Who rides so late through night and wind?
It is the student, tired and thinned.
She brings a key tucked in her arm,
For she was told it works a charm—

To breach a door that’s down below,
Where only mold and spiders grow.
The door! Is it true, is it really there,
A portal to a secret lair?

Deep under Wood Hall’s classroom maze,
Icy darkness met her gaze.
She forged on forward ‘though in doubt,
Would Providence help her get out?

At last—plain view—she swiftly saw, The open door, a gaping maw. What can that mean, who’s gone before? The resident, a thing of yore? She darted through—can’t turn back now, She would unmask the sacred cow: Rumors would soon be deflated, She’d learn how grades are calculated. Down a hall and ‘round a bend, She had not time to apprehend, The spectacle of which she saw, A random towering thing of awe.

‘Twas tall and strange the apparatus,
Curious spheres inside a lattice.
Clink and clank, they tumbled well,
And formed a curve in the shape of a bell.

The grading machine did distract
Her from the creature’s sneak attack—
Oh the basement shook, the rodents fled,
Their fight provoked a mighty dread,

She fathomed then, ‘neath the queer glow,
This was a mistake, ab initio.
And as she fell, the last she saw,
Three A-pluses in Con Law!

Copyright 2008, Robb Shecter, All rights reserved.

LexisNexis

+1 Ability to request documents in single-column. I find this much more legible for fast reading and annotation.

+1 Ability to request documents with search terms highlighted. A single-column, keyword-highlighted pdf is awesome for fast reading and research.

+1 The online legal dictionary is accessible from the front page, and gives results with one click.

-1 Doesn’t work with Firefox (latest version, Mac.) So I use Safari, which seems to do fine.

+1 The research log (“history”) is much easier to use than Westlaw’s (“research trail”). One example: I did research in both systems an hour ago. I then logged out of both. Now I’m back online, and I log into both systems. I wanted to see the most recent items I had pulled up. In Westlaw, this required four mouse clicks and screens to wait for. In LexisNexis, this required one.

Westlaw

-1 Annoying single-threaded retrieval and notification system. Click a button too soon, and you get the dialog window, “Please wait while Westlaw completes the current task [Ok]”

-1 Westlaw has Black’s Law Dictionary online. This would be a huge plus. Except that the user interface renders it unusable. Searching for a single term can require several forwards and backwards clicks and scrolling through multiple pages searching in vain for a correct sub-entry.

+1 Can enter citations without spaces or punctuation. This is pretty convenient. LexisNexis’s input is a bit pickier.