WestlawNEXT! Whoosh!

Just got back from my first day of Legal Tech and boy are my arms tired!

(From all the schwag I got.)

Review of the lovely new Westlaw Next after the jump.



The "Westlaw Next Experience" was our first stop. Ever see the South Park scene with the humanely slaughtered turkeys?



Replace the flying forest scenes with 1010101010 flying very quickly across 27 flat panel screens, a cellist, two violinists, and a plant in the audience who turned out to have a magic wand that conducted stuff. There were no seats, just a platform that awaited instructions to drop you into a vat below, walls draped in silk, with appropriately placed fans to billow them, strobe and mood lighting, and a booming Voice of Westlaw God who narrated the whole thing.

And then? FREE EARBUDS! And a chance to win an iPod to go with it! (In Thompson approved orange, of course.)

Then the bosslady and I checked out the Westlaw Next demo going on in the Westlaw Pavilion of Dreams. While standing on the comfiest carpeted floor ever (seriously-- somewhere out there an angel has lost his wings, and they've been used for stuffing) we had a very nice lady in the customary orange neckerchief showed us the brand new, never been seen before, Westlaw Next.

It's really pretty.

I mean, really, really pretty.

As in, I want it and to work for the global media conglomerate who has it so that I can be that cool and make enough money to have an angel feather stuffed carpet under my feet and wear a probably moderately expensive neckerchief that really doesn't do much for my complexion but still gives me an air of authority somehow.

There are the usual catches, of course. Nothing this pretty comes without someone trying to stab you over it. Westlaw Next removes the need to select a database, so by searching, you're pulling up results from everywhere-- including databases that you don't have access to. And unless you either:

a) Set a reminder for yourself to say "DON'T CLICK ON THIS, IT'LL COST US EXTRA MONEY

Or

b) Read the citation format under the search result and compare it to the databases that you have access to

you're going to rack up a huge fee for your firm. So essentially, West has made the site more appealing to untrained searchers who are used to Google, made searching free, but won't stop you from clicking into any of the results that you pull unless you're paying attention or tech savvy, two things that can't be said about many lawyers.

It's also not an automatic upgrade. Westlaw Classic is going to keep running, and if a firm wants to pay the extra money to make the giant legal database nicer looking and more user-friendly, well, ease doesn't come cheap. Eventually they'll close classic (read: 5 years from now) but until then, some firms might have classic and some will have Next.

But overall, the database is beautiful, easy to use, and makes my little internal researcher go all aquiver. I got lots of great prizes, and a chocolate orange ball of deliciousness, and a great way to spend my lunch hour.

Tomorrow: Lexis. I'm psyched.