Law Students Demand Schools Cut Ties to Legal Databases Over Connections to ICE
“The End the Contract Coalition is petitioning each of their affiliate schools to end their use of LexisNexis and Westlaw.”
The left thinks enforcing our immigration laws is somehow racist and not just a normal function of a country.
Campus Reform reports:
Law students unhappy they use same legal databases as ICE
Students at 23 law schools across America are demanding their universities cut ties with two major legal databases because their parent companies share data with Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
The End the Contract Coalition is pushing law schools, including Georgetown Law, Duke Law, NYU Law, and others, to stop using the popular legal research tools LexisNexis and Westlaw.
Both companies aggregate data including legal briefs, motions, statutes, and case judgements, making them critical resources for law students. ICE can also analyze data obtained from these companies including location information, license plate numbers, utility bills, and criminal and employment records, as Inside Higher Ed reports.
The End the Contract Coalition is petitioning each of their affiliate schools to end their use of LexisNexis and Westlaw. It is also petitioning LexisNexis to end its $16.8 million contract with ICE. That petition states, “We will not stop educating people about what your company is doing to immigrants and your role in furthering mass deportation in this country. Detention and deportation ruins peoples [sic] lives and contributes to generational trauma and destabilization.”
The Coalition held a “Week of Action” in October, during which students held demonstrations, including a protest at the LexisNexis headquarters, according to Inside Higher Ed. It has published flyers and stickers for member organizations to use, many of which bear the slogan “Abolish ICE.”
Separating from Westlaw and LexisNexis may be more complicated than students think. According to The Hill, these programs are used by many employers in the legal field, and students “know they will have to master them to be able to succeed in the field.”
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Comments
Would anyone bring their car to a mechanic that refuses to use mechanic’s tools based on some philosophical difference with the manufacturer? If one did, expectations of a good repair should be adjusted downward by a mile or so.
Lawyers have been utilizing Westlaw/Lexis as primary research tools for over 2 decades, and law students are expected to master one (or both) in their first year of school. A lawyer of any vintage that does not know how to use these tools is not a lawyer I’d hire. I’m in private practice, never go to court, and I use a West product daily . In my opinion, all other competing products I have seen are nowhere near the refinement or sophistication of the West/Lexis products. Not using West/Lexis in favor of another product or good old fashioned physical book work would result in many more hours of work (and much higher fees to the client), and the work product itself may suffer.
This is like a secretarial school boycotting Microsoft Word, or an engineering school banning the CRC “Rubber Bible.” You don’t want to hire from such a clown college.
Good luck on getting any legal research done–assuming the current crop of law students actually research anything. Most law firms use these and expect their employees to be able to use them as well–unless these idiots don’t care if they get jobs and want to lay around and whine
It is consistent with their feelings trumps logic approach to everything.
I would demand they find a new school…..and career.
“There’s always barber college.” – Dalton, “Road House”
Hearing all this whining coming from the “students” of so-called colleges and universities is convincing me more and more that my generation (born 1950s) are the last adults in the United States.
I know. Who’d a thunk it?
These future members of the bars clearly wish the government to not obey the law of the United States with respect to immigration laws-this used to be a question asked by character committees for lawyers awaiting admission