How Will My Judge Rule On This Issue?
Physical Description: The front asks in crisp purple letters, "How will my judge rule on this issue?".
The back of this shirt certainly has more on it than the front. At the top of the design is "Court-records research" in all of it's purple and left-aligned glory. "on LexisNexis® CourLink®" is similar to "Court-records research" with the main exception being that it is centrally aligned. Underneath all those words we are given a vision. This vision is framed as a rectangle which has a widely curved bottom left corner. Inside of this framing the viewer is presented a dark and mysterious world that is probably just the lamest carnival of all time. A cloudy, deep purple sky which gives way to a black horizon. In left a ways back is a shape that can be nothing other than a carousel. All the way to the right, but closer is a Ferris wheel. A little bit to the left we see a prophecy booth. The booth is a dark brown on the outside save for a the nameplate on the top. The nameplate's background is just as deep of a purple as the sky behind it. There are some golden rod frills around a the such colored with the addition of red outline around "ESTRELLAS". Underneath "ESTRELLAS" is the word "prophecies". Underneath the "prophecies" is some additional frilling. Inside of the booth is a woman with a red and white outfit and brown hair. She is looking down upon a light purple crystal ball. The ball is on a red plane. The woman stands in front of a purple cloth background of some sort. The figure closest to the viewer is a man with hair wearing a black suit with a white shirt. He is looking down at a piece of white paper that he is holding with both of his hands. "Go Beyond Cases & Codes", "Manage Your Practice", and "Grow Your Practice" are smaller than before but retain the same lettering and coloring. "LexisNexis...more than research." is black, bold, and all the more beautiful because of it. So beautiful, in fact, that all letters from here on out will be in black. What follows is the logo of LexisNexis; this logo is a wine red circle with two light red lines of longitude which curve to the left and start from a small area of white on the top right of the ball. This ball has a tiny ® to enforce their intellectual property. "LexisNexis" and yet another ® are underneath the logo. It should be noted that the "L" in "LexisNexis" begins the word to the left of where the previous ball would be if the ball were to be lowered. The last design element is a tiny declaration that "It's how you know" followed by the sole non-registered trademark.
I used Lexis-Nexis a few times as an undergrad. I found it to be useful for some of my reports. At the same time, I know I did not really harness all of LexisNexis to the extend that I could have because I did not pay anything for the privilege. I suppose it also did help out that at the time, I was interested in only very recent judicial decisions.
Donor Ian informed me in conversation of the awesome power LexisNexis has while as a law student he would conduct very detailed searches and come back with some very interesting results. Suffice to say, there were some interesting tidbits of information about some people that were just at his fingertips because he was a law student.
Therefore, LexisNexis is a pusherman. Have it for free now, but when one is actually hired the firm is going to have to pay lots of money. LexisNexis offers a lot of different pricing schemes for all sorts of different of access, but it appears now that the most common is a la carte. Those of us who have to worry about money all know how quickly things add up. Yet, for the purpose that LexisNexis and Westlaw exist there really is no competition. Especially when one or the other company can buy out any sort of competition within their own or different sectors. Take as an example, LexisNexis buying CourtLink.
Corporate oligopolies are, I feel, an increasing danger upon the American economy. Markets can only apply pressure if a cartel decides to not control prices.
The increased danger of Wexis is that the fees are for people to find out public information. I have no qualms about being charged for bandwidth and server space, but the idea that citizens are being charged by a corporation for what is essentially their own information does not sit well with me. Most people are not bothered by this, however, and the likelihood of things changing are near impossible.
