LexisNexis Think Like a Lawyer 2014

In the US, Lexis has a “Think Like a Lawyer” campaign aimed at law students with the social media element #BeUnprecedented. There are some interesting terms with student use of academic passwords that are not found in Canada.

For 1Ls and 2Ls, your law school Lexis Advance® ID continues to provide access to our legal research tools all summer long. Use it to look good inside a firm, or prep for the classes to come.

The LexisNexis Canada online products terms of use at section 2.5.5 limits academic use to “that directly related to academic coursework required by the academic institution where you are enrolled or employed”. This philosophy is (or was) consistent in the market. At the firm, summer students use the firm accounts for research.

I prefer to have students at my firm embedded in the firm processes; using our chosen research services combined with our training enhanced best practices to carry out their tasks. Students are given education about the costs of research to the firm and to the client during their summer employment. They are easily forgiven for their judgment errors in over lengthy research time as well. The point about which password a summer student uses is moot in my organization as we use an electronic resource management tool that measures time on resource websites regardless of the login ids.

The ‘look good inside a firm’ part of the campaign is a bit misleading in my opinion. It doesn’t look good if you are retaining inappropriate research habits, not taking advantage of in firm training that usually accompanies password assignments, incorrectly assigning client identifiers and not accounting for your time (online and otherwise). Temporarily looking good using a resource that may not be available to you when you are hired back after law school could be a big problem. Citing to Lexis when the rest of the firm cites differently would be quite noticeable.

Perhaps this is based on my perspective where we give summer students meaningful work under well supervised and mentored conditions. It is not unreasonable that a summer student’s research would be used for a file. The best way to look good inside a firm: do your best work and be part of the team.

Above the law commented on the campaign.