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A few years ago, an attorney's most consequential choice in legal research was whether he or she bought principally West products, Matthew Bender products or Bancroft-Whitney products along with Shepards, Witkin and a few specialty books in the attorney's area of expertise. Today computer access to legal research has revolutionized this law office necessity.
In addition to some of the traditional players providing both primary research as well as speciality tools (e.g. WestLaw, Lexis,) there are now a myriad of start-up companies (Jurisearch, Versislaw, Americanlegalnet, etc.) providing primary research (basically cases and statutes) offering the consumer a smorgasbord of choices creating both confusion as well as opportunity for the attorney. One such company, Loislaw (the acronym, Law Office Information Systems) touted its service to the September 15, 1999, luncheon of the Sacramento Lawyers Users Group (SLUG).
$39 For California Law
Dan Jerger, territory manager, presented Loislaw as a legal research tool offering comprehensive primary law on the Internet and/or CD-ROM . For a flat monthly fee of $39, Loislaw offers California Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases from 1924 to the present with official pagination, the California Code with legislative histories as well as court rules, current legislative acts, and hyperlinks to all cited state and federal case law, statutes, and administrative rules.
Add Federal for $98
For $98 a month, Loislaw also offers, in addition to the full state law library, a complete federal library which includes decisions from all the Circuit Courts of Appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Code. Fed. Supp. has not yet been input to their system, but will be included for the same cost when completed.
Online Plus CD
Loislaw claims a user friendly and powerful search engine and the freedom to do unlimited research either online or on the CDs for one flat fee. The ability to research and download from the Internet keeps the system current while the ability to research from the CD alone gives the user the flexibility to do research when the Internet service provider is down or when some other problem precludes access to Loislaw.com.
Extra Features
An added bonus to California users is the ability to hyperlink to any citation existing within the California case even if that citation is to a federal case or code for which the user is not paying. In other words, if a California case cites to a U.S. Supreme Court case, Loislaw will allow a hyperlink to the complete text of the Supreme Court case at no extra charge over the monthly flat fee for the California package. Other companies such as Jurisearch advertise the same benefit.
Another distinctive feature is the integration of the information on the CD-ROMs with the information on the Internet. Essentially, each time the user accesses Loislaw on the Internet, the system downloads to the attorney's hard drive all cases and codes, citations and links that were added since the pressing of the CD-ROM. Thereafter, when the attorney does research using the CD-ROM alone, he or she is accessing not only the edition of the database on the CD-ROM, but all of the additional data downloaded from the Internet, bringing the CD-ROM up-to-date.
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To the extent that a user is currently on a three month shipping schedule for CDs with certain other companies, an attorney's research using those older CDs could be as much as four months out-of-date at the time of access. With Loislaw, your own computer or CD-based research project could be nearly as timely as online research.
Liabilities
Loislaw does not subscribe to Shepard's nor to West's substitute, KeyCite. Nor does Loislaw have any other method of determining the quality or characteristics of subsequently cited cases. It obviously can search subsequent cases to determine if the case in question has been cited, but it will make no editorial comment regarding why that case was cited in a subsequent case.
The search engine does not support natural language or common language searches, but requires Boolean searches using the very specific, but powerful, symbols associated with this process.
Currently, Loislaw does not provide Fed. Supp. coverage in its Federal package, although it is promised for the future. Other startups, such as Jurisearch also are promising fuller service, at the same price, as products can be added.
Consumer's Choice
Loislaw has a good product that provides primary research at a lower cost than the full service provided by the research giants Westlaw and Lexis. It is identical in price and similar in features to other primary research companies, such as Jurisearch.com. If the attorney desires extras such as secondary sources and is willing to pay the price, Westlaw and Lexis can provide those extras. On the other hand, if the attorney wants to save money and can master case finding without the necessity of online secondary sources, then he or she should try one of these new lean and mean startup companies. Most, including Loislaw, will provide free trials of varying lengths so the attorney can experience the performance of the program before consummating the marriage.
The field of computer assisted legal research is daily becoming even more exciting and challenging. The challenge, of course, will be to find the system that gives the greatest utility to the attorney at the lowest cost with a company that will be around for a few years.
The concurrent opportunity, however, is that attorneys can receive the benefit of a highly competitive marketplace offering a myriad of new products and services with a full range of prices. It will likely take a few years before these elegant and efficient start-up companies are swallowed by the mainline, long-term research giants, at which time the prices will inevitably stabilize and the consumers' opportunities and value will be significantly restricted.
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