When is print better than online?

Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog writes:

Generally, the dis­cus­sion has tended to lean toward the idea that online research will trump print research due to the con­ve­nience of the for­mat and how the upcom­ing gen­er­a­tion will pre­fer online over print media.

via 3 Geeks and a Law Blog: Legal Research Metrics & Ethics: $499 a Year Or $825 an Hour?.

But Lambert points out that many researchers have dis­cov­ered that in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions and with cer­tain kinds of mate­r­ial, even young lawyers are dis­cov­er­ing that online access — at least, as deliv­ered by the cur­rent providers — just doesn’t work as well.

Cost is a major ele­ment of this: online access to a trea­tise (a com­pendium of legal research, opin­ion, etc. that’s an extremely use­ful resource for under­stand­ing an area of the law before div­ing into more specifics) can run to around $825 an hour, while the print ver­sion of the same trea­tise costs $499 per year (or less, if you don’t mind out-​​of-​​date trea­tises). But it’s more than sim­ply the straight-​​up cost of access — print research can be more effec­tive and time-​​efficient for many tasks:

Then along comes a reces­sion and all of a sud­den it becomes appar­ent that online research is “expen­sive” and for some forms of research — specif­i­cally trea­tise research — online research doesn’t work very well. Take a poll at one of the prac­tice group meet­ings you attend and ask the attor­neys point blank: “When research­ing in trea­tises, do you find you are more effi­cient using the print ver­sion of a trea­tise, or the online ver­sion of a trea­tise?” I’d almost give you 2 to 1 odds that the print ver­sion will be the pre­ferred method.

via 3 Geeks and a Law Blog: Legal Research Metrics & Ethics: $499 a Year Or $825 an Hour?

Myself, I find that online case-​​law research so much more effec­tive than the print alter­na­tive that I strongly sup­port elim­i­nat­ing the print ver­sions of deci­sions com­pletely. There is sim­ply no point in fill­ing libraries with dead trees hold­ing out-​​of-​​date case law that’s dif­fi­cult and time-​​consuming to cross-​​reference.

However, trea­tises are a dif­fer­ent story. The longer, more in-​​depth for­mat, com­bined the the ben­e­fits of brows­ing vs. search­ing when it comes to broad areas of the law, make the print ver­sions far more attrac­tive than their cur­rent online counterparts.

This is essen­tially the same rea­son why I do not read books on my com­puter screen: it is uncom­fort­able and limiting.

The Kindle and other e-​​readers sub­stan­tially reduce this argu­ment, how­ever, and that is exactly what I see for the future of trea­tises. The ben­e­fits of “online” access (espe­cially link­ing) sim­ply do not out­weigh the per-​​hour charges or the inef­fi­ciency of search vs. browse. Electronic read­ers, with one-​​time charges like print, add effec­tive elec­tronic search­ing while pre­serv­ing much (but not all — flip­ping back and forth between sec­tions, or hav­ing mul­ti­ple vol­umes open at once are still not pos­si­ble) help bridge this gap.

My pre­dic­tion: trea­tises will move to elec­tronic media, and “online” access via LexisNexis or Westlaw will be reduced to quick scans and data­base searches, with researchers then tak­ing it “offline” to their Kindle. (Of course, the “online” vs. “offline” dis­tinc­tion is inac­cu­rate, since the Kindle has built-​​in wire­less net­work­ing — so we need to find a bet­ter term to cap­ture the distinction.)