johnl@ima.UUCP (01/26/85)
The other large legal data base is Lexis from Mead Data Central. It differs from Westlaw in that Westlaw stores abstracts of cases, while Lexis actually has the full text of court decisions. Lexis only has one search technique -- full text search for words and phrases. Lexis has a sister service Nexis which stores encyclopedias, trade journals, and the like. Lexis isn't cheap, though. It runs $60-$90/hour. Until recently, if you wanted to use Lexis, you had to rent an official Lexis/Nexis terminal from Mead, since they seemed to be afraid that if people could call in from random terminals they'd download Lexis' umpteen gigabyte database to their PCs and stop calling Lexis. I gather this paranoia has abated somewhat. John Levine, ima!johnl