There’s been a lot of discussion (see, e.g., here) about the foray by LexisNexis/Martindale into social media (the discussion mostly focuses on its lackluster efforts in this realm). There’s a lot of food for thought out there on this issue, but my reaction after following the discussion is that LexisNexis should first concentrate on and tune up its core offerings as far as legal research.

I haven’t been a particularly happy Lexis customer over the past couple of years and I wanted to offer Lexis my suggestions. (Side note:
there’s a lot of discussion about open source legal research materials. I’m sure over time these will become more viable, but at this stage I can’t really see doing legal (case law) research without a paid search service. Lexis puts a tremendous amount of resources into maintaining its database and I can’t see a free service rivaling it as far as reliability. Let’s face it, open source/free legal research resources are just not there yet, and there’s no way I’d file a brief without running a case through lexis to see what other cases say about it and whether it’s still good law. I’d be foolish to do so.)

1. The User Interface: This may seem small, but I’ve noticed a steady decline in Lexis’s user interface. For example, Lexis has a function which allows you to plug in search terms, pick databases, and then restrict the query by date. For example, you are looking for cases citing a particular statute. For some reason, it’s now become difficult to restrict a search by the last 6 months (for example). The functionality may still exist, but it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not you see it when you hit search. Maybe they tweaked something in the UI and there’s another way to access it – if there is, they sure didn’t tell me about it. Alternatively, maybe it’s a compatibility issue and this functionality only works in IE? Either way, it’s a basic function that’s disappeared over the last 6 months – it seems to appear randomly. This disappearance seems like nothing more than a small bug, but Lexis’s failure to address it is telling.
   
   
2. Alerts: Like most other law bloggers, I use alerts, and one of them is Lexis. You can set alerts and receive emails when a new case comes out which contains certain words or citations. However, Lexis is consistently slower and less reliable than Westlaw’s alert service. I know this because other bloggers who blog in the space often forward cases from Westlaw that have not yet come up in my Lexis alerts, and which don’t for some time. I tried to call Lexis to try to get this resolved, but gave up after about 15 minutes on the phone. (See No. 6, below.)  The lack of reliability here is annoying.
   
   
3. Referencing Blog Posts: When I pull up a case that’s important, I’m curious as to what commentators are saying about it. In the old days, this meant checking treatises and law reviews. These days, blogs obviously belong on the list. It would be incredibly easy for Lexis to monitor blogs and add a link to relevant blog posts when you pull up case. Heck, they could probably start by just soliciting links from bloggers and then screening the links forwarded by bloggers. (I previously posted on this (link) and someone commented that this was not worth the money from Lexis’s standpoint. My reaction to that is that Lexis should strive to be competitive since the alternative services are starting to chip into their huge market share. The attitude that they shouldn’t do anything unless there is a direct correlation to revenue will ultimately lead to their extinction as a company.) To me, it’s shocking that here’s no “blog annotation service” – i.e., no quick way after you pull up a case to see what bloggers are saying about it.
   
   
4. Making it Easy to Blog Cases: As a blogger I’d love to read a case, click on a button and blog it (directly from Lexis) without having to download the case and log on to blogging software. Why doesn’t Lexis have a “blog this” button?
   
   Along these lines, I’m always a little nervous about posting Lexis printouts to the blog so I have to track down the (pacer) court version of the order or opinion. (I realize I’m probably being a little conservative here, but giving bloggers the heads up that you don’t care whether we post your printouts in the context of blogging cases would be good.)
   
   
5. The Handheld: I realize people don’t typically try to read cases or anything detailed on their handhelds, but generally speaking Lexis is a nightmare to load on a handheld. (I imagine it probably only works on an iPhone . . . on a Treo or Blackberry it’s not even worth trying.) Once in a while people probably send around materials that someone needs to (or would like to access) on a handheld. This is near impossible to easily accomplish with Lexis. 
   
   
6. Customer Service: Customer service is an area where Lexis could use some improvement. I’ve had competent reps but I’ve felt like they’ve pretty much been a revolving door. When I call up for search assistance which I do once in a while, I feel like I’m calling AT&T to ask about my phone service. You’re losing an opportunity to build a lot of goodwill. The only time Lexis actually contacts me, it calls me on the phone, typically trying to sell me something (see below). Giving me an email address to email my Lexis rep would be quite useful.
   
   
7. Internet Marketing: You tried to sell me on paying $$ for a website. The reps were courteous and friendly, but the sales call was a disaster. The rep had not checked out my website or profile. In fact, the rep was unaware that I even had a website. I was sitting in the coffee meeting with salesperson chuckling to myself when the rep started describing what “key words” and “law blogs” were at about a 6th grade level.

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Ultimately, there may be a profitable future in “social media for lawyers” for companies like Lexis. I don’t have a ton of confidence that Lexis will be a leader in the space. I’m not sure this is necessary for their survival. What I do know is that Lexis could implement some improvements in their core legal research tools (which include better integrating their offerings for the web). None of the stuff I mention above is particularly expensive or logistically difficult.

The initial litmus test, of course, is whether they read and respond to this post. Maybe Westlaw will? Who knows they may gain a customer?
 
(I should also note that many of the above functions may be currently available on Lexis.  If so, they are quite hard to find.)