The Expense of Online Law Databases

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Legal Research: What is the Cost?

The expense of legal databases impacts both lawyers and their clients.  Access to a legal database is essential to a lawyer, as lawyers must consult case law, statutes, and secondary sources to represent a client efficiently.  A legal database provides all of this and more at the lawyer’s fingertips.

The two primarily used online databases are Lexis and Westlaw.  Lexis and Westlaw were created in the 1970s to collect, organize, and arrange legal materials.  Over the past 50 years, both databases have seen significant change.  These databases house secondary sources, statutes, and case law, and these databases stay current on the law.  Lexis and Westlaw constantly analyze and specify the precedential treatment of the sources found on their websites in a process called “Shepardizing” and “KeyCite,” respectively.  The databases also offer users smart search functionality, which allows users to search within the databases, filter search results, and find links to related sources.  Altogether, legal databases like Lexis and Westlaw are useful for legal research.  However, these databases can come at a high cost.

Despite these high costs, lawyers are willing to invest.  Legal arguments require thorough research to identify, explain, and argue a case correctly.  Generally, lawyers seek as much information as possible that speaks to their client’s issues to advise them adequately and to anticipate their opponent’s arguments.  A lawyer uses online databases to find precedent, which is necessary to make analogies and distinctions to their client’s case.  Finding precedent is critical to a lawyer’s argument.  Lexis and Westlaw assist in identifying what cases are relevant while making resources accessible to locate and utilize.

Cost to Firms

Lexis and Westlaw offer a variety of plans for firms, each designed to meet that firm’s size and needs.  For 1-2 attorney firms, Lexis offers four flat-rate plans for three years.  Plans are billed yearly on a single-user basis.  The cheapest plan, State Basic, costs $153, while National Premium, the most expensive plan, costs $399.  The State Basic plan grants access to Shepardized cases, statutes, and briefs from one state jurisdiction.  On the opposite end, National Premium grants access to all sources from all jurisdictions.  National Premium also includes specialized services, such as Brief Analyzer, Statutes Compare, Expanded Search Term Maps, Litigation Analytics, and Legal News Hub.  These tools help a lawyer conduct thorough research, advanced searches, and compare the law across jurisdictions.  Generally, a smaller firm only needs access to one jurisdiction’s sources, so the State Basic plan makes sense.  However, a more prominent firm likely needs access to more sources across various jurisdictions, which leads that firm to a more costly option.

Westlaw’s plans are similarly dependent on the firm’s size and needs.  For 1-2 attorney firms, Westlaw offers three flat-rate plans for variable durations.  Plans are billed monthly on a single-user basis. The cheapest plan, Westlaw Classic Single State Primary Law, costs $107.90, while the most expensive plan, Westlaw Classic Primary Law All States and Federal, costs $216.45.  Classic Single State Primary Law provides access to case law, statutory law, and regulations of the user’s chosen state.  In contrast, Classic Primary Law All States and Federal allows access to all state and federal case law, statutory law, regulations, and legislative history.  Both services include Westlaw’s editorial enhancements: KeyCite, West Key Number System, and Headnotes.  These services verify that sources are still good law while linking to past and related versions.  In doing so, a lawyer can more readily view relevant sources and craft his argument.

The costs and content, thus, are comparable.  Law firms tend to subscribe to one database rather than both, as they offer very similar content.  If a lawyer does need content outside of their plan, the databases will not stop them.  However, each time a lawyer accesses content outside of their plan, the lawyer will be charged extra fees.  The databases classify “accessing content” as conducting searches for case law, downloading a document, or even viewing a document not within the chosen jurisdiction of the firm’s plan.  A new lawyer might spend more time researching than an experienced lawyer, conduct more searches, and incur more expenses that are pushed to the client.  Firms suggest spending two hours on a given case, a timetable that can be daunting to new lawyers.  Regardless of the time spent researching, costs are often pushed onto the client.

Costs to Clients

Most firms pass these costs to clients.  Lexis recommends charging $60 per search for each document a lawyer clicks on, regardless of whether the materials are within the firm’s plan.  Westlaw’s method, titled “Westlaw Predictable Pricing,” recommends charging $99 per search and for each document a lawyer clicks on.  For context, a single search is much like a search on Google.  After a lawyer types in a word or phrase, he can limit the search to his desired jurisdiction, and once he presses “enter,” the database will generate sources that meet the search criteria.  Through regular searches and clicks, the cost of use will be pretty high based on Lexis or Westlaw’s price models.  Ultimately, though, law firms choose what they charge the client.  Some firms may charge for all searches and document clicks, or they may charge only for searches that fall outside the firm’s plan.  Other firms may choose not to charge specifically for searches and documents but instead include these costs in overhead fees.

Regardless of these high costs, a client may prefer a lawyer with access to these databases.  Without these tools, a lawyer may be unable to conduct research efficiently.  Alternative resources may not be updated as often, contain a limited selection of materials, or the lawyer lacks ways to find or access related sources.  Using alternative resources may also take more time than using Lexis or Westlaw, which is a finite thing for a lawyer.  However, though alternative databases may have their issues, the cost is a significant barrier for many lawyers.

Alternatives

There are possible remedies to the expense of Lexis and Westlaw.  Lawyers may utilize other databases of legal materials or seek supplemental funding from other parties to affordably access Lexis or Westlaw.  A lawyer may have access to local law libraries, law texts personally owned, or legal scholarship housed in the firm’s library to supplement Lexis and Westlaw access.

 Other Print and Digital Sources

Some legal materials are not exclusive to Lexis or Westlaw and can be found in law libraries and other online databases.  For example, law libraries house secondary sources, statutes, case law, digests, indices, and reporters, which help locate relevant materials.  Law libraries usually only contain cases and statutes in their state, but law libraries may have the neighboring states’ content.  However, law libraries are not all-inclusive.  They do not contain all secondary materials, cases, and statutes, either because the resource is too recent or simply unpublished.  You do not necessarily have to be a lawyer to access law libraries, but they may require identification for entry.

Lexis and Westlaw are not the only online databases.  FindLaw, Fastcase, and Casetext are just a few of the alternatives a lawyer can use instead.  These alternatives are cheaper but may contain less content and annotations than Lexis or Westlaw.  Some databases may even specialize in a legal field, such as Smokeball for business law.  Smokeball offers various plans with different features according to cost, similar to Lexis and Westlaw.

 Supplemental Funding Can Ease the Financial Burden

Alternatively, some special interest groups may choose to fund access to Lexis or Westlaw to reduce rates charged to consumers.  Some legal interest groups include the American Bar Association, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and National Criminal Justice Association.

The American Bar Association (ABA) is an interest group that supports lawyers and seeks to “serve [its] members, improv[e] the legal profession, eliminat[e] bias, and advance[e] the rule of law throughout the United States and the world.”  The ABA promotes legal aid to low-income individuals and pro bono work by volunteer lawyers desiring to mitigate the cost of legal services for clients.  Funding Lexis and Westlaw makes these databases more affordable and accessible for lawyers.

Effective legal counsel is constitutionally mandated in Gideon v.  Wainwright, regardless of a client’s indigency.  Thus, public defenders and their research are paid for by the state or federal government, depending on jurisdiction.  Clients do not pay public defenders for their services, lowering the cost of legal services for lawyers and clients.

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a nonprofit established by Congress to provide civil legal aid to low-income clients.  It funds 131 independent nonprofit legal aid programs, which fund nearly 900 law offices and the research they conduct for clients.  LSC believes in equal access to justice regardless of a client’s income.  It provides financial aid to clients who seek legal assistance.

Conclusion

Many law firms consider it challenging to negotiate with Lexis and Westlaw about plans and price, instead opting to pay as is.  Despite firms’ willingness to pay, many lawyers rate both Lexis and Westlaw as expensive, especially for solo practitioners or small firms.  The expense of these resources may compel lawyers to seek other resources, which may be less efficient in finding an answer for the client.  It may also make the lawyer less prepared to argue against an opponent with access to Lexis or Westlaw.  Despite the difficulty, options are available to suit the lawyer’s and client’s needs.  The lawyer can aptly prepare and serve the client by creatively using the resources in his grasp.