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Ambivalent Question: Lexis or Westlaw?
This week's Ambivalent Question® asks: “Do you prefer Lexis or Westlaw for your legal research?”
This one is pretty self-explanatory. It was inspired by Bad Glacier's post about how much he dislikes Westlaw's interface. Some people seem to love that interface and find it much easier to use than what Lexis provides; others feel the opposite. Long-time readers of this blog already know where I stand on the issue but I'll save the rest for next week after you've all voted.
Meanwhile, the poll is open and I'd love to hear your comments about why you prefer one, the other, or neither. Vote and comment away!
Posted February 26, 2006 08:30 AM | ambivalent questions
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Lexis. Westlaw's frames, timeouts, inability to use tabbed browsing at times, etc. really annoys me.
Note: Loislaw is free for law students while they are in school, and students are permitted to use it at work. It doesn't have any frills, but, it could be used alongside one's Wexis account in order to save money.
Posted by: JR at February 26, 2006 09:35 AM
Correction: annoy
Posted by: JR at February 26, 2006 09:37 AM
I actually prefer Lexis in almost every way: the interface is generally better, it doesn't freak out as much when I used tabbed browsing, it seems to render less oddly on a Mac.
But I hate Lexis printouts. I really don't like the way the cover sheet is attached, I don't like the font (face or size). And since 80% of my research needs are printing out cases to read, annotate, and highlight, I use Westlaw. I wish I could use Lexis searching with Westlaw printing.
Posted by: kristine at February 26, 2006 10:37 AM
kristine: I'm pretty sure you can turn off the cover page for printing from Lexis, but I couuld be wrong. You may also be able to specify attributes like font and size. I try to avoid printing cases as much as possible so I could be wrong about these things. I think I've printed about one case to our law school's Wexis printers in my whole 2.75 years of law school...
Posted by: ambimb at February 26, 2006 11:26 AM
Kristine: In the Lexis print dialog (if you choose Print instead of Fast Print) you can turn off the cover page, select one or two column printing, and change the print font. :)
As for Lexi$ vs. We$tlaw... I much prefer the Lexis interface and their search is light years better than Westlaw. But I do find that Westlaw has a slightly better database of cases... and it's cool that Westlaw has so many briefs available now. Still, I find myself using Lexis 9 of 10 times...
Posted by: Dave! at February 26, 2006 11:44 AM
I've hardly touched Westlaw in almost two years, and it's their own fault: the session timeouts, and the fact that I wasn't allowed to use it during either my post-1L or 2L summers at my public interest jobs. Yet I could use Lexis, so I did.
Meanwhile, Lexis NEVER time-outs, and it's got nice news archives, so I'm pretty satisfied.
My only concern is that I might HAVE to use Westlaw again at some point, and I won't really know how to. So I may take some time over spring break to do their online classes to brush up.
Posted by: Cathy at February 26, 2006 03:45 PM
Well, there are options for changing the font, font-size, and removing the cover page; I just can't get to any of them. (Well, I can change the font itself, but not the size, which is really the problem; and I can't turn off the cover page.)
So, basically, Lexis is great for research in many ways, but it's not so much better than Westlaw, particularly given my preferences as far as printouts go. Which is really too bad, because the Westlaw lab is on a higher floor than the Lexis lab, and I hate climbing stairs.
Posted by: kristine at February 26, 2006 11:17 PM
Alright, I'm the lone vote for WestLaw!
Posted by: Audacity at February 27, 2006 09:46 PM
I am a recent convert from Westlaw to Lexis. Reason being that I missed the Lexis training in 1L, and since Westlaw seemed to work fine, I never made the effort to get a Lexis password. Then on my most recent co-op at the ACLU, I needed something that existed on Lexis and not Westlaw, and i was STUNNED at how much better lexis was. First of all - no windows trying to open incessently. I hate those windows! Second of all, i love the way that Lexis organizes the case history and citations. I think everything is easier to read.
There are some things I go back to Westlaw for. I still like searching with keywords better there. Some things I can just do faster there.
I think I'm pretty bilingual with the 2 right now. I try to go get my points from each every day ;)
Posted by: zuska at February 28, 2006 08:50 AM
I've used Lexis religiously ever since Westlaw screwed me over... I had about 30 cases printed out for a memo, and only once I was out of town and unable to get online did I realize that Westlaw didn't have the parallel citation page numbers on some of the cases. I literally had to call a friend to look up 3 cases on Lexis to get me page numbers for parallel citing.
Posted by: Kurt at February 28, 2006 09:17 AM
i prefer westlaw. i've used it on all my internships (which you're allowed to do now, as long as they're public interest). i like the west reporter images.
Posted by: monica at March 1, 2006 10:28 AM
I love Loislaw--it is so much better than Westlaw and Lexis.
check it out....
www.loislaw.com
Posted by: chris at March 13, 2006 07:02 PM
