Greetings from Chicago:
It has long been one of my positions that an effective way to control costs and most likely cut the costs of electronic databases in a medium sized law firm is to hire an electronic services librarian (esl). Specifically, the esl would spend their entire time responding to requests for database searches. For example a case from Westlaw, an article from LexisNexis, a report from Dun & Bradstreet, etc. I figure the expertise of the esl gained over constant use of the search techniques in the various paid databases would, for 130 attorneys, be an asset to the firm. The esl would also spare the attorney who rarely uses databases of any kind from signing on and then thinking about what and how to search while burning up dollars due to their lack of expertise.
Training (individualize, hands on) was early on thought to be an option that would reduce costs. However, that has not been our experience - whether trained or not, the database costs continue to escalate rather than decreasing a bit or leveling off due to the training.
Curtailing the distribution of the ID cards seemed like a good way to control costs, however, this option was not successful - something in the firm culture gives everyone who is employed the absolute expectation and therefore the right to have a paid database ID card, whether they are likely to use it or not. ... and since they have one, they are more likely to use it than not.
So, dear colleagues, any comments of what we can do to reduce the costs of 130 individual attorneys searching paid databases without restraint? Also please share if you have found another way to keep the Wexis charges from escalating exponentially.
Many thanks in advance.
Elaine Dockens
edockens@tsmp.com
312-627-4189
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 13 2008 - 16:08:30 PDT