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24 Legal Information Alert 1 (2005)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0024 and id is 1 raw text is: 4hat's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques                 Volume 24, No. 1 January 2005

Contents
Online Legal
Research Billing
Policies
Database Report
New Sources
Publishers

1
8
9
16

Index 16

Online Legal Research Billing Policies
by Cynthia L. Brown
Why should you care about online billing policies? With all of the work that librar-
ians have to do, why stack up another mound of work on your desk? Why is a pol-
icy for online legal research billing important to librarians? Are law firm finances
even a part of the librarian's concern? Should we care about the firm's overall
accounts and balances?
The answer to these questions is YES, and more so, when it comes to usage costs
for online research. Librarians must be actively involved in how much the firm
uses, spends, and recovers for all online legal resources.
If you have not been involved in these areas in the past, I strongly urge you to
carefully consider getting involved to see how you can help the firm and the library.
As librarians, we are always looking for an opportunity to market ourselves.
Developing an online legal research billing policy is a great opportunity. With
money issues, you can always get people's attention.
As part of my research for overhauling our firm's online legal research billing
policy, I posted a note on the law-lib listserv requesting sample online legal
research billing policies. I asked for information on policies that detailed appropri-
ate uses, privacy issues, how to bill or not bill for personal use, CLE presentations,
and marketing. The responses I received were varied.
I could see that the number of online legal research billing policies will be about
the same number of law firms that have online legal research resources. In this arti-
cle, I describe what I learned from the many variables there are for online research
billing policies and how I used the results of my survey to develop our new policy.
What I Learned from Law-Jib
While some firms do not bill any online research, others bill all online research. In
some policies, there was a distinct difference between flat-rate and pay-as-you-go
contracts. Some policies included provisions for situations such as CLE presenta-
tions, pro bono work, and personal use. In some policies, only the online services
continued on page 4

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