Top Law Schools

So I had a research assignment and I apparently went outside the plan too much and cost the firm quite a bit of money. I realize I messed up but the plan’s parameters were never explained to me.

I actually called them myself and they took some of the charges away but it was still costly to the firm.

How screwed am I?

Anonymous User wrote:So I had a research assignment and I apparently went outside the plan too much and cost the firm quite a bit of money. I realize I messed up but the plan’s parameters were never explained to me.

I actually called them myself and they took some of the charges away but it was still costly to the firm.

How screwed am I?

I thought there's a prompt telling you that XYZ document is outside your plan? At least this is the case for me.

How much $ did you cost the firm? I wouldn't sweat it if it's under $1k.

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:So I had a research assignment and I apparently went outside the plan too much and cost the firm quite a bit of money. I realize I messed up but the plan’s parameters were never explained to me.

I actually called them myself and they took some of the charges away but it was still costly to the firm.

How screwed am I?

I thought there's a prompt telling you that XYZ document is outside your plan? At least this is the case for me.

How much $ did you cost the firm? I wouldn't sweat it if it's under $1k.

I believe at the end the firm had to eat close to 2k... I guess lesson learned.

could be worse. when I was a 1L, someone in my law school had gotten no-offered from their Summer position because they ran up something like a fifty thousand bill on a simple research assignment

FND wrote:could be worse. when I was a 1L, someone in my law school had gotten no-offered from their Summer position because they ran up something like a fifty thousand bill on a simple research assignment

How is that possible? They spent like 200+ hours, so like 5 weeks of their summer on just that one project? And I’d guess they didn’t get no-offered because they cost the firm money, but because they blew 5+ weeks on a single project.

dianetics08 wrote:

FND wrote:could be worse. when I was a 1L, someone in my law school had gotten no-offered from their Summer position because they ran up something like a fifty thousand bill on a simple research assignment

How is that possible? They spent like 200+ hours, so like 5 weeks of their summer on just that one project? And I’d guess they didn’t get no-offered because they cost the firm money, but because they blew 5+ weeks on a single project.

They're talking about research billing, not client billing (not that SA work ever gets billed to the client to begin with). You can rack up thousands of dollars of expenses on Westlaw/Lexis in a very short time if you don't know what you're doing and start viewing pages outside your firm's established plan.

It's one of the reasons that you pay attention when the firm tells you to go to separate Westlaw and Lexis trainings. It's not that they think you don't know how to research; they want you to know how the services work in the real world.

cavalier1138 wrote:

dianetics08 wrote:

FND wrote:could be worse. when I was a 1L, someone in my law school had gotten no-offered from their Summer position because they ran up something like a fifty thousand bill on a simple research assignment

How is that possible? They spent like 200+ hours, so like 5 weeks of their summer on just that one project? And I’d guess they didn’t get no-offered because they cost the firm money, but because they blew 5+ weeks on a single project.

They're talking about research billing, not client billing (not that SA work ever gets billed to the client to begin with). You can rack up thousands of dollars of expenses on Westlaw/Lexis in a very short time if you don't know what you're doing and start viewing pages outside your firm's established plan.

It's one of the reasons that you pay attention when the firm tells you to go to separate Westlaw and Lexis trainings. It's not that they think you don't know how to research; they want you to know how the services work in the real world.

This, Westlaw at my firm cost like $90 a "click" outside of the "free" zone. So glad I'm in a transactional group and don't have to navigate the cost of research associated with litigation.

To clarify, are we talking about market amlaw50 biglaw? Or are we talking smaller firm here? I ask because this concept is just somewhat foreign to me. Occasionally I see options to spend an extra 52 to get some relatively obscure source, but other than that I’m just not really understanding how this might happen at a large firm.

So that’s the basis for my question about the firm

biglaw. I believe it was a V20 firm, but if not, then only just outside

FND wrote:biglaw. I believe it was a V20 firm, but if not, then only just outside

What type of sources were you researching? Was there not the “this will be 63 dollars” warning attached?

objctnyrhnr wrote:

FND wrote:biglaw. I believe it was a V20 firm, but if not, then only just outside

What type of sources were you researching? Was there not the “this will be 63 dollars” warning attached?

it wasn't me, it was someone else at the law school. The disaster served as a warning for everyone else

At least on Lexis Advance, I get a warning where I have to click a box "Get It Now ($) for $xx" before I can view something out of plan.

If you clicked past something like that, I think you own the mistake. If there's no clear warning I'd be surprised, but I'd also wonder how unknown charges could be enforced?

albanach wrote:At least on Lexis Advance, I get a warning where I have to click a box "Get It Now ($) for $xx" before I can view something out of plan.

If you clicked past something like that, I think you own the mistake. If there's no clear warning I'd be surprised, but I'd also wonder how unknown charges could be enforced?

Seconded all around

Yeah, I heard a lot about these horror stories in my legal writing class, but when I did work for a firm I was basically told it was no longer an issue because of the plan they had, and I don’t remember ever having to remember the ways to be thrifty. And now if something is outside my employer’s plan I can’t even click through to it - it’s not an option without approval from somewhere else.

That said, there are issues when even using within-plan materials, where some searches following up an original search generate an additional charge and others don’t (like if you click through links from a case there’s no charge but if you search for the linked case there is, I think?) If a firm doesn’t have unlimited access within the databases they do subscribe to, and does still get charged by the search, that could run up charges easily. And if the OP’s $2k is a big issue then it might be a smaller firm that has a less expansive subscription.