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Cost-effective searching on Westlaw
For those of you about to graduate law school: Your infinite supply of “free” legal research crack is about to come to an end. Many of you have hooked up with a new pusherman (e.g. a firm that's going to bill your continued Wexis access to its clients), but it's unlikely your new dealer is going to be as generous as the one on which you've come to depend. Looks like it's time to check into rehab!
To help you get started, here are some things I learned recently from our Westlaw representative:
Westlaw offers three main pricing options. First, “Plan A” is kind of old school. When you log into Westlaw with Plan A you'll have to choose whether you want your session to be billed hourly or by transaction. If you choose “hourly,” the clock starts the second you log in and it keeps ticking at the same rate regardless of what you do. If you have this option, use it only when you know exactly what you want and you can dive in, grab it, and print it, then get out. If you choose to be billed by transaction, you'll only be charged for the actual searches you conduct. There is no charge for logging in; charges basically begin once you enter a search query and hit “search.”
The second and most common pricing plan is called “Special Plan” (creative, huh?) and it's basically a negotiated flat rate for searches w/in some subset of Westlaw's available databases; each subscriber negotiates which databases are included in their “special” plan. You can do as many searches as you want in databases included in the plan; searches in databases outside the plan cost extra. This is a common arrangement in many firms and government agencies. Talk to your firm/agency librarian to find out exactly what is and is not included in your special plan.
Westlaw's last pricing option is called “Pro Plan.” It's a “mini flat rate” designed for public interest organizations, solos, and really small or boutique firms. You pay a flat rate each month for access to only a couple of sources you know you need. For example, if you're practicing criminal law in Alaska, you'd probably have access to Alaska and maybe 9th Circuit criminal cases, as well as Alaska criminal statutes, and that's it. You'll be shut out of everything else. (I assume you could always have a second login for searching on a transactional basis on your own dime.)
If for some reason you're ever stuck searching on a per-transaction basis, here are some things to keep in mind to keep costs to a minimum:
- The larger the DB, the more expensive to search. Pick the appropriate size db for your research task.
- The more specialized the database, the more expensive it is.
- Use the “directory” to narrow your search (look for the white “directory” link at the top of your screen after you log in). This makes Westlaw a little more like Lexis in that it allows you to choose the most appropriate (and narrow) database for your search.
- In the Directory, the sources on the right side are more expensive than those on the left.
- In the Directory, use the “Topical Practice Areas” to narrow your search.
- Charges begin once you enter a search string and hit “search.”
- Once you get a list of results they are included in the transaction; you can read through them w/out extra charge.
- When you want to search, write out the search on piece of paper so you don't waste time and money experimenting w/search terms inside Westlaw.
- Also, before you search, call 1-800-Westlaw; tell them you want to run search but you're not sure of the results. They will run it for you and tell you how many cases you'll get. If it's a bad search, they will help you craft a better search. This is free!
- Over time you'll get better at formulating searches, but until that point, don't hesitate to call for every single research assignment you have.
- If you just know the issue but don't know what kind of search to run, you can also call that number and they will help you formulate your search.
- Within a search result, “Results Plus” results (in the frame on left side of screen) cost extra.
- Internal citations w/in cases count as extra transactions. If you just want to click on citations and print them out, use the hourly search.
- If you accidentally hit “search” before you were finished formulating your search terms, call the number and tell them you messed up and they will credit you.
- A “transaction” does not depend on the number of hits you get. Make sure your search is not too narrow or too broad. 40-150 might be pretty good number of results.
- Narrowing in a search: use Locate in Result—does not count as transaction.
- Use “Field” searching to get a quicker answer. E.g., author, attorney, synopsis digest, etc.
- The Synopsis Digest field restricts search to summary and headnotes.
- The Synopsis field restricts to that.
- “Digest” restricts to headnotes only.
- Words/Phrases will search for any part of the case that talks about the definition of a term; use for definitions of legal issues related to a word or phrase.
- Keycite is a transaction; use it only for those cases you absolutely know are going into your brief.
- Keycite is probably the least expensive transaction on WL.
- Use “limit keycite display” at the bottom of a keycite results page to narrow results for no extra charge.
- Research Trail keeps history of your searches; print this trail for every assignment you do to give you a research record for every client/assignment.
- You can return to those results before 2 a.m. on the next day.
Posted 12:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | 3L advice law school
Online Airline Ticket Ripoffs
Ok people, please tell me I'm insane. Here's what just happened: Yesterday I checked on a flight just to see what the prices were. I checked Expedia and Orbitz. I also tried Hotwire but didn't get far Hotwire can't sell same-day return tickets. On both Expedia and Orbitz I found non-stop roundtrip tickets for $225.
Today, I was ready to purchase a ticket so I returned to Expedia only to find that the nonstop tickets were now $335! If I wanted to transfer flights once, I could get $255, but the $225 tickets were no longer available. Hmm. After just one day? It's possible, but.... So I checked Orbitz. Same thing. What about Travelocity? Same thing. Damn! It looked like I'd just missed it.
But as I was complaining about this to L., she suggested we check it on her computer, just to see if we could get that $225 price again. And guess what? The exact same search in Expedia on her computer gave us that low price—$5 less, in fact. So I bought the ticket through her computer for $220.
At first I thought the travel sites must have set a cookie in my browser; once they saw I was returning to search for a flight I had recently searched, they jacked the price. So I searched with two other browsers (Omniweb and Camino)—they both gave the higher prices, too. This seems like pretty clear proof to me that these travel sites are actually watching my IP address. They track what IP address looks at what flights, and if you return w/in a reasonable amount of time to the same flight, they jack up the price.
Am I insane here, or is this true? L. says Amazon is doing something like this now, too—charging different prices based on purchase history or something. Can this be for real? Swanno suggested the airline ticket sites were doing something similar last summer, but somehow this seems even more sinister. A few minutes searching around Google doesn't reveal any complaints about this, but how else to explain the fact that the same search produced different results on different machines?
Posted 10:04 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | life generally
Sell your law school debt on ebay!
Speaking of student loan debt, Asian Provocateur points to one of her classmates who is offering us all the chance to help him pay off his loans on eBay.
My name is Erik Mayans. I am currently a law student in my third year of law school. I have done well in school, but I have a problem. A huge problem that only gets more unmanageable as the interest continues to pile on. I am talking about my law school debt, which is currently well above $50,000.00. In less than three years, I have put myself in over $50,000 of debt to cover tuition expenses.
So, in my effort to escape this crushing debt load, I am going to make you a deal. Before I do, I want to ask you one question. When you give to charity, does it make you feel good? Satisfied?
Well, that's what I am offering. Your personal satisfaction!
By making a donation to help me pay off my crushing law school debt, you will be helping a young law student pay off his tuition debt, and that just may give you some of the personal satisfaction that you're searching for. So reach into your hearts, give a little (or a lot!) and get a lot in return--satisfaction! Along with the feeling of warmth and goodness you will get by helping me, you will also receive a personalized thank you card!
Sounds like a great idea! Can't you spare $5 for Erik? And hey, since my debt is more than three times what his is, how about you send me $15? If 10,000 of you would pitch in you'd be making my life infinitely better!
On a totally unrelated note and also from Asian Provocateur, if you're a fan of Russian figure skater and gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko, you have to see this video.
Posted 09:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L
Jury Duty in D.C.
What happens to a law student called for jury duty? The same thing that happens to most of the other people called: nothing.
I spent the other day in D.C. Superior Court in the juror's lounge waiting to be called for a panel, but the call never came. Of course I was disappointed, but it did mean we got to leave at about 3 p.m., so I wasn't really complaining.
Read on for the long and completely stupid story of how I managed to complicate my jury service by getting a judge to issue a warrant for my arrest!
The excitement came before I actually reported for duty. I was originally summoned last fall—I think it was late October I was supposed to show up, or maybe November. I didn't take it very seriously b/c I just assumed there was no way a law student—and one who wants to be a criminal defender, no less—would ever make it on to a jury. In fact, I forgot all about it until sometime long after I was supposed to report, so I just figured they'd send me another summons for a different day. I based this assumption on my experience living in California where I received several jury summonses, never responded to any of them (because I was moving every few months and almost never actually living at the address where I received mail), and suffered no consequences at all.
But you know what happens when you assume something... D.C. apparently takes jury duty a little more seriously than those California jurisdictions because last month I got a notice ordering me to court to “show cause” why I should not be held in contempt for failing to report to jury duty. The notice said I could be imprisoned for 7 days and/or fined $300 if I could not show such cause. Yikes.
But wait, it got worse—I forgot the show cause hearing, too! Yeah. It was scheduled during Spring Break and although I put it in my calendar, I forgot to tell my calendar toremind me about it. And since I was on break, I wasn't checking my calendar; I didn't really think I had anything scheduled, and I just didn't look. Oops. So by that time I'd failed to appear for a court summons twice.
This actually worried me quite a bit. I know that if one of my criminal misdemeanor clients doesn't show up to court when he's supposed to, the court takes that very seriously and simple excuses like “I forgot” just don't fly. Would it be different for jury duty?
So I went to the court the next business day with much trepidation. Were they going to throw me in jail? Would I have to beg the judge for mercy? Would they at least fine me? Was this going to be something I'd have to report on my bar examinations?
Most of you will probably be unsurprised to learn that none of those things happened. True, the judge had ordered the issuance of a warrant for my arrest, but lucky for me the warrant had not been issued yet when I showed up with hat in hand and begging for mercy, so the good people in the jury office just cancelled the warrant and assigned me another day to return for jury duty. That's it. Bing, bang, and I was out of there. I then reported for jury duty as ordered, waited around 4-5 hours, and went home a completely free man.
But you know what? The next time I get a jury summons, I think I'll just avoid a lot of anxiety and hassle and just go to court when it says I should.
Posted 09:28 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | 3L
Up to your eyeballs in debt
I recently attended a mandatory “exit counseling” session for law students who have borrowed money to pay for law school. Here are a few things worth remembering—especially if you have law school or other student loan debt of your own.
- The average debt for the 2006 GW graduating class is $96,770.
- 25% of those people borrowed over $120,000 in law-school-only debt (not counting any other educational debt).
- Whatever your debt situation, you should always pay off the highest-interest loans first, which means you should pay the absolute minimum on your federal loans until you've paid off your private loans.
- To get information about your federal loans, visit NSLDS.
- If you consolidated last year before July 1, 2005, you probably locked in an interest rate of about 2.85%.
- If you have since borrowed more federal money, you can consolidate again before July 1, 2006 and lock in a rate of 4.7% (I think).
- Interest on private loans is a quarterly variable rate based on prime which is currently 7.5%. Many interest rates are prime plus 3.5%.
- Every lender by law must offer the option to pay interest-only for the first few years.
- You can defer or forbear federal loans if you meet the appropriate conditions (e.g., low income levels or if you're back in school).
- Deferment is better than forbearance because the gov't will pay your interest while your loans are in deferment.
- You can only have a total of 3 years of hardship deferment on federal loans over the life of repayment.
- Plan to use those three years wisely.
- If you are graduating in May and do not yet have a job lined up, you should apply now to defer repayment for one year while you try to find a job.
- If you get a job or want to start paying again at any time while your loans are in repayment, you can cancel the deferment and reserve the rest of your 3 years of available hardship deferment for some other time when you need it more.
- You cannot defer or forbear private loans. Ever. Those loans are what they are and you better get ready to start repayment in either June or Nov., depending on whether you still have your grace period (which depends on whether you consolidated those loans last year).
- If you consolidate, you have rights to keep whatever loans you want out of consolidation. It is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
- You might want to exclude your highest interest rate loans from deferment because the interest rate on your consolidation loan will be calculated based on the interest rates of the loans it is consolidating.
- If you consolidated loans last year and want to take a second consolidation loan just for the loans you've taken since you consolidated, you should file for that consolidation between May 1 and July 1 2006 in order to keep your grace period on those most recent loans.
Disclaimer: You should not rely on what I've written here. Please verify anything you see here with your lender, your financial planner, or someone in your financial aid office.
Posted 12:34 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | 3L
This imbroglio's PersonalDNA
According to this test, this imbroglio is a:
It sounds mostly right. What's your PersonalDNA?
Posted 12:15 PM | TrackBack | life generally
I say we make it a mantra
Yubbledew gave a press conference today. Here's my response:
The tools we're using to “protect” the American people shouldn't be used.
Oh, and your president says he didn't want to go to war. Really?
Posted 07:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | general politics
The incredible tales of G.W.Bush & Co.
Three years ago on the imbroglio:
. . . .
Yesterday Ari Fliescher said, “the President hopes that people will continue with their normal lives.” Of course he does. We're not supposed to think about what's really going on, we're supposed to go about our “business,” proud of the fact that we live in such a “strong” country. We're supposed to “support our troops,” which seems to be code for “cease all criticism of anything other than the evildoers and what they've done.” It's easier for our troops to kill people when Americans are acting like it's just another day in the best of all possible worlds.
. . . .
The point is: This war was never inevitable until Bush made it inevitable. None of the reasons I've heard for going to war have been even slightly convincing, and I'm sick with the thought of U.S. citizens shopping in malls and going to movies and watching war porn while people die in our names. Why can't people remember that, despite all Bush Administration claims to the contrary, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11?
Three years later, I don't want to say I told you so. Instead, I just want to point out a simple fact: Those who pushed the war and tried to convince the world it was necessary turned out to be completely wrong—as wrong as wrong could be. Nearly every single thing those people said turned out to be incorrect. And whether they were wrong because they were lying on purpose, or because they were just relying on bad information, the fact remains that they were wrong. They have continued to be wrong on just about everything for the last three years.
Meanwhile, those who never believed the attack on Iraq was necessary or justified—they were right in nearly everything they said three years ago. For the last three years, most of their criticisms of the war have continued to be accurate and subsequent facts have shown that they were correct all along.
So now, today, shouldn't we listen to those who always opposed the war? If we have any desire to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them, shouldn't we start listening to the people who have shown they have a grasp on what's really going on in the world?
Posted 07:51 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | general politics
Sunday Sermon: Teaching Integrity
What makes lawyers behave badly? And how can we teach them to do better right from the start?
These questions spring from the big legal news of the last week (besides the little fact that our representatives in Congress seem to think the president is above the law)— the prosecutorial misconduct in the sentencing phase of the Moussaui trial. While countless others have already made many interesting points about this attorney misconduct (see, e.g., Concurring Opinions here and here, OrinKerr.com, and Scoplaw), I want to raise it now in connection with the fact that the faculty at GW law are convinced their students are completely untrustworthy cheaters. I believe this sort of law school faculty attitude helps produce attorneys who act unethically.
You see, at GW law you must take your exams when they are scheduled; there are no exceptions of which I'm aware. Therefore, when you pick your class schedule, you must also check to see that none of the corresponding exams will overlap or conflict w/one another. This sometimes means students cannot take the classes they would like to take merely because the exam schedule doesn't work. Therefore, students recently proposed more flexibility in taking exams so that not everyone in the class would have to take the exam at the same time. Professors said (and I'm paraphrasing) “no way; then our students would cheat!”
Students at GW (and any other law school where the faculty act in similar fashion) are getting the message loud and clear, and that message is: I'm expected to cheat. If students then do, in fact, cheat, they are only fulfilling the expectations set for them by their professors.
So we have law students learning that they are expected to behave unethically and break the rules whenever they can get away with it. Is it any wonder we have attorneys like Carla J. Martin, the rule-breaking and unethical lawyer in the Moussaui case? She was just living up to her profession's (and society's) expectations of her as a lawyer—expectations she probably learned well in a law school that didn't trust her.
(As an aside: Putting the President above the law does relate to questions of professional ethics. If our elected leaders don't have to follow the law, why should any of the rest of us (professionals or not) have to follow it either? And if laws are made to be broken, how much more fungible are rules of ethical conduct?)
In the February '06 edition of Student Lawyer Magazine, Professor Lori Shaw addressed similar questions about exam policies; she asked whether cheating really is a problem in law school, and if so, what should be done about it. (The article is not available online.) Professor Shaw is conducting an online survey to collect responses to these questions—I'm sure she'd love it if you took a minute to complete the survey.
The questions Professor Shaw raises are good ones and I look forward to hearing what she learns from her survey. But even without knowing those results, I have little doubt that policies like GW's exam policy are sending exactly the wrong message to law students who are learning to become members of a profession that is supposedly self-regulating.
Hence, the sermon: Law students need to learn from day one that they have an extremely serious obligation to behave ethically and to report ethical breaches (cheating) by their peers. This is vital because they must regulate themselves and each other while in practice. No one likes to tell on their friends, but so long as the legal profession continues to maintain that that's the best way to regulate legal services (a dubious position, to be sure), law students and lawyers are going to have to do exactly that. It takes work to get people to actually become the ethical actors and tattletales that a self-regulating profession requires them to be; that work needs to begin in law school.
(Read on for a couple of the questions from Professor Shaw's survey and my responses to them.)
17. Who within the law school should be responsible for identifying cheaters? Law students often find themselves extremely uncomfortable in the role of accuser, but most law school honor codes place the responsibility for reporting wrongdoing squarely on students. Is that where it belongs?
Students should have the responsibility to not cheat in the first place and to report cheating if they see it or learn of it. If this is going to remain a self-regulating profession, that needs to begin in law school. If you teach students that you don't trust their integrity, you'll teach them to have none. Currently my law school teaches exactly this, which is why I'm not surprised to hear about lawyers behaving badly. Of course, it goes both ways. Law students see that in practice they will generally have to be *seriously* unethical to suffer any serious sanctions, so that may also teach them that breaking the rules a little here and there is no big deal and is expected and accepted by the profession.
19. What is the proper punishment for a law student found to have cheated on exam? What should happen to cheaters?
They should get an F in the course but also a letter that will be forwarded to all the state bar where that student applies for membership upon graduation. The letter should also remain in their professional file permanently.
20. In recent years, many universities have taken the position that the undergraduate years are a time of growth and that even a student's serious error in judgment should be viewed as creating a learning opportunity. Should the same standard apply in law schools, or should expulsion be the rule? Has the time for “living and learning” experiences passed, or is youth still a viable defense? What type of punishment fits this crime? Should we be seeking to rehabilitate, to deter, to punish, to denounce, to incapacitate, or some combination of the foregoing? Should law schools adopt a zero-tolerance policy?
Law school is a learning experience, so no, the punishment for cheating should not be so permanent as expulsion. The goals should be deterence, punishment, and rehabilitation. That's why I think the appropriate punishment is to fail the course and have a letter sent to the bar association in the state where the student applies for admission to practice. This is a serious penalty, but it should not destroy the person's legal career. (Of course, that's assuming the state bar association does not decide to refuse admission to anyone with such a letter. But again, there's no reason for them to be so draconian. Instead, state bars should take such letters as a warning that they need to look over this application more carefully and look at all other factors of the applicant. But mostly the letter should just remain in the student/lawyer's professional file for the rest of his/her life as a reminder and added incentive to follow the rules as a professional.)
22. If cheating is a real problem or is perceived as a problem, how should law students and law schools address that problem? Are there ways to change the culture?
I don't really think it's that big a problem. But regardless of the size of the problem, law schools should teach ethical behavior and put the responsibility on students to meet high expectations. If there's a problem w/bad ethical behavior in the legal profession, part of the reason for that has to be that students learn that they are expected to behave badly (see answer 17 above). We can start changing that by setting higher expectations and showing law students how a self-regulating profession is supposed to work.
(As an aside: If cheating is a problem in the legal profession I also think you can attribute much of it to the rise of law and economics and its cost/benefit analyses that encourage any sort of behavior so long as the benefits outweigh the costs. If that's true, then penalties for cheating need to be greater -- for both law students and practitioners who act unethically. However, this only makes it more important for law schools to teach students that as professionals they are expected to adhere to very high expectations. Exam policies that rely more on the honor system and less on surveillance and suspicion are one great way to start teaching those lessons.)
Posted 09:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | 3L law school
