A Coup for Lexis

Lexis has announced that as of May 1, it will be the "exclusive third party online distributor of ALM's broad collection of industry-leading legal content worldwide." What this actually means is that Westlaw will no longer offer access to The National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, New York Law Journal, New Jersey Law Journal, and a host of other publications. All of these titles will be available on Lexis, where they will help to level the playing field between the big two legal database vendors. As a teacher of legal research, this news is heartening. Students sometimes ask why they have to learn Lexis (students at my school tend to favor Westlaw, perhaps because we use TWEN), and access to the ALM publications will be a strong incentive.