Friday, May 05, 2006

What's Going on at Lexis?

There have been some troubling things happening at Lexis lately--nothing earth shattering, perhaps, on an individual basis, but the cumulative impact makes me wonder if there are problems within the company. For instance,

- There is no TRIALL this year.
- We didn't get any National Library Week goodies this year.
- They dropped sponsorship of the Legal Research Teach-in notepads.
- Our excellent regional academic rep left and was guarded about the reasons for his departure.
- There have been personnel changes at Matthew Bender, and rumors of staff dissatisfaction. This information comes from someone who works there.
- The LexisNexis database is not keeping up with Westlaw. It is less user friendly, and it is getting harder to persuade students that they need to learn how to use it. It seems to be standing still.
- The exclusive deal with ALM that Westlaw just announced is going to make LexisNexis a great deal less useful to researchers. And why didn't the reps know about the removal of the New York Law Journal, etc.? I think users knew before the reps did.

Does anyone out there know if any of this means anything? Does anyone know of more examples of trouble at Lexis?

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