Many, many thanks to all of you who responded to my question about general
satisfaction with BNA's Labor & Employment Law Library on the web.
We, for one, have not had much success with the product. Our labor
attorneys have often had trouble connecting and when they do connect they
have trouble searching. We never had formal training and the 800 help
number didn't do the trick either. To renew the web product this year will
cost us an additional $900.00 - too much money for too little satisfaction.
We will be looking at another product and/or going back to BNA's print.
Here is a summarization of the responses.
I'm interested in any replies you get - we tried it a while ago - had
trouble connecting - found it slow - and my attys weren't fond of their way
of searching
We use both the Labor & Employment and Tax Portfolios on the web. For both,
there were major hassles in retaining the concurrent user license system
this year, but I finally beat BNA into submission on that. Also for both,
but seemingly more for the Labor library, the site goes down with
distressing frequency. Also, my labor practitioners who used to use the CDs
complain that the search capabilities on the web aren't as sophisticated in
some repects. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln... I will say that despite the
griping, the Labor Dept. uses the site with a reasonable degree of success.
Final grade - B? C+?
WE have been a subscriber to the service for over 2 years, and the attorneys
love it. One of the attorneys told me that he hopes he never has to use the
print service again. It is easy to use, the training is free, and the
customer support is good. We have had minimal problems with it. Hope this
helps.
absolutely the best Labor product on the market
I keep a paper copy of the reporter in our library. We don't maintain
individual sets in attorneys offices. So, in office access is not the
culture or expectation here. I would be reluctant to get the electronic
version of the reporter because of the familiarity and ease of use
associated with scanning the physical copy for related digest headings etc.
However, in order to deal with copyright licensing restrictions, I did go
with the BNA e-mail daily newsletter products. These link up with a BNA
website carrying the full text of the highlights and they also contain a
research component for archives. Thus far, these products have been well
received.
We've been using the BNA Labor & Employment Library on the web for a couple
of years. Most of our employment attorneys do not like it and find it clunky
to use. Being a branch office, we had a lot of difficulty getting someone to
come into our office to do training, and by the time we finally did, many of
our attorneys had already given up on it. They did offer telephone training
which I did and found very helpful, but there was such a backlog that you
had to sign up at least a month in advance, which most of our attorneys were
reluctant to do. I will say that the trainer they finally sent to our office
was very good, though. We also have the CCH Labor Law Reporter: Wages and
Hours on the web. Since we subscribe to only the wages and hours segment,
it's narrower in scope than BNA, but easier to use. The attorneys who have
used it here like it a lot better than BNA. They also generally only offer
telephone training though. But I found that it was easier to demo to
attorneys after going through the training myself than BNA.
We do not have the full library, but have not had problems with the
electronic newsletters have been no problem. At my old firm we had the tax
library and when the firm closed ALL the attorneys demanded it at their new
firm--that's how much they liked it!
Call me we love it.
I can discuss in greater detail, but we did not have great success with the
BNA internet product. I have canceled my subscription for next year. I'm not
sure it is that straight forward in terms of use. We have done much better
with the CCH internet products.
Print was a pain to up-date. The CD was not that current. The Web was a
disaster. In the beginning our Firm had one labor law attorney. He knew the
BNA digest system like the back of his hand. Then we acquired a 6-attorney
group from another firm. They didn't know the BNA digest system. We switched
to CD to put it on everyone's desktop. The new guys didn't find it very
friendly--not knowing the digest system very well. Our old pro was not
satisfied with the CD because it wasn't all that current. We switched to the
Web as soon as it came out. The new guys continued to ignore it, like they
ignored the Print and the CD. I brought out the trainer from DC
twice--Attendance was nil. Only one attorney and I took the time to learn
how to operate it. I took a couple telecourse session on my own. BNA's Web
program was not all that user-friendly. One fundamental problem was the
division of the material into distinct databases. Which database to choose?
For example, a disabled employee is in the restroom of a public hotel and
falls in the stall having no grab-bar to hang on to. ADA? FEP? LRRM? etc? It
took me a while to learn how to search multiple databases. Our old pro knows
the law like the back of his hand. He knows the title of a recent case that
is relevant. He tries to find it on BNA's Web. No results! No results! No
results! User error or unfriendly platform? It took me a while to figure out
how to Find a case when I knew the citation. After a year plus of non-use,
we can the Web and return to the print.
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