Westlaw and Lexis Points


Law School	Frugality	Personal Finance	Productivity	Career

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The Frugal Law Student is always on the lookout for ways to get free stuff. When I found about Westlaw and Lexis points during orientation, I jumped on the point collecting bandwagon.

The idea of the point system is basically patterned off of crack dealers. Both companies offer rewards to students who use their service. The goal is to form product allegiance to their product.

Westlaw by far has the best reward system. All you have to do is sign on and you get 10 points. After you sign off, you can answer a super easy question about Westlaw service to earn 15 more points. Part of daily routine is to sign, look up a random legal word Black’s dictionary, sign-0ff, and answer the trivia question. Boom! 25 points daily points. Westlaw also sends out e-mails that offer 200 points just for opening them. Sometimes the e-mails have bonus trivia questions worth 100 points. The Westlaw classes also offer tons of points for attending. They take about an hour, but are worth up to 400 points each. (Plus you learn some cool research skills). I’m up to 3, 700 points so far. I’m thinking about using my points to buy Mrs. Frugal Law Student a nice handbag for Christmas and the only thing it will cost me was 2 minutes of my day. What a deal.

Lexis points suck. You don’t earn anything for signing on. Instead, you have to complete these dumb “Passport” quizzes. They take up insane amounts of time to do. Even when you complete them, you don’t get many points. Additionaly, Lexis training points pale in comparison to Westlaw. I think if you attended a Westlaw workshop at my school, you got 100 points. Lame. However, I’m still trying to earn points on Lexis because you can exchange your points for gift certificates to Chili’s or amazon.com. If I earn enough, I can take out Mrs. Frugal Law Student for dinner and eat the crap out of a Ground Peppercorn Burger and Southwest Eggrolls. And it won’t cost me a dime.

Bottom line: If you’re not already doing so, get serious about Westlaw and Lexis points. It doesn’t take much time and the pay off can be good.

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The Frugal Law Student | 29 Oct 06 | Lexis, Westlaw, Free Stuff

5 Comments

Andrew on 30.10.2006 at 21:02 (Reply)

I couldn’t agree more! My espresso machine just came; got it with my Westlaw points. I usually get DVDs for my wife with the Lexis points. Oh, I also got my iPod from Westlaw last year. Free stuff is awesome!

One thing I would disagree on, though, is the utility of Lexis. It is harder to earn Lexis points, but points are worth more on Lexis (i.e., you can get more for your points - at least, a more diverse selection of things).
The Frugal Law Student on 30.10.2006 at 21:25 (Reply)

Good point on the Lexis rewards. I like the idea of being able to trade points in for gift certificates at Amazon. That definitely gives you more diversity.
Anonymous on 01.12.2006 at 20:20 (Reply)

I’ve been saving points on Westlaw since I was a 1L just to see how much I could get. I wasn’t even that serious about it until I saw my friend got a free nano. Then I got down to business and since then I’ve amassed 17,110 points. Almost enough for the 30G video ipod. I’m going to wait until graduation in May and see where I’m at. The 80G is 23,000 points. Will I make it? The lesson is amass those points!
links for 2007-09-08 | The Frugal Law Student on 08.09.2007 at 22:35

[…] Westlaw and Lexis Points | The Frugal Law Student […]
RoSco on 17.09.2007 at 22:31 (Reply)

Apparently, the points you get vary from school to school. My school had a very generous Lexis rewards program, while Westlaw more-or-less ignored us, having already been firmly entrenched in the state’s industry as the go-to for online legal research. Anyway, I ended up with a ton of Lexis points and used them to buy $125 worth of $25 Macy’s gift cards. I then gave away the gift cards at Christmas time.

I found out (too late to accumulate enough points) that one of the prizes with Westlaw was a $50 certificate off of the Bar/Bri bar review course. I think they’d let you accumulate a maximum of three certificates, but you’d need to have an ABA membership number.

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The Frugal Law Student is for anyone trying to mitigate their crippling debt. Me? I'm trying to mitigate the tens of thousands of dollars I've taken on in student loans. Join me on my quest to avoid taking on more debt, paying off some of the debt I have, and trying to survive law school while doing it. Read more about The Frugal Law Student, check out some of the best articles, or become a subscriber via RSS feed or via email

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