Monday, March 23, 2009

Leiter on the Demise of Westlaw and Lexis

Oh my!

Richard Leiter, in an apparent response to a comment to his post of March 11th, has more fully explained his reasoning (to Anonymous) about why Westlaw and Lexis are going broke. His reasoning, set out in full here, cannot be faulted. WL and LN, in fact, seem to have forgotten all about the Golden Rule of legal research: It's the Secondary Sources, Dummy. As we move closer to free, full digital access to all government publications (state, local, federal) of all kinds (cases, statutes, regulations) the only remaining market will be in secondary sources. We will need a way to tie all that free and low cost digital information together. Leiter is right. The future is now. If they aren't already Westlaw and Lexis will soon be Zombie Publishers.

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