I just saw the press release from LexisNexis announcing the addition of American Lawyer Media (aka ALM) content to the Lexis service. As a single-service shop (we only have Lexis), I have to say that I’m a bit confused. First this content was available through both Lexis and Westlaw. Then came the Westlaw “exclusive.” And now the Lexis “exclusive.” All the while, it remained available through ALM’s Law.com platform.
I used to compare the ALM access situation to my iPhone. If I wanted it bad enough, I would use the service it was on. Like AT&T, people complain about the service but didn’t have much of a choice. It was either go through Westlaw or through the google-type search engine on Law.com. Readers of my prior blog posts can guess which one I went with. I was willing to endure being inundated with results over the alternative.
ALM does have great content and I am pleased that it is available on the Lexis platform. Being able to run targeted searches on this content will be a wonderful change. However, I’m not so pleased that, after purchasing it in print and through Law.com (not to mention getting premium access to their surveys), I’ll have to pay a third time to get it from Lexis. I think the best solution would be to follow the iPhone lead and make their content available at least on both of the top two platforms.