There is an interesting article about W and L in the January 4, 1993
issue of _Forbes_ entitled "Logging Off Lexis".
A few selected quotes from the article:
"...on top of this general slowdown [in the information industry],
MDC's system has been, according to industry experts, technologically
leapfrogged."
After discussing a series of setbacks for MDC the article continues:
"West, which got into full text legal information retrieval in 1979,
six years after Lexis, has cut Lexis' market share from 95% in the
early 1980s to 60% today. If early kinks can be worked out of the
natural language interface, many legal data experts expect that West
could soon have a larger share than Mead."
"In October David Berger, the head of Lexis, was fired. Three weeks
later Mason [CEO of Mead since May] sacked Jack Simpson, the
president of MDC since 1982. But it is probably too late to repulse
West Publishing's assault on Lexis. Opines Robert Berring, head law
librarian at the University of California at Berkeley: "If I was
Mead, I would be worried.""
---Scott Finet
Cleveland State University Law Library scottf@valhalla.csuohio.edu
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