Colleagues,
The 2007 edition is the product of nearly 1,000 hours of editorial work, providing completely updated bibliographic and pricing information on thousands of titles and products, including supplementation costs through the year 2006 and, in some instances (Matthew Bender, primarily), 2007. The book has grown in size by nearly 30 pages, to over 750, including new developments in the world of legal publishing, and nearly 100 reviews of new treatises and reference titles. There are now reviews of over 1,500 of the most significant legal treatises, all with cost and historical supplementation cost information. Initial cost and supplementation costs for 2003-2007 are provided in Appendix H, our unique spreadsheet of pricing data. However, supplementation costs from the book's initial publication in 1996-date are included with each treatise review, some of it as far back as 1992.
With the effective demise of the AALL Price Index for Legal Publications, the Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual is the only publication which will provide you with complete and accurate pricing and supplementation costs data for all publishers. The AALL Price Index for Legal Publications still exists, of course, but the elimination of all West titles from it so emasculates the enterprise as to render it of no practical importance. With the publications of the largest legal publisher removed, the index is both methodologically unsound and statistically meaningless. This stems, of course, from Thomson/West's refusal to provide supplementation cost data to the committee and the AALL's board's unwillingness to challenge them on the issue.
The AALL Price Index for Legal Publications 3d, which uses 2005 as its new base year, has eliminated more than 50% of the legal serial titles formerly tracked (267 of 527--all West titles), including 66% of the legal encyclopedias (6 of 9), 47% of the statutory codes (29 of 62), and, incredibly, 98.4% of the digests (61 of 62). Not surprisingly, the Price Index 3d was released on the aallnet.org site with no fanfare. Data from the Price Index for Legal Publications 2d remains on the aallnet.org web site, but the two indexes bear no statistical relationship to one another. Moreover, the editor's position has been eliminated, thereby removing a voice of reason who could continue to press the issue of West's participation or question the resulting unsoundness of the new enterprise.
As a member of the original committee which designed and implemented the AALL
Price Index for Legal Publications 2d, and a member of the committee
itself for three years, I had a hand in selecting the titles to be
tracked. Indeed, many of those titles
were, and remain, titles in the Legal Information Buyer's Guide,
which I was tracking simultaneously.
These efforts were a part of AALL's strategy,
initiated by President Bob Oakley, which followed in the wake of Thomson's
acquisition of West Publishing, and the consolidation of the industry
generally, to closely monitor legal information prices. They included a pricing study by economist
Mark McCabe. From the
beginning, Thomson/West refused to provide pricing data to the committee,
despite promises by a succession of AALL presidents to press the issue with
them. At the last meeting of the
Price Index Committee that I attended (
From the beginning, the committee obtained the data from member libraries financial records and my own figures. At some point in 2005, however, the board decided that, in light of Thomson/West's refusal to provide data directly, it would order the Price Index Committee to drop West from the Index. Why it didn't just abandon the Index entirely is a mystery to me, as it made no sense to continue under these circumstances. Moreover, it is grossly unfair to track the pricing of only those publishers who have been cooperative. The data collection process was, of course, complicated by the introduction by Thomson/West of Library Maintenance Agreements (LMAs), under which participating libraries no longer have access to subscriber (as opposed to list) costs of individual titles and which cuts them off from "real world" supplementation costs. However, the committee could have continued to obtain pricing data from member libraries which do not have Library Maintenance Agreements, or from volunteers. Last year at this time, Thomson/West argued, through its mouthpiece, that the existence of these individualized pricing plans (LMAs) compromises the index. Thomson/West claimed that aggregate data would distort the AALL Price Index, because the company "structures individual pricing plans for each customer based on their print and online research needs." Thomson views the Index as a "one-size-fits-all" model, which aggregate data will not fit." It also made the self-serving argument that its failure to comply with Principal 2 of the Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers (regarding the providing of historical supplementation costs) by a smokescreen of the confidentiality agreements it writes into many (most) of its LMAs. Of course, only a small minority of legal information consumers generally fall under these LMAs, although it's a significant percentage of those most knowledgeable about the industry and likely to speak up (law librarians).
The fact of the matter is that despite LMAs (which
affect a minority of the market), the supplements for each West title have a
list and subscriber cost. The subscriber
cost is anywhere from 80-85% of the list cost.
You will find many of the list costs of bound volumes and individual
supplements on the West web site, by clicking "Choose Volumes" on any
product listing. What Thomson/West
doesn't provide is the total annual subscriber cost of supplementing any of its
titles. So, despite the existence of LMAs, West itself maintains the annual and individual
component subscriber costs of all the titles in its catalog which, for example,
an attorney in
The Price Index for Legal Publications [1st] was initiated in 1973 by Bettie Scott as an individual contribution to the profession, and continued by Margie Axtmann through 1996. Many of us argued, however, that this was an enterprise important enough to warrant Association sponsorship and committee involvement. Under Bob Oakley's leadership, we moved in that direction. Now, after seven years of the Price Index for Legal Publications 2d (1998-2004) we have retreated to a position far worse than when the Index was an individual enterprise, having been stripped of the products of the largest legal publisher. Clearly, the board needs to ask that the Committee either do it correctly or abandon the effort entirely.
In the meantime, the supplementation costs for all the Thomson/West titles dropped from the Price Index 3d may be found in the Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual 2007, as well of those for all other publishers. I remain forever committed to the proposition that every consumer is entitled to this information before making an informed purchasing, or cancellation, decision. And I'm not going away.
The cost of this massive compendium of bibliographic and pricing information is only $145.00, with additional copies shipped to the same institution and address only $125.00. A companion CD-ROM is also $145.00, or only $75.00 when purchased with the print edition. There is no extra charge for networking the CD-ROM; and we permit limited photocopying for educational or internal purposes. It's no wonder that Legal Information Alert listed the Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual as one of the 20 top innovations in legal information of the past ten years, and the only book to make the list which included Google and search engines, blogs, KeyCite, and Law-Lib. It's the legal information consumer's best friend and the ONE publication you simply can't live without.
Thanks,
Ken Svengalis