By Greg Lambert of Jackson Walker
(July 31) – Your refrigerator just died. You need a new one – fast. So you go to a big box store. You find the perfect fridge. Then the salesperson tells you the only way to buy that refrigerator is to first purchase a pricy license that will give you the right to also buy an oven you don’t need. You’d most likely walk away in bewilderment and head to a competitor’s store.
Such a scenario may sound preposterous, but it’s exactly the type of situation law librarians nationwide face regarding access to vital legal information.
Last summer, LexisNexis, one of the world’s leading legal information providers, did a surprising about-face. Instead of allowing its customers, specifically law librarians and the law firms they represent, to purchase the standalone products they need – such as trade publications through Law360, analytical tools like Lex Machina, and print treatises such as Collier on Bankruptcy – it required organizations to purchase a license to the Lexis Advance legal search product in order to receive access to other LexisNexis publications and products.
Because Lexis has industry control over many of the most pertinent law information products, the answer for law librarians isn’t as simple as going down the street to another store. That’s why LexisNexis’ decision has caused a huge ripple effect throughout our profession in particular and the legal community in general.
Responding to an urgent concern
In June, the American Association of Law Librarians – whose membership includes more than 4,100 academic, government, law firm and corporate legal department law librarians – took action. We hired Michael Best & Friedrich to send a letter to LexisNexis CEO of Global Legal Business Mike Walsh on the AALL’s behalf requesting that LexisNexis cease and desist these anticompetitive and potentially unlawful sales practices.
LexisNexis’ actions specifically violate Section 3.2 of the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers, which states: “Publishers should engage in open and fair negotiations with customers regarding licensing agreements and other contracts.”
Such discussions haven’t yet happened. While the AALL sat down with LexisNexis representatives in Chicago in early July, they would not discuss specifics, citing non-disclosure agreements with its customers. There were no direct follow-up discussions with LexisNexis at the AALL Annual Meeting in mid-July, but the topic was a hot discussion item among AALL members.
The potential impact
At the core of their jobs, law librarians fight on behalf of each office, practice area and individual. Our value comes from finding the right information that helps our employers fulfill their legal obligations while negotiating fair deals. LexisNexis’ practices threaten our ability to do just that.
Consider this conundrum: If your law library passes on the Lexis Advance license and relies on a competitor such as Westlaw, your firm would lose access to materials like the AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 200 survey and other competitive intelligence data. Without a Lexis Advance subscription, legal news from any of the American Lawyer Media titles (American Lawyer, Texas Lawyer, National Law Journal, Law.com, and more) are unavailable to your entire law firm. The same holds true for Law360 products. It is a potential situation where law firms cannot access key news and analytical tools, without bloating the firm’s overall budget by having to include a Lexis Advance subscription.
All of this is occurring at a time when law libraries deal with serious financial pressures. Since the great recession, law library budgets haven’t kept pace with inflation. At the same time, we are asked to negotiate with vendors who seek double-digit increases. And we are tasked with finding the right balance not only between print and digital (which can save five- and even six-figure subscription costs depending upon the product), but between information and cost.
LexisNexis’ decision to require the purchase of a Lexis Advance license could cost tens of thousands of dollars to firms at a bare minimum. The larger the law firm, the higher the cost – potentially six figures and higher. And the impact goes beyond law librarians within law firms, impacting academic and government law libraries as well.
If LexisNexis is successful in requiring the purchase of one product in order to purchase an unrelated product, other legal information vendors could follow, creating even more access and cost pressures down the road.
Possible next steps
To help begin a dialogue with LexisNexis, the AALL is encouraging its members to speak directly with their local LexisNexis customer representatives, ask them to explain the reasons behind their sales tactics, and then ask to have our concerns about these practices elevated all the way up to their corporate office.
While we as law librarians often work quietly behind the scenes, this issue is bringing our profession into the spotlight. When we briefed the AALL executive board on this matter at the annual meeting, we made it clear that we preferred continued communications with LexisNexis on correcting this issue, but that we would also consider all legal and commercial options.
We will continue pushing to find a solution, because it’s our passion and our obligation to look out for the best interests of our firms and our profession. It’s at the very core of who we are and what we do.
Greg Lambert, immediate past president of the American Association of Law Libraries executive board, is the chief knowledge services officer at Jackson Walker, the fourth largest law firm in Texas. He works as a liaison between many departments on issues of business development, competitive intelligence, knowledge management and firm-wide initiatives. His “3 Geeks and a Law Blog” has received numerous awards, including being inducted into the ABA Blawg 100 Hall of Fame in 2015. He received his B.A. from Cameron University, and his master’s in library science and J.D. from the University of Oklahoma. He lives in Houston.