Legislature(2005 - 2006)Anch LIO Conf Rm
08/10/2005 01:30 PM House JUDICIARY
| Audio | Topic |
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| Westlaw | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE JUDICIARY STANDING COMMITTEE
Anchorage, Alaska
August 10, 2005
1:35 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Lesil McGuire, Chair
Representative Tom Anderson
Representative Nancy Dahlstrom
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative John Coghill
Representative Pete Kott
Representative Les Gara
Representative Max Gruenberg
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
OVERVIEW(S): WESTLAW
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
PAUL RICHARDS, Lobbyist
for Thomson West
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: During the overview of Westlaw, provided
introductory and closing comments.
ALLAN MILLOY, Manager
Western Regional Sales
Rocky Mountain Region
Thomson West
Vancouver, Washington
POSITION STATEMENT: Assisted in presenting the overview of
Westlaw.
RICHARD "RICK" BROWN, Director
Codes Content Center
West
Thomson West
Eagan, Minnesota
POSITION STATEMENT: Assisted in presenting the overview of
Westlaw.
JOSEPH J. KUBES, Director
Government Relations and Contracts
West
Thomson West
Eagan, Minnesota
POSITION STATEMENT: Assisted in presenting the overview of
Westlaw.
HEATHER NOBREGA, Staff
to Representative Norman Rokeberg
Alaska State Legislature
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Asked a question during the overview of
Westlaw.
CRAIG JOHNSON, Staff
to Representative Lesil McGuire
Alaska State Legislature
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Asked a question during the overview of
Westlaw.
ACTION NARRATIVE
CHAIR LESIL McGUIRE called the House Judiciary Standing
Committee meeting to order at 1:35:05 PM. Representatives
McGuire, Anderson, and Dahlstrom were present at the call to
order.
^OVERVIEW(S)
^WESTLAW
CHAIR McGUIRE announced that the only order of business would be
the overview regarding Westlaw.
PAUL RICHARDS, Lobbyist for Thomson West, after introducing
himself and Allan Milloy, relayed that [Thomson West] has a 130-
year history of publishing.
ALLAN MILLOY, Manager, Western Regional Sales, Rocky Mountain
Region, Thomson West, spoke. [His initial comments were
indiscernible due to lack of proximity to a microphone.] He
relayed that [Thomson West] is one of the divisions of Thomson,
and that Thomson is one of the leaders [in providing] global
information in the fields of legal and regulatory information;
tax, accounting, financial information; and scientific and
healthcare information. [Thomson West] provides "must-have"
information, and supports over 20 million users around the
world, he remarked, and went on to detail some company revenue
figures and numbers of employees.
MR. MILLOY mentioned West and Westlaw, and said that [West]
publishes cases, statutes, and code, and "all of the secondary
information that help attorneys do a better job for their
clients." For Alaska, [West] publishes the Alaska Reporter and
the Alaska Digest. He indicated that the intent of the overview
is to discuss the possibility of publishing state statutes,
since the contract for doing so is coming up for review this
year. Mr. Milloy referred to Joseph Kubes and Richard "Rick"
Brown.
1:43:06 PM
RICHARD "RICK" BROWN, Director, Codes Content Center, West,
Thomson West, spoke. [Some of his presentation was
indiscernible due to lack of proximity to a microphone.] He
relayed that he would be speaking specifically about West,
referenced a PowerPoint presentation, and described what various
pages of the PowerPoint presentation pertained to. He outlined
the physical location of West and the company's buildings,
provided historical background on West, and spoke of the merger
of the companies that now make up the parent company. He said
that West has always been known for its case law and statutes.
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER remarked on the size of the facility, that no
subcontracting is necessary, and that all of the company's
functions can be done in-house, under one roof.
SEVERAL UNKNOWN SPEAKERS, in response to a question, commented
on the size and number of Westlaw's databases, on the number of
references attorneys employed by West, on the customer and
technical support services offered by the company, on how
interconnected the functions of the company are, and how devoted
the company is to producing a quality product.
[Some further comments were indiscernible due to background
noises.]
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER referenced the PowerPoint presentation and
said, "This is the way our statutes look online now, and ...
we've spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of money
presenting our statutory material in a more user-friendly way."
1:51:02 PM
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER remarked that attorney staff read every
single reported Alaska Court of Appeals case and every single
Alaska Supreme Court case so that the cases can be included in
the Alaska Reporter. The cases are also being looked at to see
whether they "construe any statute"; if any do, then the statute
editor is notified. He added: "We're the only publisher that
is going through the cases [at] that level of detail, and that
gives us the unique ability to ... [ensure] that there's no
case, that is germane, that is missed and not referenced in a
statute set."
[Some further comments by an unknown speaker were indiscernible
due to background noises.]
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER said that West has developed a research
system that one can use to find the points of law being sought;
he referred to this as the "Key Number System," and
characterized it as unique in the publishing world and as "the"
standard.
[Some further comments were indiscernible due to background
noises and several people speaking at once.]
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER characterized the aforementioned system as
very, very concise, and relayed that there are 90,000 different
key numbers and 410 topics available.
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER said the aforementioned helps people make
better decisions faster, because "once you find your point of
law, then you drill into that, and then you can see all of the
relevant case law or statutes that deal with that point of law
in any jurisdiction in the land."
REPRESENTATIVE DAHLSTROM, referring to a portion of the
PowerPoint presentation, asked whether West has developed
territories based on certain areas having similar statutes.
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER indicated that it had not done so, but
relayed that "these particular publications are entirely case
law." He posited that the distinctions between the different
publications are merely the result of historical accident.
AN UNKNOWN SPEAKER posited that the volume of cases in any given
state might have had some influence in creating the
distinctions.
1:56:03 PM
MR. BROWN, referring to a portion of the PowerPoint
presentation, said it is a map illustrating "our own proprietary
annotated statutes product." He remarked that West now has "41
of them" and has added 14 new annotated codes in the last eight
to nine years. He said that in doing so, West has leveraged its
history as a case law publisher, and has used all of its
resources to create a new annotated statutory product that
really looks and feels different. He referenced what he called
the "central head notes database," and said that over all the
years, West attorneys have written 25 million head notes.
MR. BROWN went on to say:
What we want to talk about is what our statutory
products could look like and how that's different.
These are all editorial enhancements that are included
in every West statute product. United States Supreme
Court reference: these are references to Supreme
Court cases that took place outside of the
jurisdiction. We have uniform laws, commentary that
we reference. We reference law review commentaries.
And that next line - (indisc.) a lot of those lawyers
co-op (ph) products that are now part of our family.
United States Code - we reference the administrative
code in each jurisdiction; it is also important
information to link people to, whether you're working
online or in print. Historical notes describing the
legislative history, the cross-references to other
statutory material within the same statutory set.
And these two at the top are really the two that we
feel are most important to a West product: the notes
of decisions - and those are where we use those head
notes, these are the case law summaries that we use to
provide interpretations for what that statute means -
and then the index. ... We've done a lot of market
research and we found that ... somewhere in the range
of 90 to 95 percent [of] people say that those top two
bullets are the things that really matter the most -
these things are really essential. And the index is
something we spent a lot of money on doing; the notes
of decisions we spent a lot of money on. ... I want
[Joseph Kubes] to show you, now, what this looks like
online and how it can work for us online. ...
1:59:34 PM
JOSEPH J. KUBES, Director, Government Relations and Contracts,
West, Thomson West, said that if West were ever chosen to
publish Alaska's statutes, it would look to integrate all of the
aforementioned sources and references into that publication so
that it could be a more efficient and effective resource. Using
as an example for a search the term "good faith," he said that
very few statute publications have on their face everything one
needs in order to understand the meaning behind a particular
term, and that the references that West incorporates into its
publications can be used as secondary resources for that purpose
- to garner a better understanding of a particular term as it is
being used in statute. Relaying that Westlaw has annotated
statutes for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the territories of Guam and the
Virgin Islands, he then guided the committee through an online
search via Westlaw.
CHAIR McGUIRE surmised, then, that although Westlaw does not yet
publish Alaska's statutes, Westlaw customers can still view
references them.
MR. KUBES concurred, adding that although Westlaw actually has
more editorial enhancements available, because it is not yet
publishing Alaska's statutes, those enhancements have not yet
been integrated.
CHAIR McGUIRE asked Mr. Kubes to send the committee a copy of a
statute book published by West.
MR. BROWN agreed to send the committee a volume of statute
published by West and a volume of statute published by Lexus Law
Publishers ("Lexus"), both from the same jurisdiction, for
comparison purposes. He mentioned that in the states for which
West does not publish statutes, West provides information via
Lexus under a licensing agreement.
MR. KUBES relayed that what he is showing the committee is
West's publication of North Carolina annotated statute and all
reported North Carolina cases that interpret or reference [a
particular statute], and described the specific aspects of what
the committee was viewing and how a person could go about
researching a particular topic.
MR. BROWN referred to the "key number", and said that by using
it, one can collect every head note that has ever been assigned
to that key number; for a state like Alaska, this feature would
be helpful in researching precedent outside of the state. He
mentioned that this feature was so popular that [Westlaw]
retrofitted every code to include that feature.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER referred to a "graphical user
interface," and said that with this feature, users can see - via
a flow chart of sorts - the path of a particular case; users can
see whether a case is still good law and how other cases have
treated it.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER, after describing for the committee what
it was looking at, said that the aforementioned feature becomes
very handy in researching seminal federal cases such as Miranda
v. Arizona.
REPRESENTATIVE ANDERSON characterized Westlaw's product as more
centralized.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER referred to a feature he called "results
plus," and said that this runs a query in secondary sources and
details how a case has been applied in other treatises.
CHAIR McGUIRE characterized the Westlaw features as great,
particularly from the viewpoint of a lawmaker; being able to
quickly and easily research how other states treat certain
issues or what constitutional issues have been raised by the
passage of certain laws would be very helpful.
MR. KUBES relayed that Westlaw can also show what a particular
law looked like in the past and which provisions have since been
added or deleted.
HEATHER NOBREGA, Staff to Representative Norman Rokeberg, Alaska
State Legislature, asked how many years that feature could go
back.
SEVERAL UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKERS indicated that it could back to
the late 1980s.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER referred to another feature that would
"point up" any cases that have been decided within the last 60
days that affect a particular statute.
CHAIR McGUIRE posited that it would be nice to be able to see
how a law one introduces ultimately gets interpreted.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER, in response to a comment, relayed that
West's research and development budget is approximately a
quarter of a billion dollars every year.
2:21:31 PM
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER mentioned that Legislative Legal and
Research Services has access to Westlaw.
CHAIR McGUIRE opined that any contract entered into ought to
allow for the direct use of the online product by legislators
via passwords.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER, in response to a question, reiterated
that Legislative Legal and Research Services has access to
Westlaw, and said that the Alaska State Legislature already
purchases a number of state statutes and other treatises, in
print, from West. He added: We've been working with the
libraries across the country to say, "Hey, if you'll agree to
keep these books online, we'll save the ... library 50 percent
of the ongoing upkeep and [at] the same time we'll also ... give
you unlimited use of Westlaw."
CHAIR McGUIRE relayed, however, that it is nice to be able to
access written statute books and recorders, particularly during
a meeting.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER said that the legislature could keep the
printed materials, but cut the cost of updating those books
while also giving legislators unlimited access to Westlaw; this
could result in a savings of $15,000 a year.
REPRESENTATIVE ANDERSON opined that every legislator should have
access to a web-based service like Westlaw as well as access to
one source of printed materials.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER relayed that Westlaw can also cite other
court documents such as the collection of briefs filed with
certain courts regarding a particular topic, and made
suggestions for how such information might be used.
2:29:04 PM
MR. RICHARDS relayed that in arranging for this overview, the
speakers had hoped to provide information about their company's
product to [the legislature].
CRAIG JOHNSON, Staff to Representative Lesil McGuire, Alaska
State Legislature, asked how far back would a Westlaw product go
with regard to Alaska statutes.
SEVERAL UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKERS relayed that West has the ability
to go back a number of years, perhaps as far back as 1994.
MR. MILLOY concurred that the goal of the overview was to share
with the committee what types of information the legislature
would have access to from West, and that West wants to make
itself available to the legislature. He said that West does
business with the state courts and municipalities, and suggested
that the committee research what other companies can offer in
the way of a similar product.
CHAIR McGUIRE asked whether attorney general's opinions would be
accessible via Westlaw.
AN UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER said they would be.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
Judiciary Standing Committee meeting was adjourned at 2:32 p.m.
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