Legal Research

A Law Student?s View: What You Do Not Know Can Be Costly

By Leslie A. Pardo

As law students, we rely extensively on Westlaw and LexisNexis for research. Thankfully, for the three years we are in law school, we have completely free access and can do as many searches as we would like. That all changes, however, once we either begin a summer associate position or graduate from law school.

My first taste of researching outside of the free Westlaw provided during law school occurred last summer when I worked for a law firm in Phoenix. As if the experience of working for a firm is not daunting enough, I was faced with continual concerns regarding the costs I was incurring while researching on the firm?s Westlaw account. Even though most firms engage in flat rate billing, each client must be billed for research performed on that client?s behalf.  Some clients do not like to pay for researched performed on Westlaw, so in that case, there is definitely pressure to ensure that any research done on Westlaw is minimal. Each document that I accessed had multiple costs associated with it. For example, if I looked up a case using the transactional billing method, I would be charging the client $13.00 just to view that document, and, if I decided to print the document, there would be another charged added as well. If I looked at something in a PDF format, there were additional ?image charges? assessed, in some cases up to $85.00. If I wanted to start my research in secondary sources to find out more information about my topic, the cost could range from $30.00 for viewing a law review article, or over $50.00 to view a 50-state survey. When I attended a WestlawNext training through my firm, I also discovered that WestlawNext charged additional rates on top of the published rates?so viewing a case through WestlawNext would be even more costly than utilizing ?traditional? Westlaw.

Obviously, I had to perform the research, so I tried a few things to minimize the cost. First, I called the Westlaw Reference attorneys daily, sometimes multiple times a day. They would run the searches for me and find the best materials that were on point.  That way, when I logged on to Westlaw I knew exactly what search to run and would not waste money by viewing cases or other materials that were not on point. If I needed to access a document that was not included within my firm?s subscription, I would locate the document (without viewing or printing it!), log out of the transaction billing method, log back in using the hourly/per minute billing rate, and quickly copy and print the document. I also did not print directly from Westlaw, instead, I would copy and paste documents into Word and print the documents that way.  I tried to be mindful of the case upon which I was working to try to gauge how much time and money I could realistically spend researching. If I could cut down on some of the legwork by using free resources, I would start there and then move on to Westlaw.

These are just a few things to consider as we prepare to leave our free law school Westlaw accounts and move on into the maze of client billing. All of the information I shared concerning cost was taken from Westlaw?s Pricing Guide for Commercial Plans which is available on WestlawNext.

Our guest blogger is Heather Horrocks who is a third year law student at the Sandra Day O?Connor College of Law.

Full post as published by Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog on February 02, 2011 (boomark / email).