It sounds to me like this is capitalism at it's best!
Why leave the lucrative law firm market to just the big players like Thomson and Reed Elsevier? There's plenty of cash to go around and Law360 thinks that your firm has plenty of it. Have these solicitations been going to court and academic library patrons as well? If not, it just underlies the suspiscion that they are trying to make a quick buck off of lawyers who think they're going to get something very special, something better than what their librarians can provide using the usual resources.
Has this new "product" been reviewed by a legitimate reviewing source (like Legal Information Alert or the like)? If so, you have something to go on in terms of its value. If not, forget about it (at least until they start passing out t-shirts, clicky pens, fuzzy things, and other memorabilia and assorted chatskis at AALL meetings, it's probably pretty fly-by-night).
Any information vendor who markets directly to lawyers, going around the librarians warrants very careful scrutiny. They're a lot like marketers that aim directly towards children, trying to stumulate an artificial demand for a non-meritorious product.
All in all though, I would tell the attorneys in your firm that a legit operation would be marketing through the library, not directly spamming lawyers, and that you regularly scan the review literature and this hasn't turned up yet. They would send a rep to your library to show you this new "product," and they would respect the position of librarians as the information experts in the firm.
On the other hand, the 'tried and true' vendors increasingly act in a predatory manner, so one doesn't want to come down on new entrants to the information market too hard. Maybe the market is not the ideal mechanism to create, circulate and recreate legal knowledge after all.
Sam Trosow
University of Western Ontario
----- Original Message -----
From: "Holsten, Terri" <Terri.Holsten@alston.com>
Date: Thursday, May 4, 2006 5:18 pm
Subject: Law360 Websites
To: law-lib@ucdavis.edu
> Does anyone have experience with the Law360 websites from
> Portfolio Media? (I know there was a question about
> Bankruptcy Law360 a few weeks ago, but I didn't see any replies
> to the list.) It looks like this group started emailing
> their updates to many of our attorneys, and now we're getting
> requests for the articles . . . which aren't free, of
> course. (I don't think our attorneys signed up for these
> emails, because we started getting requests from too many people
> . . . in too many departments . . . all
> at about the same time. Grrrrrrr.) This group does 4
> different websites -- bankruptcy, securities, IP and competition
> law. Each site is available to an individual user for $790
> per year. A firm-wide license for one topic is available
> for the bargain price of $2900 per year. There's no price
> listed for a firm-wide subscription to everything. Anyone
> have any words of wisdom?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Terri Holsten
> Reference Librarian
> Alston + Bird LLP
> 1201 West Peachtree Street
> Atlanta, GA 30309-3424
> 404-881-7104 (phone)
> 404-253-8344 (fax)
> terri.holsten@alston.com
>
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