> Reply-to: law-lib@grandpa.ucdavis.edu
> Date: 18 May 1993 15:46:42 -0500 (CDT)
> From: "ROD R. BORLASE" <LAWE@Jetson.UH.EDU>
> Subject: WWINN (WESTLAW'S WIN IS NOT NATURAL) -- LONG (3 pp)
> To: LAW-LIB@grandpa.ucdavis.edu
>
>
>
>
> May 15, 1993
>
> To: A.A.L.L. members, and all colleagues teaching legal
> research, advanced or otherwise.
>
> From: Rod BORLASE, Reference & Computer Services Librarian,
> University of Houston Law Center Library; Adjunct
> Professor, Advanced Legal Research, University of
> Houston Law Center.
> (713) 743-2325 FAX (713) 743-2299
>
>
> Re: WWINN (WestLaw's WIN Is Not Natural!); or
>
> Where's John B. West when you really need him?!
>
>
> Unfortunately I am unable to attend our Boston conference, but
> hope to provoke some discussion there and thereafter. My basic
> concern is for law librarians who teach WestLaw to law students,
> clerks and judicial interns.
>
> Declarations: I teach Advanced Legal Research, both "the
> books" and the boolean databases (WestLaw and Lexis/Nexis). I am
> computer literate, and skilled with boolean database searching.
> I am a practicing law librarian and attorney. I have read
> WestLaw's WIN materials and applied their teachings. I have used
> WIN side by side with competently drawn boolean searches.
>
> My theses may be summarized as follows: (1) WestLaw's
> "WIN" is not natural; (2) WIN's obdurate promotion subverts our
> teaching; and (3) West betrays our trust.
>
> (1) WestLaw's "WIN" is not natural:
>
> Whether or not WIN is natural must be considered from two
> points of view, viz., (a) the computer/technical side and (b) the
> researcher/teacher side.
>
> (a) If one knows anything about artificial intelligence, one knows
> that it is simply not here and not expected before the year 2000,
> until after several memory, logic, programming and hardware break-
> throughs. WIN is in part "probablistic," subject to all ills that
> statistics suffer. It is an improvement only for those who will
> not learn WestLaw's relatively simple native tongue, boolean logic,
> and a few delimiters and navigational commands. WIN is the
> proverbial dog walking on its hind legs, amazing not because it
> does it so well, but because it does it at all!
>
> Conceptually, boolean logic is not difficult, only unfamiliar.
> It can be made utterly transparent within an hour. I guarantee it.
> It is simple in the comprehension but, like so much else about law,
> more subtle in its application. It can be taught effectively.
> Like the legal profession itself, it requires practice. One must
> develop high proficiency during law school in order to afford
> WestLaw after law school.
>
> Question: Were your child's foreign language teacher to
> propose that, by teaching only nouns and verbs, a native speaker
> could probably understand much of what s/he says, would that be
> acceptable?
>
> (b) Law is a profession of nomenclature, a progressive practice
> without magic pill. Nomenclature, syntax and context are what we
> use, regardless whether we use the books or the databases. Logic
> brings us much, but statistics bring us little! The law library,
> the lawyer's laboratory, is organized, has a terrain, texture,
> places for this and that and methods for getting where we need to
> go. Just getting somewhere is not sufficient, especially when it
> subverts getting where we need to be. Learning to "think like a
> lawyer" and exploit law's laboratories is a practice art, taught
> (to be sure) but learned by doing. Anything that inhibits this
> process or provides an easier route to a lesser result, subverts
> our mission and thwarts our success.
>
> Question: If West published an index of all significant words
> in the American Digest System and then proclaimed it now to be
> "natural," would you believe it?
>
> (2) WIN's obdurate promotion subverts our teaching:
>
> In its simplest form, we teach three boolean search
> strategies, from the most coarse (and expensive), "trolling"
> databases with a word or two until something useful tumbles out, to
> "silver bullet searching" (the least expensive) artful query
> formulation to net a handful of on point cases to verify a legal
> point's current efficacy. In between is "broad searching" to net
> a quantity of documents that surely cover one's point, and then to
> "sub-search" those with LOCATE (WestLaw) or FOCUS (Lexis/Nexis).
>
> Neither WestLaw's nor Lexis/Nexis' instruction promotes even
> intermediate skill. Left to their own devices, few law students
> progress very far beyond the trolling stage. When promised great
> success without time or learning investment, how's the teacher to
> influence them? WestLaw's only suggestion has been power! "If
> you don't want them to use WIN, forbid it." It is somehow better
> that we should shoulder blame than that they should compromise.
> It is not in their commercial interest to teach a high skill level.
> On the contrary! For their purposes, dependence is sufficient. It
> is our responsibility to teach skill.
>
> WestLaw's WIN is barely an improvement beyond trolling and
> insures inefficient searching for dependent users. A $$ bonanza!
> A disservice to our students. Most practitioners will never learn
> boolean database skills. They will hire our students to do that.
> It is a job skill, and we have seen that in our local job market.
>
> (3) West betrays our trust:
>
> In the late '60's and early 70's, commercial "gathering plans"
> offered academic libraries a collection building method that
> included acquisitions and cataloging records and good discounts,
> along with corresponding processing and personnel savings. Once
> staffs were pared and the libraries' dependence was effected, the
> gathering plans' policies began to change, elevating corporate
> commercial interests and advantage over whatever policy the
> academic institution might embrace. They concurred with the late
> President Johnson, "When you've got'em by the [sensitive parts]
> their hearts and minds will follow."
>
> It was difficult to recoup our mission's control. Indeed, it
> was a major fight at the national level, won only after we pointed
> out that, under our current budget constraints, we could better
> survive a year without buying any books than they without selling
> any!
>
> I suggest that we are beneficiaries of something other than
> immaculate beneficence, hostages to commerce, and currently face
> the same dilemma with both WestLaw and Lexis/Nexis. If you do
> not believe it, deviate (be it ever so minor) from their commercial
> preferences, "policies." For instance, ask them to emphasize the
> use of parentheses in their training, or avoid WIN. In addition to
> being simply ignored, I have been told (albeit not always in these
> words) that I "don't understand," "don't know what my students
> need," "am lying," and "don't know my students' learning patterns,"
> to mention just a few. They seek our "cooperation," a purely one
> way street in my experience.
>
> When I floated these notions last April at the Southwest
> Association of Law Librarians' conference in Albuquerque, it was no
> surprise when representatives (both directors and teachers of legal
> research) responded with similar experiences, indeed, from four of
> the seven states attending. They thought they were alone, isolated
> incidents. Others laughed that the WestLaw representative's
> rebuttal proved my every point. Intransigence in extremis!
>
>
>
> Rod BORLASE, Reference & Computer Services Librarian,
> University of Houston Law Center Library; Adjunct
> Professor, Advanced Legal Research, University of
> Houston Law Center.
> (713) 743-2325 FAX (713) 743-2299
> Internet: LAWE@JETSON.UH.EDU
Although my feelings about WIN are not as negative as yours (we have
found that it generally yields results that are at least comparable
to a well formulated boolean query (of course, the WIN query was
formulated by someone familiar with boolean searching)), you raise a
more general point that I agree law schools need to address. Our
library I believe has also surrendered too much control to Lexis and
Westlaw. Their reps are there to market their product as much as to
teach how to use it. The solution, I believe, is to have someone
without that vested interest teach the students. The problem we
have at this school, and I am sure at others, is that there are not
enough personnel on the full time faculty, the adjunct faculty and
in the library willing and able to teach the entire first-year
class the basics of computerized legal research. The problem is
exaserpated by the fact that most of the full-time faculty
(especially the senior faculty) have no understanding at all of
computerized legal research. Many of them have never even attended
a demonstration of Lexis or Westlaw. So how do you convince them of
the necessity of the law school expending the resources to properly
teach the students?>
**********************************************************************
Jason Levine Internet: 8jlevine@jmls.edu
Reference Librarian Phone: (312) 427-2737 x485
John Marshall Law School Fax: (312) 427-8307
Chicago, IL 60604
**********************************************************************
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