WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENT

Workplace Environment: LexisNexis



Workplace Environment: LexisNexis

Introduction

This study chooses LexisNexis as the case to examine the history of access rights because LexisNexis is one of the dominant legal information providers in the market, with a history almost as long as that of digital legal information itself. As the first commercial full text legal online service, LexisNexis has exerted a powerful influence over computerassisted legal research (CALR), which in the 1960s and 1970s was a new way of accessing legal information.

As a powerful actor in today's legal information market, LexisNexis continues to influence access rights to digital legal information (Agnew 2008,p. 65). Using LexisNexis as the case does not mean that its longtime major competitor West Publishing Company was less important or powerful. On the contrary, West has been the most prominent legal publisher in the U.S. and the dominant force in the digital legal information market. Lexis and West have been engaged in an intense competition for the online legal information service market since the late 1970s, and West's online legal information service Westlaw has continually jockeyed with Lexis's services for market share in the professional legal market and within law schools. Lexis however is the primary provider of legal materials to general academic libraries through its Academic Universe product West did not create a comparable service.

While this study describes key elements of the competition between West and Lexis, it focuses on Lexis because it aims to examine the expansion of the legal information user base to non-law-school faculty and students. Moreover, Lexis was an earlier digital legal information service than Westlaw, and Lexis was born digital it was an innovative, technology-driven upstart that competed against a dominant publisher and the traditional information access methods in a print environment. This is a path that many of today's information providers are trying to follow. In addition, the reliance on the publicdomain legal information in Lexis's early years makes it an especially interesting case to study in the current information environment in which open access/open knowledge movement grows increasingly important.

Mission

To provide an environment that accepts, respects and encourages individual differences. Systemic and behavioral barriers to the development and success of all employees are removed as soon as they are encountered (Bodie 2006 ,p. 885).

Objectives

To integrate diversity with all aspects of recruiting, retaining, rewarding and developing our employees will result in the organizational effectiveness necessary to maximize our business results and ensure a sustainable competitive advantage (Booth 2005 ,p. 459). To leverage diversity by:

Recognizing the changes taking place in the workforce and in our customer base. Creating and fostering an environment where all employees are encouraged to develop and allowed contribute at their maximum level. Recognizing and eliminating exclusionary practices. Incorporating inclusionary practices that motivate and empower all employees.

Practical Issues

It is precisely the essence of historical inquiry the selection of relevant sources, historical facts, and significant interpretations that prevents historical knowledge from being truly objective (Tosh 2002, 178). Nor can historians produce a historical narrative that is one hundred percent ...