Have electronic research tools progressed far enough and become reliable enough to give up subscriptions to the hard books (i.e., digest and SW series)?

1) Does anyone rely on the internet alone for their research?

2) What do you use for backup if the internet is down?

3) Can we count on Premise as an long-term backup to the internet?

Whether to go all electronic would seem to depend on how good your IT people are. Most of our trouble is our email system. Internet is fairly reliable.

Paper usage is also an issue unless you have a really good monitor.

1. No. We have a full selection of Southwestern Reporters, Federal Reporter, Vernons, West's Texas Digest, Lawyers Edition, USCA, and Shepards in a library available to the entire office. Secondary materials include Bakers, Teague, McClung, Texas Practice, ALR, Tex Jur, CJS, and Am Jur. Plus, each prosecutor has the great TDCAA Annotated Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure.

2. Books

3. Good question. We now use Lexis as our exclusive online system. Lexis offered us a CD rom based backup for what seemed like a reasonable fee.

John S.: In my mind you raise a fundamental issue of how long the books are even going to be available. For some time I have been predicting that many law books will become a thing of the past. I have predicted this will occur no later than 2010. It seems to me as more and more lawyers switch to other forms of information the cost of producing the books will only increase, so that eventually they will not be produced even for major libraries.

Quare: If there is no longer a Southwestern Reporter, will there need to be another method of reference? Many courts have already have gone to an opinion numbering system that seems to work fine (except maybe for pagination issues). Authenticity of opinions is going to become an issue at some point too I suppose.

CDROM currently seems to be the most logical substitute for the books and Premise is about the only thing out there for Texas caselaw. As you know, you get the green and white "books" with a Premise subscription and we keep ours for about 2 years. But I have been getting along without hard-bound SWR for some time. I admit I miss getting to spend all that time in the Texas Digest, but I only occasionally use our 1996 edition of that (which is easier than switching from one Premise disc to another to another-- something West should be working to remedy anyway). I do still depend on TexJur, CJS, Dix & Dawson, and the annotated statutes in book form, but less than I used to.

My conclusion: I do not think you can justify investing in very many hard-bound books at this point- certainly not multiple sets of the same books. If the net fails, it fails, but in the meantime you are spending a lot on something not really likely to be very useful or necessary. And if the internet becomes unreliable, then there may be a lot more things to worry about than just finding a case in a hurry. Local software/hardware issues may be important to consider, but should not make a difference in the ultimate conclusion.

[This message was edited by Martin Peterson on 02-21-03 at .]

The Texas Digest books were the first to go in our office after we adopted Lexis. We do keep SW reporters and Vernons. We still have Sheperds, but no one really uses it now that it is available on Lexis.

Texas Digest can't compete with a good electronic search engine. We substantially reduced our expenses switching to Lexis and probably increased the number of people in the office who actually do research.

John Bradley
District Attorney
Williamson County, Texas

I admit that I haven't touched a digest in years, and only then because I had exhausted all other avenues. Our appellate section has a number of veterans who like the digest system. At the same time, many of the same people have their own indexes that are their initial resource.

Our financial people have been after us to drop books for a couple years, and we have dropped some of the more esoteric binder services. Those are really expensive.

I think I have to agree with Martin that most of the books are an endangered species. If I had my druthers, I'd drop the advance sheets and keep the main volumes. I was under the impression that the real expense of a reporter subscription was the advance sheets . . . Knowing West, that probably isn't an option.

Our Office of General Counsel dropped the CD-Roms and more than half of our book series about 17 months ago. Now we use LEXIS through the internet. We still keep the subscriptions for the Southwest Reporter, the Supreme Court Reporter, the Texas statutes and codes, and U.S.C.A., along with some treatises. We canceled our subscriptions to the Digests, Tex. Jr., Dorsaneo's Civil Lit guide, and the Criminal Practice Guide because all those are available on Lexis or a reasonable substitute. It has saved us a bundle of money, and research is so much faster. For a while we actually had a subscription to LoisLaw as an inexpensive backup to Lexis for the federal and Texas cases. Nobody in our office wants to go back to the 'good ole days.'

Janette Ansolabehere
Senior Assistant General Counsel
Texas Department of Public Safety

Janette,

You've always been on the cutting edge of technology. I remember how jealous I was of your Apple Powerbook 170 way back when.

And now that you can get your jury charge language from tdcaa.com, there is even one less reason to have Texas Practice.

John Bradley
District Attorney
Williamson County, Texas