Customer Service: Westlaw, like most research companies, is salesperson driven; however, whether the salespeople perform or fail to perform, you are at the mercy of the direct sales representative and their regional manager. National Westlaw has nothing to do with customer service, only billing. Certainly, as your firm grows, you needs grow; however, you can only add or delete elements of your legal research plan if you increase the cost of your plan each time. To be clear, if the service does not suit you and you drop access to parts of Westlaw, you have to substitute them with others. Clearly, if what Westlaw provides suit your firm, you are stuck because you cannot downsize your plan for the balance of your contract term to get the services you need elsewhere.
Further, as we added and dropped services, we had to wait, as long as two months for Westlaw to effect the changes. So if you get a large new client and need access to new practice areas imminently, Westlaw's sales representatives are not responsive. Additionally, you will loose many billable hours on the phone with either your sales representative, or their regional manager, many times, with no immediate change.
The Lexis Nexis representatives are responsive, forthcoming and provide you with the truth about your plan from the very beginning with no smoke and mirrors. The customer service differences are overwhelmingly different and I now know why the two large firms I have worked with over my 10 year career (50 layers and 450 lawyers) each chose Lexis over Westlaw.
Finally, your sales representative and their general manager have no incentive to make you a satisfied customer because your sales representative gets paid regardless because you are under contract.
By way of information, our sales representative was Lisa Mermaud and her regional manager is Scott Schumaker. Neither can be trusted so ask for immediate reassignment to new reps if you get them.
Contract Length: Never fall for a contract longer than one year. Westlaw discounts your monthly plan rate for longer contractual commitments but it is not worth it. Over time, if your practice areas evolve or your sales representative is wretched, you want to be able to get your research elsewhere.
Automatic Renewals: We refused Thompson West's book subscriptions which are on a automatic renewal and ship and bill whether you want them or not. Our sales representative offered us free books, then placed us on a automatic renewal plan. We caught it immediately and cancelled the auto shipping and auto billing of the books. Nonetheless, they shipped and billed to our credit card anyway. Our sales representative and her regional manager repeatedly indicated that they were working on correcting the billing to our credit card since we refused every book that was shipped to us. But as you may well imagine, they are still on our credit card months later.
In a sentence, refuse the free books.
Credit Card Billing: As indicated above, the headquaters in Minnesota is very effective in billing your credit card but refer you to your sales representative to receive credits. As you may have guessed, good luck with getting your sales representative to be responsive to issuing credits.
Summary: In sum, Westlaw is a law school research service, it is not flexible or responsive enough for law firms but Lexis Nexis is. Call you Lexis representative, you will not regret it and you will benefit from their fair business practices. If nothing else, value being treated as a customer rather than a monthly subscription amount, and having an online legal subscription plan that helps your business grow rather than burdening it. Lexis is more of a partner for your business.
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