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Guide to DOJ Legal Info Initiatives
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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
CROWN JEWELS CAMPAIGN - Juris, Legal Information
October 11, 1994
The following letter was sent to publishers to inform them of
current DOJ initiatives regarding legal information. Specifically, the
letter includes news on public domain citation systems for case law, a data
base of federal and state judicial decisions, the antitrust investigation
of the computer assisted legal research market and DOJ's procurement of legal
information.
Michael Ward
---------------------------------------------------------------
October 6, 1994
Dear Legal Publisher:
This letter is about several important developments
regarding public access to government legal information. These
include the following:
1. The Department of Justice (DOJ) efforts to broaden public
access to legal information.
Janet Reno, the U.S. Attorney General, issued a press
release on September 2, 1994, announcing a Department of Justice
(DOJ) inquiry into the benefits of:
a) a unified public domain system of citation for both federal
and state case law, and
b) a database of state and federal judicial opinions that would
be available to the public, including publishers.
Reno's announcement was met with stiff opposition from West
Publishing. West sent a letter to 6,000 of its employees asking
them to write the Attorney General in opposition to both
proposals, and rallied the Minnesota Governor and Congressional
delegation to write the President and the Attorney General in
opposition to the DOJ initiatives. LEXIS has endorsed the DOJ
effort to create a unified public domain citation system for
state and local judicial opinions, and opposed the pubic database
of judicial opinions. Other publishers, many of them smaller
companies, have endorsed both DOJ proposals.
The Attorney General has designated Kent Walker to head the
DOJ working group on these issues. Please provide him with
written statements of your views on these important issues. He
can be reached as follows:
Kent Walker, Counsel to Deputy Attorney General
Room 4222
Department of Justice,
10th and Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20530
voice: 202/514-3796, internet: kwalker@justice.usdoj.gov
2. October 19 meeting of publishers on public domain citation
system.
On October 19, a number of publishers will be meeting in
Washington DC at the Carnegie Institution to discuss the adoption
of a specific public domain citation system. The meeting is open
to any publisher that wants to attend, but you should confirm if
you plan to attend. If the confirmed attendance is large, the
meeting will be moved to a different location. This group will
also be meeting with officials at DOJ about the citation issue in
the afternoon. In order to clear security, we must have the
names of attendees in advance. There is also an Internet
discussion group, named OCT19@TAP.ORG which has been established
to discuss the citation issue before the meeting. This list is
open. Requests to be included in the meeting or the discussion
list should be made to Mike Ward, Taxpayer Assets Project (v.
202/387-8030; v. 202/234-5176; internet: mike@tap.org).
3. DOJ Antitrust Investigation of Computer Assisted Legal
Research Industry.
At least one dozen firms have been interviewed or contacted
by the DOJ Antitrust Division for an investigation of the
Computer Assisted Legal Research (CALR) industry. This
investigation may be extended to include some aspects of the
print legal publishing industry as well. The focus of the DOJ
investigation appears to be West control of the page numbers that
are required by most judges and legal journals. It is our
understanding that other issues are also involved. If you have
information about problems involving monopolistic or
anticompetitive practices in the legal publishing industry, you
are encouraged to provide facts and perspectives to DOJ. The
recommended mechanism is to write a letter, detailing the
specific issues that you want to raise, with very precise
information about how these practices effect your firm.
Supporting documents, with a cover memo explaining their
relevance, are also important. These comments should be sent to:
Anne Bingaman, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
Department of Justice
10th and Constitution Ave., N.W. Rm 3109
Washington, DC 20530
The investigators can be reached by fax at 202/514-8397.
Faxes should be addressed to Donna Alberts, and include a phone
number where you can be contacted. This is an extremely important
inquiry, and your rapid attention would be helpful.
4. DOJ Procurement of CALR services.
On September 28, 1994, DOJ published a request for proposal
(RFP) for CALR services. This procurement has several anti-
competitive features.
a) The RFP lists an extremely large set of "mandatory"
databases. These include such items as federal district court
decisions dating back to 1789, statutes, judicial opinions and
court rules from all 50 states plus several territories, and
large amounts of administrative law. The information must be
available by January 1995. Only WESTLAW and LEXIS have databases
of these items. Some items are privately copyrighted, such as
the State of Texas statutes, which are copyrighted by West.
b) The RFP requires a blue book citation for all the mandatory
items. According to Harvard Law Professor Virginia Wise, it will
be impossible to meet this requirement without access to the West
page numbers. At present, only WESTLAW and LEXIS have permission
to use the West page numbers on these types of services.
c) The RFP allows the bidders to bundle the mandatory
databases, which can only be provided by West and LEXIS, with
optional databases and services, including many value added and
niche market products. Moreover, the RFP encourages a fixed
price contract, so that any value added or niche market products
that are bundled with the mandatory databases will be available
to DOJ officials at a zero marginal cost. This will make it
difficult or impossible for many publishers to sell products and
services to DOJ unless they are a partner with West or Lexis.
This gives West and Lexis a great deal of power to extract
concessionary terms from the publishers who cannot provide the
mandatory databases.
Copies of the RFP can be obtained from Mark Selweski at
202/307-1968 or on the Internet from gopher.usdoj.gov.
If you believe that this RFP discourages competition in the
CALR market, write Attorney General Janet Reno and your own
Congressional delegation (your two senators and member of the
House of Representatives). If possible, provide copies of this
correspondence to the Taxpayer Assets Project (P.O. Box 19367,
Washington, DC 20036, fax 202/234-5176, tap@tap.org), so that we
can share it with a wider audience, including journalists.
5. The Taxpayer Assets Project
The Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP) was created by Ralph Nader
in 1988 to monitor the management and sale of government
property, including government information. TAP was instrumental
in the passage of the GPO Access Act, the decision to put the
SEC's EDGAR filings on the Internet and several other public
access initiatives. The Director of TAP is James Love (w.
202/387-8030; h. 610-658-0880; f. 202/234-5176; jamie@tap.org).
Thank you for taking the time to think about these issue.
James Love
Director, Taxpayer Assets Project
Appendix
Some important news stories about the CALR market.
Gary Wolf, "Who Owns the Law," Wired Magazine, May, 1994.
Susan Hansen, "Fending Off the Future," American Lawyer, September 1994.
Tim O'Brien, "Small Companies Want Part of $50 Million Justice Pact," Wall
Street Journal, September 6, 1994.
Tim O'Brien, "Computer-Aided Legal Research Subject of Probe," Wall Street
Journal, October 3, 1994.
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