By Jason Wilson

It’s been a long time coming, but Thomson Reuters Legal’s (TRL) latest campaign (as reported by Joe Hodnicki over at the Law Librarian Blog) suggests the imminent death of the dreaded looseleaf service. In 18 years, we’ve never published such a creature (monstrosity) for the simple fact that they are, and remain, an inelegant device for learning and finding information. Binder-based books are awful, unwieldy, lack portability, discourage innovation in typographic design, and cost more in upkeep than simply acquiring a newly bound volume.

So imagine my surprise to find that TRL’s Print & New Media division is finally experimenting with the idea of getting rid of the looseleaf service. I had always assumed that the margins on the supplements were far better than reprinting the entire collection every year and shipping it to customers, and they may very well still be. But since AALL in Denver this year, I’ve come to understand that many law firms may have cut subscriptions to these services dramatically because they no longer have the library staff to ensure upkeep, so it doesn’t matter much if the margins are better, assuming subscriptions are in a rapid free fall. And if the Ribstein and Keatinge on Limited Liability Companies (Ribstein & Keatinge) experiment is any indication of what’s going on behind the scenes, then I would suspect sales are in fact declining and TRL is trying to find a way to maintain margins. Let’s examine this experiment a bit.

Hodnicki informs us that the current list price for Ribstein & Keatinge is $434.50, but current subscribers will receive the “Summer 2010 Pamphlets” for $326 “with a second edition coming later this year.” Did you catch that last part? The publication will now be updated twice a year. Great, right? Cheaper and more current. Hold on a second though. Hodnicki says that the 2010 proforma pricing is $620. So, you’re getting hit with two editions that cost nearly $200 more than the original retail pricing for the looseleaf service. Hmmmm, maybe there’s a way to protect those margins after all.

So why the change and additional cost? Well, we could speculate, but thankfully one of the authors, Larry Ribstein, took up the mantle on behalf of TRL and posted a comment to Hodnicki’s post. Here’s what he had to say (emphasis is mine):

I would like to offer a few thoughts. First, for the reasons stated by TR, the pamphlet is indeed a higher quality product than the prior format of supplements with call-outs to the text. In my judgment as someone who has been closely involved with this product and with LLC law since the beginning, LLC law is moving much too fast for the prior format to continue to work. Librarians should take these improvements into account when evaluating the price increase. Second, interfiled pages are very labor intensive at your end and not necessarily cheaper. Third, contrary to the statement in the post, the pamphlets include both the latest updates from the prior looseleaf and new revisions to reflect the latest developments. One advantage of the pamphlet approach is that it is easier to rewrite sections as required by the latest cases and other materials. Obviously, though, neither the law nor the book changes entirely each six months. Finally, I believe that Ribstein & Keatinge is the best work available on LLCs, which are the fastest growing segment of business associations (more LLCs are now being created than corporations), and very important for all business practitioners. If I were a law librarian (and obviously I’m biased on this particular issue) I would take these facts into account in deciding how to best serve my patrons.

After reading his comments, I had the following thoughts:

1. How was the looseleaf format a limitation? If Ribstein & Keatinge were a true interfiled title, then replacement pages would be printed and the customer would always have the most current information when they looked at the text. But it isn’t, so the format is considered a limitation because the supplements for these services have become pocket parts (whether inserted in the front or back), which is something Hodnicki raised in an earlier post. As Hodnicki has said, if the looseleaf pocket part is considered a limitation, then it is a limitation for all books with pocketparts, which suggests, to me, inferior design.
2. Interfiled pages are labor intensive at our (i.e., the customers’) end? Yes, they always have been, and now you’re using this as a justification for an increased pricing structure. Terrific.
3. With a true interfiled system, how does the pamphlet make it easier to rewrite sections? You just rewrite the sections and ask the customer to replace all the pages that have changed. But if you just make pocketparts, then yes, your looseleaf system is a limitation. Being able to reprint the entire book, as rewritten, is a huge advantage to the customer and to the author and to the publisher. How much time and money does the author and publisher save by moving to this system? That should be part of the equation as well rather than asking only the customer to pay for that advantage.

I get moving to pamphlets. It’s the only format we publish in. For print, it’s the only format that makes any sense because much of the law is incredibly dynamic and no taxonomy can be carved in stone. But to move from a looseleaf service that was updated once a year to a pamphlet service updated twice a year and charge more for it smells funny to me.

And while we’re on the subject of abandoning the looseleaf service, I have two final observations:

First, you cannot simply go from a looseleaf service to a soft-bound book (i.e., pamphlet) without rethinking some design details. For example, binders typically have smaller pages, wider gutters (for the holes), and physical tabs. Dumping a looseleaf service into a pamphlet format won’t work.

And second, the customer’s perception of value is vitally important. With looseleaf services, the customer always had an opportunity to weigh the value of replacement pages by size. Forget whether much content actually changed because this isn’t a rational assessment. If you received a looseleaf update costing $175 but only received 50 pages, you might question the value of that update. With pamphlets, the value is disguised, hidden. It’s up to the author and publisher at that point to craft a good introduction explaining to the customer the subject matter that has changed and been updated, highlight new cases, statutes, etc. that have been added and addressed, and on. Obviously, you don’t have to call out all of the changes, but certainly all of the major ones. Taking that step will go a long way towards building trust between the publisher and customer.

[Image (CC) by mandiberg]

By Jason Wilson

This came to me the other day, sitting in my car, thinking about how law students don’t know anything about secondary sources and just insist (said disdainfully, and as if I had dirt in my mouth) on looking for answers on Westlaw or Lexis as if it will just come to them if they ask. All the while, a perfectly good {pick all that apply: treatise, horn book, practice manual, research guide, forms book} would, potentially, both answer the question and help him or her actually understand what the answer means. But do they reach for such a magical device (also known as a “book”)? No, and I’ve decided it’s due to a lack of education.

So take a gander at the image above this post because it represents what a secondary source can be. You see, primary law and all of the incident bullshit created around it (regs, A.G. opinions, appellate and district court briefs, jury instructions, judgments, agency determinations, and on, and on) is like a farm. And on this farm are cattle (bulls and cows), chickens, pigs, crops of all sorts, barns with hay bales stacked to the ceiling, tractors, combines, trucks, silos filled with grain, a woodshop, a metal shop, dogs, cats, mice, a farmer (of course), and his wife. Secondary sources are like cheeseburgers.

You see, when need to eat and you see a farm, you don’t know that it can give you a cheeseburger. Or a taco. Or chicken salad. You just see a farm. But you know that the farm can feed you, so you go out and you figure out how to make that cheeseburger. It’s going to take you a lot longer to do it that way than if you just went into the house, spoke to the Missus (that would most likely be your professor or librarian BTW), and asked “Do you have something to eat?” And that’s when she’d say “Sure, how about a cheeseburger?”

Do you understand what I’m saying? The cheeseburger will feed your appetite a whole lot faster than working the farm, no matter how awesome your tools are. That’s because someone who knows better already did the work for you.

Think about that for a while, and then go brush up on secondary sources.

And you’re welcome.

[Image (C) by David Schwen, and I hope he's cool about it because I modified it to make a point.]

By Jason Wilson

I’m extremely busy with my actual job these days, but I have three posts (somewhat related) I’ve been working on simultaneously over the last few weeks. The first is on the problem of decaying commentaries, the second is on the concept of “slow analytical,” and the final post covers a new distribution model, the lawyers’ news exchange. I hope to have all of these posts completed in the coming weeks for your consuming pleasure.

Thanks for your patience.

[Image (cc) by HORIZON]

By Jason Wilson

My post on curating the legal web is now up on Slaw.ca. You can check it out here.

[Image (cc) by Vineus]

By Jason Wilson

So, it would appear that West Publishing still has a few tricks up its sleeve. On the heels of being nominated as one of the world’s most ethical and admired companies and best global brands, they’ve gone and launched a very interesting new service: the [Casebook] Rental Program for Students. And by “interesting,” I mean to say West seems to have its eyes set on (1) crushing the used casebook market (and by extension the “first sale” doctrine and university co-ops) and (2) gathering data on the value of eCasebooks (by using students as unwitting test subjects).

According to the launch site, here’s how the system works:

1. Rent a casebook. Not all casebooks are available yet, but rest assured, if the system works, they will be. You will have to provide a credit card during this process, but when you sign up, you’re only charged for the first month’s rental. You will be charged every month after that until the seventh month, after which (i.e., month eight), you own the book outright. Why? Because you will have paid full retail for the book by then.
2. Access & markup the eCasebook. What? Yes, I said access the eCasebook. But by access, I mean your computer because you can’t get it on the Kindle, Nook, iPhone, or iPad. Basically, anything that doesn’t support Flash. Boooo! But you’ll have web access through two different portals for the rental period. This means, by month eight, you get cut off. But during that time, you’ll be able to highlight and make notes on the eCasebook. But after month eight, say bye-bye to your digital casebook and your notes. But no worries because you have the hard copy, right? That’s assuming you kept it until you owned it, which sort of defeats the purpose of the whole program right?
3. Receive your book in the mail. You’ll get the book sometime, which shouldn’t take too terribly long, but you never know. After all, I buy books from West, and sometimes it can take an interminably long time to get them.
4. Mark up your hard copy. You can use the book just like you would for one you buy from the store. Highlight it, write marginalia, etc. Just don’t destroy it. You get charged extra up to the retail cost for that.
5. When you’re done, return it for free. That’s right. Just like Zappos, you can go to your account, print out a UPS label, stick on the box the book came in, and return, free of charge. As long as you do it before the post date for the next billing cycle, you’re all good.
6. Save money. The pitch here is that you can save up to 38% off the retail cost of a casebook. Pretty sweet, huh?

Here’s what I see:

1. Delayed delivery = POD. Students get their course schedules, determine what books they need, determine whether they can get a rental, and order. Three to four weeks later, they get a book(s). I think this will allow for a print on demand service. West will be able to take orders at roughly the same time, and print on site. [Disclaimer: I've toured the printing facilities twice, they are impressive.]
2. Retail value of print & digital are the same. While a student is waiting, they are hitting the eCasebook and highlighting and writing notes. How many of those students will stop that process (once they’ve been trained) to read a print book? I’m going to speculate that 80% continue marking up the eCasebook, the rest will switch to the print version. This means that the vast majority of books returned (assuming I’m right) will be in pristine condition, and all the while, West is charging the student near retail prices to access the eCasebook. Do you see where this is headed? The promise of print (and its corresponding retail value) mollifies the student’s perceptions of the cost of digital, which consumers always believe should be less than print.
3. Usage data. There will undoubtedly be a great deal of data collected by West about how students use eCasebooks and the types of services (e.g., study groups) and tools they want attached to them. Without sacrificing profit, West will be able to gauge (and train) students reception to digital books. This will give it a huge advantage over competitors seeking to break into the market.
4. Killing the secondary market. By making it easy for a student to order, receive, use, and return a casebook, the incentives for purchasing them through a bookstore are significantly reduced, particularly when you factor in the eCasebook advantage. If enough casebooks are offered through this system, it could have a serious impact on the used casebook market within the next five years or so. If (and that’s a big if) that happens, West could control a significant part of spigot for casebooks, effectively choosing to turn it on and off as it chooses.

The only hurdle I see to this system is (1) getting the word out and (2) overcoming a student’s expectation of getting cash at the end of the semester. But as best as I can tell, there is very little downside to offering this program. Other than absorbing the shipping and return costs and the additional labor to determine whether returned books can be put back into the system (and there I suspect the cost of printing a new book is less than paying a person to look at returned books, which means all books shipped will be new), there is almost no reason why West wouldn’t continue with this program until they have achieved the ultimate goal: controlling the secondary market.

In short, I think they have created a genius plan.

[Image (CC) by Swansea Photographer]

By Jason Wilson

Yesterday I came across a post by John Bratt of the Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog titled, Are Law Books Obsolete? Yeah, Mostly. In it, he made the following observation:

But some things I think are a lot quicker and easier with a book, like looking up a Maryland statute. If I know what I am looking for I can flip right to it more quickly than I can open Explorer and search. Plus, it helps to be able to browse the sections immediately before and after for related material. There are also a few reference books that I use regularly, like Pleading Causes of Action (Sandler & Archibald) and Maryland Rules Commentary (Neimayer & Schuett). Nearly everything else I do online.

This observation is not unique, but it is worth restating. The point here is that Bratt’s preferences are similar to most attorneys, at least according to Thomson Reuters Legal’s own studies on how lawyers research (with desktop books being referred to as “tools”). It happens to be my preference as well.

From where I’m sitting these days, it would seem that it isn’t about whether or when print will completely die out, but which kinds of print are going away. I’m thinking hardback and 3-ring binder books will soon be a thing of the past, relegated to online services or converted for serious desktop use. But to be suitable as a desktop tool, the book will have to have a soft cover, be perfect bound, preferably with a good lay-flat design, and use quality paper. Publishers will need think hard about design, ensuring that attorneys will be able to access print as readily as possible, which will be particularly important for multi-volume binder sets being converted, many of which will have to be reworked to translate well to soft-cover.

I suspect we’ll continue to see a healthy market for desktop books for the next ten years or so. For all you technologists out there, I wouldn’t get your hopes up about that all digital, cloud library just yet.

[Image (CC) by beingkatie]

By Jason Wilson

A good friend of mine, Rachel Schipul, has just released her first digital book. I was lucky enough to have been given an opportunity to read it before she released it as a digital edition, which is available for download on her website. It’s a terrific, fast-paced story, and I would encourage you to check her website out for excerpts and links to download both epub and mobi formats of the novel. She is currently working on a follow up to Forty-Two Blue, which I have no doubt will be every bit as good as the first.

By Jason Wilson

In my recent interview with Peter Jackson, the chief scientist for Thomson Reuters, we had the following exchange:

JW: I was curious about the current state of the art in legal search. In 2007, you raised the issue that extraction technology required information to be explicitly stated in the text; it couldn’t be implied. You used an example of when a debtor moves to convert from Chapter 7 to Chapter 13, and a creditor files a complaint to oppose it, the judge decides the case by “finding for the plaintiff,” which really means the conversion was denied because the plaintiff is the creditor and the defendant is the debtor. Are we any closer to achieving the inferential capability necessary to extract this kind of data?

PJ: I think it is a very hard problem. I think that in theory you could sit down and build a very specially crafted solution for that particular kind of inference. It’s very hard to see how you do that in a way that would be scalable or would apply to similar kinds of reasoning problems. With the right amount of duct tape  you can solve all of these narrow problems. You can always come up with some sort of algorithm or device or whatever, but to come up with a more general solution that you could apply to different kinds of situations, even just within a case, is much more difficult. For example, when we worked on Litigation Monitor, we wrote a program that went through the front matter in a case and figured out who the plaintiffs were, who the defendant’s were, what attorney and law firms were represented, whom they were representing, and what was the case was about. But that was a very specially crafted piece of code. There’s nothing in that code that would help you solve an analogous inference problem either with a different kind of document with a different kind of format or some other kind of reasoning problem like the one you described about bankruptcy.

Since then, I’ve been thinking more about the problem of organizing and searching the legal web (a topic of my upcoming Slaw.ca piece), and the difficulties we face as editors (curators).  In particular, how do we make specifically relevant information generated by legal professionals findable? Particularly when you realize that Google only gets you so far.

I actually owe this post to Mike Cane, who reminded me that dumb information can be turned into smart information in his post last year titled, “Dumb eBooks Must Die, Smart eBooks Must Live.” It was after reading that post I realized the difficulties in making dumb information “smart.”  As far as the legal web is concerned, most blog posts, white papers, firm synopses, etc. are “dumb” information. And Jackson’s response to my question merely solidified Cane’s observations. Namely, the inference problem is really one of hidden data, which can only be revealed by human editors at this point.

Let’s take a look at a random passage from a recent opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, City of Ontario v. Quan.

And it is worth noting that during his internal affairs investigation, McMahon redacted all messages Quon sent while off duty, a measure which reduced the intrusiveness of any further review of the transcripts.

Some of the “smart” information associated with this single passage could include the following:

<citation-parties-01=City of Ontario>
<citation-parties-02=Jeff Quon>
<citation-court=United State Supreme Court>
<citation-date-month=June>
<citation-date-day=17>
<citation-date-year=2010>
<citation-judge-majority=Kennedy>
<citation-judge-concurring=Stevens>
<citation-judge-concurring-in part=Scalia>
<citation-district court-state=California>
<citation-district court-district=Central>
<citation-district court-judge=Stephen G. Larson>
<citation-court of appeals-district=Ninth>
<factual-police=internal affairs>
<factual-police=Ontario Police Department>
<factual-police=OPD>
<factual-police=Special Weapons and Tactics Team>
<factual-police=SWAT>
<factual-person-01=Patrick McMahon>
<factual-person-02=Jeff Quon>
<factual-person-sex=male>
<factual-person-identity=man>
<factual-person-role=seargent>
<factual-person-occupation-01=seargent>
<factual-person-occupation-02=police officer>
<factual-person-label-01=respondent>
<factual-person-label-02=witnesses>
<factual-location-galaxy=Milky Way>
<factual-location-planet=Earth>
<factual-location-country=United States>
<factual-location-city=Ontario>
<factual-company=Arch Wireless Operating Company>
<factual-location-year=2001>
<factual-location-year=2002>
<action-01=deleted>
<action-02=redacted>
<action-03=review>
<action-04=pager issued>
<action-effect=reduced>
<action-effect=lessened>
<action-effect=not intrusive>
<technology-01=pager>
<technology-02=beeper>
<technology-03=backup communications system>
<technology=short message service>
<technology=electronic mail>
<technology=SMS>
<technology=numeric message>
<technology=text message>
<communication=short message service>
<communication=SMS>
<communication=electronic mail>
<communication=numeric message>
<communication=alphanumeric message>
<communication=text message>
<communication-nature-01=sexual>
<communication-nature-02=explicit>
<communication-nature-03=private>
<communication-nature-04=off-duty>
<factual-documents=transcript>
<factual-documents=internal affairs>
<factual-documents=personnel records>
<government-action-police=internal affairs>
<government-action-police=review>
<government-action-police=transcripts>
<government-action-police=investigation>

When did you stop reading? The first five lines or so? If so, I encourage you to go back and read the rest and then think about what other implied data is missing. Cane describes this as “exploded data,” that is, hidden text that makes a dumb sentence into a smart one. But, as you soon realize, it is a human who is the bomb maker. It is a person who is making most of these connections, not an algorithm.

In talking about eBooks, Cane makes a very astute observation:

An eBook becomes a local terminal connected to a growing and living cloud of associated information, with meanings and implications no publisher or writer can currently imagine.

Take a second and think about this perspective in the context of a single practitioner’s blog post and how much exploded data is included within it. Without human editors at this point, what are you really discovering? Better yet, what are you missing? I ask this because you (legal researcher) think that everything you know about a subject is found on WestlawNext, Lexis Advance, Loislaw, Fastcase, CaseMaker, or (gasp!) a printed treatise or handbook. But it isn’t. The Scott Greenfield’s of this world teach us that a single sentence is full of exploded data, especially that pesky “practical knowledge” kind.

My thought at this point is that the legal web is in an infancy that we can’t even fathom yet. There is cloud of associated information that our current computer assisted legal research vendors cannot give to us based on their algorithms, especially when they remain in walled-in gardens that don’t account for the vast and valuable information being created by users. The question is whether we will step up to organize this sea of data, or wait until a program can do it for us. If the latter, what does it say about the future of legal research and the practice of law?

[Image (CC) by hey mr glen]

UPDATE & CLARIFICATION

Greg Lambert over at 3 Geeks has a nice follow up on the concept of exploded data. In his post, he quotes the last two sentence of my post and notes that he doesn’t see the problem as a man versus machine issue. After reading it, I realized that my post indeed leaves that impression. I want to clarify that I don’t see this as a man versus machine problem. My point was more about the wait. Some man-machine combination is going to be necessary to curate the legal web, but my line of thinking was “well, do we use the tools available to us now, roll up our sleeves, and start pounding away at the keys,” or “do we sit back until someone creates a really sophisticated algorithm that pulls all of this material together for us, adds in the metadata, and then we review it”? I think if it is the latter, then we are going to be missing an enormous amount of valuable research data, particularly when you consider Simon Fodden’s observation (in the comments below) that the associated data opens up pathways to all sorts of disciplines.

By Jason Wilson

At AALL 2010 in Denver this week here is the gist of a conversation I witnessed (okay, maybe participated in as well):

Person 1: Do you really think we’ll be able to crowd source analytical content?

Person 2: Yes. I mean, not right now, obviously, but I do see it in the future.

Person 1: Really?

Person 2: Absolutely.

I’m here to tell you folks, these individuals are a mile high, if you catch my drift. I say this because I have spent nearly two decades of (1) writing analytical content and (2) trying to get experienced practitioners to do the same. Guess what? Lawyers (and judges) aren’t so good at dedicating themselves to writing content, and unless there is some cataclysmic shift in mindset, it will never happen, especially if you are talking about writing for FREE.

I have given considerable thought to this problem (and I have a greater interest in solving it than most), and I just don’t see how a Demand Media or similar model could ever produce good or reliable analytical material. If you disagree, please say so.

By Jason Wilson

My interview with Peter Jackson is up on Slaw.ca here. Jackson offers up a number of insights into the history of WestSearch, aspects of state of the art in legal search, and his take on the Steve Jobs’ affect. It was a fun interview with a great guy, and I think you’ll enjoy seeing what he has to say.

[Image (cc) by crowbot]