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West Slow to Distribute WestlawNext Passwords to Academic and Library Users

By Eric Lipman

Professor James Levy reports on the Legal Writing Prof Blog that he's still waiting for a promised password granting him free access to the new and improved Westlaw, officially known as WestlawNext, but still called "Project Cobalt" by some who presumably miss the halcyon days of double secret multi-billion dollar M&A due diligence. My predecessor Bob Ambrogi thoroughly reviewed Next on his Law Sites blog, pre-launch. Levy's colleague Joe Hodnicki, on the Law Librarian Blog, raises the possibility that this could be, at least in part, the result of fears that the non-paying users will go sharing their passwords willy-nilly with people who should be paying for access. Hodnicki, the director of the Butler County Law Library in Hamilton, Ohio, for one, seems willing to promise not to do so. One would think that West would have the technology in place to detect suspected password sharing and Hodnicki's point, echoed by Betsy McKenzie, director of the Suffolk University Law School Library, is that library and academic users are a key "market" for this kind of technology. Free licenses might not bring in revenue directly, but getting the product in circulation, getting the broader legal community familiar with it, and starting...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 10, 2010 (boomark / email).