April 17, 2006

Yes, My Friends, Westlaw Still Sucks

One of the recurrent aggravations of my life as a first-year associate has been setting aside time in the evening hours when I can work from home via the magic of the Inter-Net, only to have my best laid plans thwarted by technical difficulties. On numerous occasions I've had doc review servers crash on me for no apparent reason, and my firm's VPN system is extraordinarily unreliable (though I must say it's been better lately). And now, Westlaw is down.

Anyone who's spent enough time around me in the legal context knows my views about the respective merits of Lexis and Westlaw. In short, Lexis is a wonderful, effective, and extremely helpful research system with an intuitive interface and an easily navigable architecture. Westlaw is the opposite of all of those things. Unfortunately, there are certain materials that Westlaw hosts exclusively (just like Lexis has its own exclusive goodies), and for tonight's (now tomorrow's) research assignment, the truffles I need are buried deep within the tangled roots of the Westlaw system. And Westlaw is currently down, which makes it slightly less useful than usual.

This is all very disappointing.

Posted by hb at April 17, 2006 10:40 PM

Comments

hmm, at this point I prefer Westlaw, but perhaps that is simply because I am a lowly 1L and cannot yet appreciate the greatness that is Lexis. Westlaw prints double-sided, so it looks shorter. Point 1 for Westlaw!

Posted by: Mary on April 24, 2006 10:53 AM

I am a Lexis fan myself. Westlaw just aggravates me.

Posted by: meish on April 24, 2006 01:55 PM

I guess you're not 1337 enough to backdoor your VPN

Posted by: doca v on April 24, 2006 02:53 PM

No, I'm much more of an L7.

Posted by: holohan on April 24, 2006 03:02 PM

As a law student, the most important factor in deciding which legal research service I prefer is the stuff offered through the various reward programs. Lexis lets me get free board games, so it beats out WestLaw.

Also, Westlaw's interface is really painful. Lexis is easy and intuitive to browse through, so I generally use it if they have what I'm looking for. It's annoying, though, that they sometimes use odd citation formats.

Posted by: Zach S. on April 24, 2006 03:09 PM

Having worked for the rat bastards of stupiddumb Lexis, I wanted nothing more than to stick it to them by becomming a lifelong Westlaw fan. Alas, you are correct, and Lexis is more intuitive, not to mention that I have already invested 2 years in familiarizing myself with their systems. I am doomed to spend the rest of my life throwing money at the fuckers who were too cheap to give me a raise.

Posted by: Iason on April 25, 2006 09:28 PM

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)