At this point in its development, WIN is a quick and dirty and
not very powerful way of finding a handful of cases. It is not
yet a reliable tool for serious legal research. I have run
numerous WIN searches on my standard teaching examples, and I
have found that WIN misses important cases. Because it is
deceptively simple, and because West is presenting it as a
substitute for boolean searching, there is a danger that the next
generation of law students will learn only WIN. This is a good
example of why academic law libraries should not allow the
database vendors to take control of teaching of the use of their
products.
David Lowe
Computer Services Librarian
University of Alabama Law Library
dlowe@ua1vm.ua.edu
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