The Frugal Law Student » Lexis

How to Make Money While in Law School: Westlaw or Lexis Rep

Brett McKay — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:56:12 +0000

Being frugal will only get you so far in your quest to mitigate your law school debt. You also need to earn some extra income, but the pressures of law school can make that difficult. However, one of the most flexible ways to earn income while in school is becoming a Westlaw or Lexis Nexis Rep.

Westlaw or Lexis student reps are in charge of promoting their respective companies product. Whenever there is a training course, their job is to get as many people to come. Additionally, they spend a few hours a day in the computer labs answering other students’ questions about legal research.

Luckily, I snagged a job for next year with Westlaw. I’m really excited about it. They pay is pretty good and the hours are extremely flexible. Each rep puts in about 10 hours a week in the computer lab. I’ll be learning more about Westlaw which will help out in my career down the line.

Check with your school’s Westlaw or Lexis Rep to see if they plan on hiring for next year. You won’t regret it.

[tags]Westlaw, Lexis Nexis[/tags]

The Monetary Value of Lexis Points

Brett McKay — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:36:00 +0000

This is an awesome post. Legal Andrew did a write up on the monetary value of Lexis points. It comes out roughly to $0.015 a point. He then goes on to explain how you can easily earn $35 in an hour by using different Lexis services.

I’m a big fan of Lexis and Westlaw points. It blows my mind that there are many law students who don’t take advantage of the stuff you can get just be looking up a citation.

Check it out!

Westlaw and Lexis Points Update

Brett McKay — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 03:56:00 +0000

This week was a good week for Westlaw points. I attended three training courses that awarded me a total of 450 Westlaw points. The trainer even provided free Chick-fil-a at one the courses. I ate the crap out of the chicken nugget platter.

I’ve started to take Lexis Points more seriously. While the points are hard to earn, the possibility of a free dinner at Chili’s motivates me to do their Fact or Fiction trivia each day. It’s kind of a pain to have to go through their research system to get points; however, I admit that I’ve learned more about Lexis by doing it.

Westlaw Points: 4,820
Lexis Points: 520 (Boo…)

Use Your law library

Brett McKay — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:18:00 +0000

One of the least used resources at law school is the law library. I’m amazed at the stuff you can find in there, especially when it comes to supplements.

I’ve had many helpful 2L’s and 3L’s suggest which supplements I should buy to help me prepare for exams. The problem is that if I were to actually buy all the supplements they suggest, I would be out about $1,000. Several of my fellow 1L’s have actually gone out and bought all the hornbooks for their classes. Not frugal.

You can find all supplements at you law school library. Most of them tend to be in the library reserve. After every class, I’ll go the library and check out my favorite supplement. (Right now my favorites are Examples and Explanations and the Understanding Series by Lexis.) I’ll read the chapter on the section we just covered in class and answer any practice questions. Total cost: $0.

I plan on taking advantage of all the multiple choice practice question books that the library has on reserve while I start preparing for exams.

Lesson: Don’t buy supplements. They’re expensive and you can use them for free at your library

Westlaw and Lexis Points

The Frugal Law Student — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:17:00 +0000

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.