 Hi, this is Mary Wissner from the Gallagher Law Library. Today I'd like to address a question. Why do we have so many online systems? This question often comes to us in different forms. Some students will say, look, I started with Westlaw and I like it. I'm good with that. I'm going to stay with Westlaw. Or they say, my professor uses Lexis, so that's all I have to learn. Somebody might say, why should I bother learning Bloomberg Law? Or they ask, really, what's the one best system? What one system should I learn? There's a difference between individuals and institutions. Should any one student learn System X? That's one question. Should the library subscribe to System X? That's a little bit different. So for instance, the library subscribes to tax notes. If you are a tax LLM student, or you're a JD student who wants to focus on tax, or you're a tax law professor, you should really become familiar with tax notes. It's a fabulous resource. If you're not a tax specialist, then never mind. If you're in a seminar and you're writing a paper on Indian law, you should take a look at Heinon Line's American Indian Law Collection. If you're a tax specialist, stick to tax notes. The library subscribes to many services because we need to support the needs of the law school, and the law school has many different interests. Why should you learn more than one system? One reason is to prepare for employment. It's just really a drag. If you spend three years using only Lexis and you get hired by an employer who only has Westlaw, when you could have been practicing on that, too, using more than one system helps you learn about searching and how to learn about searching so that when a new system comes along five years from now after you've graduated, you're able to learn it because you're familiar with the different ways that systems can be set up. And you get to access a lot more content to help you with your work. The big three subscription services are Lexis, or Lexis Advance, Westlaw, or Westlaw Edge, and Bloomberg Law. Each of those has almost comprehensive coverage of US primary law. They all have federal and state statutes, they all have federal and state cases, they all have federal and state regulations, and they all have a citator. There might be some differences on the Edge, maybe one picks up a case that another one misses, but you can research primary law in any of them. They also might have different bells and whistles, different features, different ways to organize your work, different folder arrangements, but you can do primary law in any of them. Secondary sources are where they vary. Lexis and Westlaw both have hundreds of law journals, but generally only starting in the 1990s. Bloomberg, Lexis, and Westlaw all have legal news sources, but different sources. They all have news, but different sources. Treatises and practice guides are perhaps the greatest difference. Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg all have helpful treatises and practice manuals, but not the same ones. Why? Well, it's all about the licensing. Westlaw is owned by Thomson Reuters, and it has materials published by Thomson Reuters companies, including the old West publishing company. Lexis has materials published by Lexis Publishing, including Matthew Bender. Bloomberg Law has licenses for various manuals by the ABA, BNA, and other publishers. Who cares? Well, when you use works by different authors, you get different perspectives, you get different analyses, and sometimes only one of the three systems will have a great source for your particular research need. For example, simple procedure. There's a huge multi-volume treatise that's very well respected called Federal Practice and Procedure. Sometimes you hear this called Right and Miller. It's published by Thomson Reuters, so it's only on Westlaw. Another big multi-volume set, also widely respected, is called Moore's Federal Practice. It's published by Lexis, and it's only on Lexis. If you want details about Supreme Court practice, there is a treatise called Supreme Court Practice that's published by Bloomberg, BNA, and it's only on Bloomberg Law. Here's another example, Employment Discrimination. There's a multi-volume set published by Thomson Reuters called Employment Discrimination Coordinator, and it's only on Westlaw. There's a set called Larson on Employment Discrimination that's only on Lexis. And there's a great book called Employment Discrimination Law that's published by the ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law, and Bloomberg Law, and it's only on Bloomberg Law. Now let's talk just briefly about news. All three systems have lots of news sources, but they're not all the same sources, and they're not the sources you might assume. For the Seattle Times, the New York Times, and other news sources that you probably need, use news databases available through university libraries. To get there, you go to the home page for the university libraries, and you choose e-newspapers, and then you work through the menu. Bloomberg Law has terrific legal news. They have reporters who cover very specialized beats like the pharmaceutical industry, or labor and employment, or bankruptcy, and they report on new developments, not just case law, but industry news, pending bills, and so on. Here's just the start of their topical areas. Banking, bankruptcy law, benefits, coronavirus. They already have a newsletter on coronavirus, daily labor report, daily tax report, and so on. Here's a little snippet from the privacy and data security law news listing some of their most recent articles. Lexis gives us access to law 360. You go up to the upper left corner of your Lexis screen, and you click on this icon with nine little squares, and then you choose law 360. And that gives you access to law 360 stories. You can subscribe to one of their 61 sections and get it sent to your email if you want. Westlaw has a wide variety of legal newspapers and newsletters, some 420 of them. And you can also follow those and set up alerts. Let's turn to Hein on line. Hein on line is not comprehensive like the big three. That is, it doesn't have primary case law regulations, statutes for all 50 states, but it has a lot of things that are really valuable. Notably, its law journal library has more journals than Lexis or Westlaw. They generally go back to volume one of the journal, even if that was in the mid 1800s. It includes many foreign journals. There are also databases with bar journals, ABA section newsletters, federal legislative histories, the code of federal regulations, treaties, and more. And Hein on line gives us PDFs of what it has. So here's an article from the Washington's law review in 1975, and we see it has the original type setting. It's more comfortable, easier to use PDFs than using the versions that are on Lexis and Westlaw. You know, we get the bold face at the top and we have the footnotes at the bottom. Did I mention Hein on line has PDFs? Here's a page from the federal register with a map of critical habitat for streaked horned lark. And you can't get that on Lexis or Westlaw, typically. The PDFs are really valuable. Each system has useful content and features. And that's why our legal research videos include examples from different systems. We'd like you to feel comfortable and competent using any of them. So now you might ask, is that all? If you try Bloomberg, Lexis, Westlaw and Hein on line, are you set? It depends on where your research leads you. If you specialize in tax or if you specialize in health law, or if you're working on a project that requires historical databases, there are other databases that can be useful to you. Start off with the ones that we've listed here and then move on. This has been Mary Wissner for the Gallagher Law Library. See our website for library services, research guides and more.