in Harris County in 2008 when almost every judge got voted out of office.  Reason?  Because they were too soft on crime??  Nope… Because people voted for Obama for President in mass numbers, and did so by voting the party line.  That means in one fell swoop, judges with extensive experience on the bench got tossed out not because they were unqualified to hold the position, but rather simply because they happened to be the same party affiliation as John McCain.  Now, don’t feel too badly for them.  Many got initially elected for the same reason, but on a different political wind.

Now let’s point out some of the “new history” that a politically appointed Board of Education just approved for Texas school children (and many of your states will adopt these same textbook standards, so pay attention… there will be a quiz.)

  • To balance out the amount of pages dedicated to work of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights Era, the Black Panthers were added as a way to show that it wasn’t all ‘non-violent’ action taken by people of color during the 60’s.
  • Textbooks will now be more fair to Joseph McCarthy by saying that America was infiltrated by those Pinko Commies and McCarthy had it right… but just went a little too far in his hearings.  (Gee… seems like I remember something like that being said about someone in the Axis in World War II when I used to play dominoes with the crazy old men down at the Courthouse when I was a kid in Mississippi.)
  • Hispanics played the following role in American social studies — oh, that part’s now blank.
  • Thomas Jefferson has been removed from the ‘Enlightenment Era’ of American history books and replaced with John Calvin (who, by the way, never lived in the United States).  I guess the topic of religious predestination is easier to describe to public school children than the fact that Jefferson was a deist and fathered children with his slaves.  
Adding politics into places it doesn’t belong, namely the judicial bench and the state board of education overseeing textbooks and educational curriculum, just creates insane situations where it just doesn’t need to exist.  Hyper-politicization creates situations where you end up with draconian rules like “zero-tolerance policies” or “mandatory jail sentences”  because no one trusts anyone else to make appropriate decisions.  We’ve probably come too far on the “over-politicization trail” to turn back now, but someone has to stand up and call this over-politicization of judges and school textbooks what it is… and that is just plain crazy!!

I initially put this as a comment on yesterday’s post of “Hey Library! You’re Now in the Marketing Department!!“, but thought it actually deserves its own posting.
I’ve had some “off-line” conversations with other law librarians at big firms and there is a question that has been raised whether the people that have run the law libraries at firms over the past 15-20 years (basically the baby-boomers that are about to retire) have screwed the law library field (add in the law library associations to this, too).

Whenever the law library gets progressive and starts promoting new ideas, those ideas get spun off into their own departments and the creative law librarians leave the library field to join these departments. Things like Knowledge Management, Competitive Intelligence, and even some Marketing and IT ideas that were created in the library now exist outside the library. So it seems that the general direction the law firm libraries have taken in the past 15-20 years is to get us back to what we were doing in the 1980’s.

In the past 15-20 years when the law firm IT and Marketing departments carved themselves out “C-Level” positions, what were those running the libraries doing?? Law Library departments got passed up and never got included in the “C-Party” and now we are having issues of where do we fit on the company ladder when we don’t have that C-Level person. Perhaps the biggest injustice was that we allowed the IT department to claim the title of “Information Officer”, when it usually isn’t “Information” they are in charge of, but rather “Technology”.  If the law library isn’t the “Information” center, then what is it?? Now the law library gets moved under some other department, many times run by someone with no clue on how a law library operates, solely because there is no other place to the library on the firm’s org chart.

Moves like the one MoFo did to push the law library under marketing, coupled with the fact that many seem to be okay with the move, shows that the law library has fallen a great deal in stature under its existing leadership. I’m tired of hearing that I have to move away from the library and into Knowledge Management or Marketing or IT in order to succeed. It is time for those of us in the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ generations who are about to take the reins of the law library field to reevaluate what the law library does.  It is time to stop spinning off all of our great accomplishments and letting others take credit for what we’ve created. It is time to change the way the law library is run and viewed by those with whom we work. To steal a certain political party line, it is time for those coming into library management to come up with a type of law library that allows us to declare:

“This Isn’t Your Daddy’s Law Library!”

I written before that I think the Library department and the Marketing departments work very well together.  However, apparently the folks over at Morrison Foerster (MoFo) have taken my advice further than even I would have imagined.  Yesterday at the Law Marketing Association conference, MoFo new CMO, Joe Calve, discussed the topic of increasing ROI in the Marketing department and announced that the first thing he did when he came on at MoFo was to move the Client Development team and the Library Department into Marketing.  At which my initial reply was “Whaa??”

I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around this decision, and am reaching out to Joe Calve to get his reasoning behind the move. I understand putting Client Relations in Marketing (although others may disagree wwith me), but putting the Library in Marketing seems odd.

From what I’m hearing from the Librarians at MoFo, they are excited about the change and are looking forward to the transition. So, again, maybe I’m missing why this is a good idea. I just can’t seem to think of any off of the top of my head. I guess if the Library can fit under Marketing in order to improve ROI, then how about moving it under Accounting? Or under the Paralegal group? Or Recruiting? That makes about as much sense to me as Marketing.

Anyone disagree with me??

Great read over at LOMAP on Research Trails: Breadcrumbs for Recovering (the) Most of Your Research Buck.  This is a good follow up read to the post we did here on 3 Geeks asking if a lawyer really needs premium tools like Westlaw to practice.  Jared Correia at LOMAP points out that there are a lot of state and local bar associations that provide its members with free legal research tools – in Massachusetts it is Casemaker (same here in Texas).  In some other states it is Fastcase.  So, if you’re state bar is providing you with access to these services, are you using them??  If not, why? Are you stupid or something??

If you’re one of those attorneys that I mentioned last week that loves to search Google for legal research (probably because it is free and doesn’t get charged to your firm or client), then you owe it to yourself, your firm and your clients to make sure you know what products are available to you.  And, if you’re one of those folks that has a free service from your state bar, but plunked down a subscription to another low-cost provider at $1000 to $1800 a year, then let me ask you again… well, you know….

As Jared pointed out in the LOMAP post, sure these aren’t Westlaw or Lexis, but they do offer some powerful researching abilities, and if they are available via your state bar… they cost the same as that silly Google search your attempting to do.  Go check out your bar association and see what they have to offer.  You might be surprised at how much they have to offer!

[Note: Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle.com has a nice list of Bar Association benefits that they provide their members.]