You’re Overpaying For Legal Research

How much does legal research cost? Nobody really knows. The legacy research providers always negotiate secrecy about the price into their contracts to prevent this information from getting out.

But we do know one thing for certain: Legal research costs a lot. The fact that the big incumbents try to hide the pricing says it all: They want to negotiate one-on-one with all 48,000 law firms in America to extract every penny possible.

Making matters worse is that major research providers will present content not covered in your plan. When you click on it, you incur additional, unexpected charges.

Secrecy and unexpected charges is an approach that’s good for the big research providers, but a bad deal for you. If you run a small law firm, every dollar counts. You’re running a business, and don’t have an extra $2,000 per attorney to needlessly spend on legal research.

So how much does legal research actually cost?

Since Casetext is a new legal research company challenging the old guard, we’ve investigated the question of how much legal research costs deeply.

What we found using public data and word-of-mouth (basically, people complaining publicly about the costs of legal research) was stunning. Legal research costs from the traditional providers vary dramatically, even when the subscription coverage is the same.

Generally, the prices we’ve seen from traditional providers range from $1,200 and $14,000 per year per attorney (a nearly 12x difference!), with an average around $3,600 per year per attorney. Some attorneys have negotiated $600 per year for the first year, but get locked in to $2,000+ per year contracts for at least two more years.

This implies that there’s substantial wiggle room. 

1. Negotiate a lower rate

You’re a lawyer. You negotiate settlements with opposing counsel, hourly rates with your clients, and probably too much with your significant other. So negotiate with your research provider!

The most important ingredient in a successful negotiation is leverage. If the legal research provider thinks you are stuck with them, they won’t budge on pricing.

So give yourself some leverage. Make clear that you’re willing to leave (even if you’d prefer to stay). If you’re willing to walk away, then they make themselves more amenable to a conversation. 

2. Get less (and be careful what you click)

One of the key factors for the wide discrepancy of traditional legal research costs is what you get in your plan.

If you only need Montana state case law (not federal), no treatises, no statutes, etc. — you can only pay for that. Your costs will be lower.

This does come with two substantial pitfalls, though. First, you’re handicapping yourself against opposing counsel who likely has access to all the law (the presiding judge certainly will). Maybe your state court hasn’t ruled on an issue, but you can find persuasive authority from another jurisdiction? If you don’t find it, opposing counsel will, and your ability to build a convincing case will be undermined. As a zealous advocate, you need to be able to go where the research takes you, not just where your subscription plan allows.

Second, the less that’s covered in your plan, the easier it is to incur “ancillary” or “out-of-plan” charges. You have to be really, really careful what you click or you’ll find yourself in this sort of situation: 

3. Switch research providers

If you’re one of the thousands of attorneys that’s done with costly (not to mention, tech-backwards and hard-to-use) traditional legal research tools, it may be time to consider switching.

The key is to find a legal research provider that will save you substantially more money, has the content you need, and is easy to use and learn, so you don’t need to spend a lot of time getting acquainted during the transition. While you’re considering the switch, you can use it as time to explore new advancements in technology, like artificial intelligence, that are being developed by other companies and make research more effective and efficient.

We’ve made this really easy if you want to switch to Casetext. If you’re stuck in a long-term contract with a traditional research provider, you can get Casetext for free until your contract expires when you sign up for an annual plan.

But whether you switch to Casetext or another provider, the savings are usually strongest when you switch. More importantly, you get to put bad business practices, secret prices, limited research and high costs behind you (and not look back).

---

Jake Heller is the co-founder and CEO of Casetext. Before starting Casetext, Jake was a litigator at Ropes & Gray, President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Clerk on a federal appeals court. He’s a Silicon Valley native, and has been programming since childhood. For more information about Casetext’s program that makes Casetext free when you switch from other legal research providers, click here.