Westlaw Next
posted by Sarah Waldeck
Lately I’ve found myself thinking more than I have for a long time about the process of legal research. This is because of an intriguing article by Ronald E. Wheeler, Jr., the director of the library at the University of San Francisco Law School. Wheeler’s article (which can be found here) discusses Westlaw Next, the new search engine rolled out by Westlaw in 2010. Several features distinguish Westlaw Next from Classic Westlaw; most notably, that Westlaw Next is a sort of “Google for lawyers” because it uses a crowd sourcing algorithm that relies on the actions of other Westlaw users to rank the relevance of documents retrieved in a search. Wheeler’s article is a must-read for anyone who teaches legal research to law students and a should-read for any scholar who uses or has research assistants using Westlaw Next.
Wheeler concludes that Westlaw Next is a “powerful tool that returns more focused results,” but he cautions about several negative effects. Here’s a excerpt that will be of particular interest to academics:
. . . [T]here are certainly times when researchers are looking to find the stone left unturned, the less popular result, the most esoteric tidbit of legal information or the item that has not been viewed, printed, saved or foldered by members of the collective crowd. In fact, particularly in the academic environment, it is often the case that the obscure or less popular results are exactly what are needed. Often academics are doing research to advance their scholarly agenda for publication. It is important in academe to write about unique ideas or concepts, or to approach a topic from a different point of view. This is true because the most popular or most used information has probably already been written about. Legal scholars, therefore, often look for legal oddities, unfamiliar concepts, breaking news, and rulings or decisions that are different from the current state of the law. Legal scholars and creative thinkers also frequently write about changing the law or the effects of proposed changes. Again, these sorts of research inquiries may not fall within the crowd of results considered useful by the masses.
Here’s another excerpt that will be useful to anyone trying to get good research out of young lawyers. Wheeler discusses Westlaw Next’s (in my opinion, eye-popping) pricing structure at length and notes:
Charging to edit or focus searches could result in researchers retrieving less accurate results. When researchers are deterred from refining their searches by using the editing or focusing function, they are likely to merely settle for the results they retrieve from their initial searches. Researchers will settle for these results if they perceive that their initial search results are good enough. The potential costs associated with refining initial searches, without any real guarantee of better results, may cause researchers to accept any result that they perceive as adequate. Especially in this time of hyper cost consciousness in law firms and other practice environments, researchers will likely err on the side of frugality and sacrifice some portion of research accuracy.
Initiating the practice of charging a fee for each opened document will discourage researchers from opening and reading documents. It will cause researchers to examine fewer documents and discover less information. WestlawNext’s new pricing structure creates a strong economic disincentive for researchers to open and peruse numerous documents. Opening, skimming, and even reading portions of numerous documents was, in the past, the norm for thorough, thoughtful and careful researchers. Classic Westlaw encouraged that type of research behavior by not charging researchers a fee for each opened document. Experienced researchers have come to rely on their ability to examine portions of the documents they gather. Moreover, examining and reading documents is one of the leading ways that attorneys and other researchers gather information. Thus, pricing structures like WestlawNext’s, that discourage the practice of opening and reading multiple documents during the research process will surely result in less thorough and less productive research.
The financial disincentive to edit or focus search results created by WestlawNext’s pricing structure will be particularly crippling for researchers precisely because of the nature of WestlawNext results. As discussed earlier in this paper, WestlawNext retrieves much more focused results than Classic Westlaw. Although this feature is sometimes desirable and certainly praiseworthy, it can leave a researcher wanting more. Researchers may want or need to expand their results. One way to do that is by editing the original search. When each attempt to expand results by editing or refining a search costs an additional $60.00, researchers will shy away from doing so. Other methods of expanding results also result in additional charges by WestlawNext. For example, expanding research using KeyCite costs researchers $7.00 per citation. This chilling effect on refining searches or expanding research results by other means will be particularly daunting for newer associates and inexperienced researchers that are understandably afraid of running up excessive research bills.
More than anything, Wheeler’s article has made me ponder how to best teach law students about the cost and quaility consequences of each decision they make during the research process. It also has me wondering whether law schools have ceded too much ground to Westlaw (and Lexis) in allowing them to come into law schools and be involved in teaching students how to use these tools.
March 22, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Posted in: Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)
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Responses (3)
Hillel Y. Levin - March 22, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Sarah:
Thanks for pointing this out. As someone who incorporates online legal research into my doctrinal classroom, I’ll have to think about these issues.
But I have to say that asking law schools to teach legal research in light of corporate pricing schemes may be asking too much, particularly in a world in which lots of law schools don’t do a great job of teaching legal research skills at all, never mind cost considerations.
Civ Pro King - March 23, 2011 at 11:26 am
Hillel, my impression is that legal research is the only thing recent law graduates can do comfortably without much oversight. That appears to be the impression of most of my colleagues.
Sarah, this article appears somewhat bias. I was selected as a pilot user for WestlawNext. I used the free UN and PW for a ton of pro-bono cases. It worked well. The product was marketed to me as an alternative to Westlaw, but not a replacement. It’s good way to survey an area of law for the locus classicus materials. People in academia (and those looking for unturned stones) tend to focus on the exceptions more than the base rules, but that’s only 5% of legal practice. For the rest of us practicing in the real world, WestlawNext is a good second option. So yes, lets teach it to law students.
N - July 15, 2011 at 12:25 pm
This is an old post but I felt the need to comment. I am a lawyer in private practice, and have always prided myself on my legal research skills. I’m very comfortable with both Westlaw and Lexis. Although I’ve previously been at a large firm, I’m now at a small firm that subscribes to Westlaw.
About a year ago, I decided to start implementing an ipad into my practice here, which has worked out superbly. The only negative factor: Westlaw. It works horribly and awkwardly on the ipad. When I called Westlaw to report this and to find out if they ever planned on a fix for it, they tried to foist Westlaw Next on me. I was initially interested, only because I assumed that our firm’s very expensive Westlaw contract meant that Westlaw had done what every single other online-based company has done with their loyal customers: created an ipad-specific application to help us continue enjoying their product. I was repulsed, then, to learn that Westlaw had done no such thing.
Well, they had, it’s just that they wanted my firm to pay them EVEN MORE for the privilege of accessing their product properly on an ipad. In other words, my choices were limited to: very poor, hampered, unevolved access to Westlaw on my ipad even though my firm is paying for a subscription, or supposedly improved access to Westlaw on my ipad for even more money than the current subscription.
This business practice leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. I frankly cannot stand Westlaw as a company now, particularly when I view it as a supposed partner in conducting my business as an attorney. It’s obvious that this “partner” will try to rip me off at any opportunity it gets, and that it could care less what my actual needs are. I suspect, with the astronomical progress of informational technology, some day in the future companies like Westlaw will fade out of existence due to their databases becoming obsolete. I will politely applaud.
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