Law librarians get tough on costs
Jinfo Blog

21st August 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Legal information publishers come in for criticism in a recent survey of law librarians over the prices they charge and the value for money they offer. But the difference is that this survey comes not from a legal or information industry commentator but from an investment analyst, making buy/sell recommendations on leading publishers’ shares. In its latest quarterly survey, covering 75 large law firm librarians, broker Execution Limited (http://www.executionlimited.com) finds respondents expecting a 12% contraction in information budgets (compared with an expected 4% the previous quarter). Prices, on the other hand, are still rising – by 2.4% on average, compared with an anticipated 0.4% at the time of Execution’s last survey. As a result, law librarians are getting tough; Execution’s report (seen by VIP LiveWire and reported very briefly by the Guardian at http://digbig.com/5baesn) finds that about half of the respondents consider Reed Elsevier’s products ‘poor value for money’, while a third believe that Wolters Kluwer is ‘not essential’ (and half would cut Wolters Kluwer’s products first). Thomson Reuters fares a little better but, even here, 17% of respondents indicated that they would cut its products first if they had to, compared with none the previous quarter. Reed Elsevier’s LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw fight head to head when it comes to legal information market share, and there have been a few occasions recently when they’ve actually announced new developments within a snip of each other (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e17797 or http://www.vivavip.com/go/e22500 for instance). But it seems that cost may finally be outweighing innovation in legal information professionals’ eyes. Reportedly singled out for especial criticism by Execution’s respondents, LexisNexis actually continues to innovate constantly. Only recently, it announced a new Related Content feature, which identifies and links to documents that provide additional support and analysis for case law (http://digbig.com/5baesp) – and it has also released a new version of its PCLaw practice management software, which helps law firms handle their time, billing and accounting more efficiently (http://digbig.com/5baesq). But Execution cites two possible factors to explain why respondents expect a relatively sharper decline in budgets than a combination of headcount and price might indicate. One is an anticipated decrease in multiple terminals – but the other is a ‘potential cut in spending for products which are now sold as enterprise solutions mostly for the back and middle office’, of which PCLaw would appear to be a prime example. Despite a steady stream of product innovations from the major players in what Outsell has hitherto characterised as a ‘stable and fairly predictable segment’ of the information industry (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e12759 for background on this), it looks as if law librarians may finally be saying enough is enough.

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