I am concerned that I have not seen any responses on this list
from AALL Executive Board members to the discussions of Kendall
Svengalis's recent article outlining the repercussions of
Thomson Corporation's possible acquisition of West Publishing.
According to the article recently posted on this list, the
Executive Board has decided not to take a public position about
the proposed sale. I am baffled by this neutrality because the
proposed purchase will in all likelihood have a profound effect
on every one of us, our budgets, our institutions and our
patrons.
Svengalis warns that if the West/Thomson deal works, then
Thomson will control:
100% of the national legal encyclopedias
100% of the annotated federal codes
100% of the commercial U.S. Supreme Court reporters
100% of the U.S. Supreme Court digests
80% of the national form sets
76% of the state legal encyclopedias
Westlaw
The entire National Reporter System, including state offprint
reporters
All West state, regional, federal and topical case digests
Twenty annotated state codes
A large share of the law school textbook market
The West, LawDesk and Casebase CD-ROM products
50% of the major American legal treatises
Disturbed by these percentages, individual members of AALL
certainly can and have expressed their opposition to the
proposed acquisition by communicating with the Department of
Justice. But I do not understanand why our professional
organization has not actively advocated for its members by
opposing the acquisition, particularly when statistics show a
history of huge price increases by Thomson. Annual
supplementation to Lawyers' Coop's Am Jur2d was $584 before
Thomson bought the company in 1989. Annual supplementation had
nearly tripled to $1450-$1500 by 1994 and 1995. Shortly after
Thomson created the new entity Clark, Boardman, Callaghan in
1992, supplementation frequency doubled for Couch on Insurance
and costs rose from $133 in 1992 to $695 in 1995.
I cannot help but wonder how AALL squares its neutral position
with its Code of Ethics clause on a member's duty to minimize
costs. According to the AALL Code of Ethics (AALL Directory &
Handbook 1995-1996, page 362,) law librarians
have a duty to society and the legal profession to work
both individually and through their professional
organizations toward improving the quality and
minimizing the cost of the library component of the
delivery of legal services.
I worry that we may be selling ourselves short, along with the
society and legal profession that our Code of Ethics
champions. When our association chooses cooperation with legal
publishers over objective, candid, courteous and effective
consumer advocacy, there will be a huge price to pay. When AALL
members do not press our association to advocate vigorously on
our behalf, our institutions literally pay an enormous price
for our complacency. When we, as a group, turn a blind eye
to price increases way out-of-line with other consumer price
indexes, we encourage publishers to take further advantage of
our willingness to settle for so little.
Lyn Warmath
Hirschler, Fleischer, Weinberg, Cox & Allen
Richmond, Virginia
(804) 771-5605
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:12 PST