[blindLaw] Point of having Westlaw and/or LexusNexus

Sun Jul 31 18:27:54 UTC 2022

Adding only a bit to the good advice below:

1. Many court decisions, law reviews, etc. give citations only in the form
"X vs Y, 123 WL/LEXIS 456, 1987". It's very difficult, if possible at all,
to resolve this citation without access.

2. Many court decisions or other legal documents are not electronically
available at all in other places. For example:
• almost anything reported in F. Appx.
• ungranted and unfamous Supreme Court motions or applications for cert
(before the last couple years, when they adopted a CM/ECF type system) —
including virtually all pro se cases (and yes they do get cited by court
decisions)
• lots and lots of Canadian and UK case law, e.g. anything reported in IRLR
(UK employment law)

3. Shepardization (checking whether a case is still valid) is a huge pain
to do otherwise, if indeed possible at all.

This is one of the things I had to do routinely when I was working as a
judicial extern. And yes, I did often catch litigants citing things that
were overturned, or citing something wildly out of context for a conclusion
that it definitely did not support. That happened often enough, even in DoJ
submitted briefs, that I simply stopped trusting anything they said about
anything unless I had personally read the entire cited case.

4. Lots of very useful stuff is not in case law, but in law reviews,
treatises, etc.

Most law reviews are available on scholar.google.com.

Treatises aren't. Moore's Federal Practice & Procedure, for instance.

I cannot approve of the existence of such paywalled law; I consider a
commercial control over access to any of the above to be absolutely
antithetical to fundamental requirements of justice, like that people
should be equally able to know the law.

But the blunt fact is that right now, this is the situation.

Even more so if you're blind. Going to a law library (if you're even
allowed to do so) to literally find a book containing a cited case is not
really an option. You need an electronic version that's searchable etc.

I've not used the alternative services that Michal Nowicki mentioned. Maybe
they provide similar levels of access at a cheaper price. I don't know
either way.

But one way or another, if you're practicing law, you will need regular
access to such services to get competitive professional result in any
reasonable amount of effort and time.

This is one of many "is, not ought" facets of law. Alas.

One tip:

The Massachusetts Law Library will send you almost anything they have
access to, for free, by email. You just tell them the citation. They don't
care where you live, whether you're registered anywhere or the like.

It isn't really as workable as being able to do searches yourself, they
won't give you more than a chapter or subsection of a book, they'll get
annoyed if you ask for more than about 5 to 10 things a day, and they don't
have access to some things — but they do have quite a lot.

In particular, they have almost everything with a WL or LEXIS cite, most
Law Reports and similar publications, most academic legal publications on
the usual paywalled sites, etc. They will also send you the Shepardization
/ Westlaw appendix also, but only if you specifically ask for it.

They will give you the electronic version if they have it, but often they
don't, and they'll send a scan — literally they just find the print book
and put it on a flatbed scanner. The resulting OCR is not at all reliable,
so scans are probably not going to be blind accessible, but that's a
separate problem that I assume you know how to deal with.

Anyway, if you want stuff from them, just fill out this form:

https://www.mass.gov/forms/document-delivery-service-request-form

I suggest you try just asking for a few random things and find out for
yourself what it's like vs. what you can get directly on free & open
services. Much easier to learn from examples than to describe, in my
experience.

Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc., a 501(c)(3)

Sent from my mobile phone; please excuse the concision and autocorrect
errors.

On Sun, 31 Jul 2022, 18:23 MIKE MCGLASHON via BlindLaw, <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> I would also add here that west and lexis are becoming the official
> reporters in some states such as Illinois and Indiana; (who has no official
> reporter at all anymore; they use west as their official reporter now).
>
> Second, one thing you get with west and lexis is codified statutes; lexis
> and west also provide top cases that correspond to the statute you are
> looking at.
>
> I would worry that other sources may not be able to show the most current
> statutes, and may not be able to provide matching cases for those statutes.
>
> Third, west and lexis provide boiler plate forms for motions and pleadings
> that other less sophisticated sources may not be able to do.
>
> Just my two cents worth;
>
> By the way, I just finished the Illinois Bar the other day.
>
> So, don't take my word on anything.
>
>
> Please advise as you like.
>
> Mike M.
>
> Mike mcglashon
> Email: Michael.mcglashon at comcast.net
> Ph: 618 783 9331
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Michal Nowicki
> via
> BlindLaw
> Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2022 1:07 PM
> To: 'Blind Law Mailing List' <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Michal Nowicki <mnowicki4 at icloud.com>
> Subject: Re: [blindLaw] Point of having Westlaw and/or LexusNexus
>
> Thomas,
>
> Google and other popular free search engines are no match for a dedicated
> legal database like Westlaw or LexisNexis, especially for case law
> research.
> These databases are very useful - and sometimes essential - for verifying
> whether a particular court decision is still good law; this obviously
> cannot
> be done from the text of a court opinion alone. Additionally, legal
> databases offer very advanced searching and results filtering and sorting
> functionalities you won't find elsewhere. Furthermore, Westlaw and
> LexisNexis both offer robust editorial annotations for statutes,
> regulations, and other primary sources. Those are just a few tremendous
> advantages of these legal databases that make the cost worthwhile for many
> practitioners.
>
> For attorneys who work on a tight budget, however, there are several
> cheaper
> alternatives, among them Casetext, Fastcase, and Casemaker (which
> apparently
> has recently merged with Fastcase). Most state bar associations offer
> complementary access to one of these alternative databases to their
> members.
> These cheaper alternatives do not offer all the benefits of Westlaw or
> LexisNexis, but are still much more powerful than free online searches.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Michal
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Thomas Dukeman
> via
> BlindLaw
> Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2022 7:52 AM
> To: 'Blind Law Mailing List' <BlindLaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Thomas Dukeman <ThomasDukeman at outlook.com>
> Subject: [blindLaw] Point of having Westlaw and/or LexusNexus
>
> Hello fellow legal beagles!
>
> I was wondering what the point of having those two legal databases was? I
> mean is there any information in those databases I couldn't get access to
> any other way or that it is just a more efficient way to find law related
> information then just trying to look it up on your own with google? I know
> that many law firms through out the US at least use them but that the
> license for it can be pretty expensive to keep up sometimes so I was just
> trying to understand if the whole point of using something expensive was
> because it is the only way to get important information or that is just
> what
> we have gotten used to using?
>
> Thanks for your time in advance,
> Tom
>
> Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
>
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