Looking at the legal publishing industry

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-pll-sis-29794@aallnet.org
[mailto:bounce-pll-sis-29794@aallnet.org]On Behalf Of Michael Ginsborg
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2005 2:36 PM
To: Private Law Libraries SIS
Subject: [pll-sis] BNA's price increases in the context of the legal
publishing industry and AALL's responsiveness with respect to disclosure


A quick look at AALL Price Index data by Kendall Svengalis
(http://www.rilawpress.com/orall_presentation.ppt) shows an average
increase of about 11% for the same period for all serials, excluding
periodicals. You might reasonably object to this comparison group, as
the Index data for newsletters shows an average increase of about 6%; or
you might even question the accuracy of the data, based on the sample
and averaging. However, the available data - and our collective
experience - tend to support the generalization that legal publishing
business practices have escalated price increases over the last decade.

Thus price escalation at BNA may have less to do with the incidental
fact that employees own BNA than with larger trends in the legal
publishing industry. For information about the larger trends, see the
opening chapters of Svengalis' Legal Information Buyer's Guide and
Reference Manual http://www.rilawpress.com/, articles by Joe Stephens,
and "Law Serials Pricing and Mergers: A Portfolio Approach," by Dr. Mark
J. McCabe, at http://www.informationaccess.org/. Consider also - in the
same context - the confidentiality clauses in firm and institutional
pricing by Westlaw and Lexis, and the effects on price escalation in the
world of online legal research.

BNA's pricing model appears to have exceptional features, and may
warrant tailored remedies by individual customers. Of course, the larger
trends in legal publishing hardly detract from the perceived needs of
individual BNA subscribers to address BNA's pricing practices. But
another question lies just beneath the surface. Despite the dedicated
and commendable efforts of CRIV, does an organization that accepts
subsidy from legal publisher significantly compromise its efficacy as a
consumer advocate? The disclosure principle under AALL's Guide to Fair
Business Practices for Legal Publishers not only does not commit us to
reversing "The Big Three" confidentiality clauses, but appears to commit
us to accepting nondisclosure of these invidious "proprietary" clauses.
(http://www.aallnet.org/about/fair_practice_guide.asp) Moreover, the
Guide has no enforcement mechanism, and compliance depends on the "good
will" of the publishers. Such "good will" has funded many of AALL's
activities, but it has exacted a price on AALL's role as a consumer
advocate of disclosure.

I am expressing (or rather, for some, repeating) my own professional
view, and it carries no other affiliation.