 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
Bar News - October 1, 2000 Lexis Responds to Librarians’ Concerns By: Jeff Monroe, Eastern Region Publisher, Lexis Publishing I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the letter from the Association of New Hampshire Law Librarians addressing issues related to our products. We take all concerns seriously. Several of the people who work on our New Hampshire products have experience back to the days of Equity Publishing, and we all take great pride in the service long provided to the New Hampshire legal community. Below I address the specific concerns raised by the Association. Moore’s Federal Practice. I have spoken with the editors of this publication who tell me that Moore’s will include a revised note sheet in its December release containing the minor, non-substantive changes to the proposed rule. It is important to note, however, that the changes did not relate to the current version of Rule 26, so no one who relied on the version printed in Moore’s Federal Practice would have been placed at risk. In the meantime, Congress could still act to make further changes in these rules before they actually take effect on December 1, so any proposed amendments are speculative. LEXIS New Hampshire Court Rules Annotated. LEXIS will send a supplement free to all of our Court Rules subscribers in early November containing the updated court rules, about the time this issue of the New Hampshire Bar News reaches its subscribers. We immediately placed production of a replacement supplement on a fast track several weeks ago, when we heard of the missing federal rules amendments. These rule changes, which extend the period to pay fees and set new requirements for binding the appendices, among other things, should not have seriously compromised any attorney practicing in the federal courts. LEXIS New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated. The Association’s statement that “annotations and history for the last three years have been omitted” is inaccurate. We have full history cites (also known as Source Notes) for every section in the LEXIS New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated. Although amendment notes from several years prior to 2000 are not provided, these notes do not provide full history, but merely an explanation of a particular year’s amendment. Our discussions with New Hampshire attorneys told us that these notes are often too general to be of much practical use. We believe that New Hampshire attorneys have the critical information they need through the Source Notes to reconstruct changes to the statutes, but we expect to include Amendment Notes in all future publications. Prior to publishing the 2000 Supplement, LEXIS reread and re-analyzed the case annotations for the past few years. We believe our efforts produced a superior product, as our experienced attorney-editors read all cases against the statutes as they exist today, and eliminated unnecessary annotations. In any production of this magnitude some annotations may be overlooked, as reasonable minds may differ about the appropriateness of including a case’s holding under a certain statute. If New Hampshire legal professionals wish to suggest specific cases be annotated under particular sections, we will gratefully listen to their reasoning. We cannot replicate the informed opinion of our subscribers. LEXIS believes its New Hampshire products to be the best legal products anywhere. A staff experienced in New Hampshire law produces these products. They are the most timely products available, and, as of this writing, LEXIS is the only source for fully updated New Hampshire statutes. I think we could all agree that legal professionals using current legislation are at less risk than those using old statutes. It is safe to say that no legal publisher has ever produced a completely error-free product. We continue to strive hard to come as close as possible to this goal, and appreciate the efforts of our subscribers to let us know when errors slip through the cracks. But we do not plan to stop there. We intend to continuously improve our New Hampshire code, and I promise you that LEXIS will remain publishers of the New Hampshire RSA of choice into the future!
|
|
Home | About the Bar | For Members | For the Public | Legal Links | Publications | Online Store New Hampshire Bar Association |
