LexisNexis Review: Online Legal Research

Lawyerist Rating for Lexis
Rating Breakdown
Our Rating: 3.9/5
Our rating is based on our subjective judgment. Use our resources—including our rating and community ratings and reviews—to find the best fit for your firm.
Community Rating: 1.6/5 (based on 7 ratings)
The community rating is based on the average of the community reviews below.
Composite Rating: 3.1/5
The composite rating is a weighted average of our rating and the community ratings below.
3.1/5
What is LexisNexis?
LexisNexis is one of the veterans of the legal research industry. As such, they boast an impressive catalog of materials and tools. Law firms in the market for online legal research and review, will want to look at Lexis or Lexis+—if only for comparison. Although, LexisNexis’s pricing might scare off those looking for a low cost solution.
Starting Cost: $153/user/month (State Basic 1-year contract)
- Secondary Sources
- Citation Check
- Integrations
- Expensive
- No Open API
- Not for Solos
LexisNexis Review: Online Legal Research Features
Customer Experience & Support
/5
Price & Value
/5
Security
/5
Innovation & Future-Proofing
/5
CHEAPER FORMS ELSEWHERE
Fraudulent practices by Lexis
Lexis is the best in the Biz
Worst experience ever
Within months, my client representative said I’d be better served expanding my subscription and save money doing so (because I had been paying for out of subscription cases, ala carte).
Was sent a promotional addendum with no pricing grid and signed the addendum. Saw later, when I contacted customer service, that the pricing grid (not part of my DocuSign receipt) near doubled by pricing and extended my subscription.
I only wanted to dump one product and continue the other contracts. They wouldn’t hear it. And, they wouldn’t escalate my matter past the base account representative level.
These people are deceptive and scummy.
Terrible product.
LexisNexis = Total Inept Accounting, Minimal Service, Overpriced
LexisNexis - Weak, Ineffective, expensive, exhausting
Don’t waste your money with this product.
The search:
Intermittent and does not give continuous results. The natural search engine is heavily lacking – you need to be a Boolean pro to pull up anything relevant and even then it feels like a shot in the dark. There are many times where we’ve called in to get help on the search and spent too much time with Representatives only to get nowhere. The poor reps even had trouble using it. I found myself having to go to the public law library to use Westlaw instead.
Practice Advisor:
The contracts provided in Practice Advisor are weak and not very relevant. LexisNexis gives limited access on a section basis. There are also a lot of contracts that are not even available. For example, I am subscribed to the business section, I would search for a Sales Agreement and would get results for partnership agreements and LLC operating from other states. Try typing in anything more complicated than that and your better off just writing the contract yourself.
Courtlink:
Courtlink is another battle. Very Inaccurate. It barely pulls cases when searching a litigants name. I would search for cases I knew existed and they would not populate unless I used the exact case number. Pulling complaints from federal and state dockets is hit and miss. Sometimes the load screen will run for half an hour with nothing. I would give up occasionally and go straight to pacer or state court websites to pull dockets and documents. I simply cannot rely on this product.
Practice Guides:
The Mathew Bender practice guide are hard to access and search and give limited guidance compared to Rutters.
In conclusion, I find myself crossing my fingers when I login to LexisNexis hoping that maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for. Save yourself a lot of time and headache, spend a few extra dollars and go with WestLaw or any other research tool.