lexis

Come to think of it, both Westlaw and Lexis Nexis actually have a suite of enterprise software.

In our cost-conscious era, Big Law is reeling in the short term, as are Lexis and Westlaw.

One thing this article doesn't mention is how utterly Lexis Nexis used to dominate the industry.

Like Lexis and Westlaw, they reap enormous profits from providing structured access to mostly free information.

In the area of research, Westlaw and Lexis still rule because of their completeness and accuracy.

There are lots of opportunities in the legal market, but trying to take Westlaw and Lexis Nexis on directly is insane.

For Lexis and Westlaw to compete, they will eventually have to lower their pricing considerably.

Unfortunately, this information is collected and maintained by West and Lexis in proprietary databases.

Here's one I wrote in 2010 about reddit: Hexis-a-plexis, A- -lexis Ohanian Started a website with His best friend Steve.

So are most of the records on Lexis and Westlaw.

Now with Lexis and Westlaw giving you way more cases to look at it, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up researching more.

In any event, this is most definitely a game changer, and I am sure Lexis and Westlaw will see an immediate hit to revenue in 2010.

It probably won't even replace the vast tedium of researching West/Lexis for a while, but it might replace the "attorneys" that West/Lexis employ to summarize and tag articles w/ metadata.

The competition between Lexis and Westlaw did lead to far better pricing for some users, from the old "x dollars per minute" model to flat-rate pricing for users in specific categories (e.g., small firms), but this still involved hundreds of dollars per month at minimum (anything beyond the specific categories remained x dollar per minute).

If a case is about landlord/tenant law, the Lexis/West will categorize it and tag it as "landlord/tenant" (as well as a LOT of other things) even if the words "landord" and "tenant" never appear (maybe the opinion calls them "renter" and "rentee").

Lexis eventually undercut the West monopoly and sent West scrambling for a competitive response (hence, Westlaw).

However you look at this, this is a big blow to Lexis/Westlaw and their monopoly position has taken quite a hit.

None are permanent, but this is not a perfect solution yet: 1 - Lexis/West both allow lawyers to search based on jurisidiction.