LawMoose Comes in Two Reference Levels:
Public Edition and Enhanced Subscriber Edition
LawMoose Reference now comes in two levels, a Public Edition for the public and a much larger, Enhanced Edition tailored especially for legal subscribers.
The Public Edition
The Public Edition of our Legal Reference Libraries and our Search Engine are published for your personal or academic reference. They are free to use (but not copy or "borrow" from). No subscription is required to view the Public Edition.
Just be sure not to keep LawMoose to yourself. Please tell your friends, family, co-workers, and colleagues about LawMoose and its commitment to the original vision of an easy-to-use Web of valuable knowledge.
Public Interest Usage vs. Commercial Usage
We aim to serve the public interest as well as private interests, and so we put it to you this way. If you are a lawyer in private practice, or working inside a private, non-profit, or governmental organization, we make this simple request.
If you use the Public Edition of LawMoose for reference for free, please participate in the same spirit by not charging anyone else for the time you spend using LawMoose. View it as our mutual way of improving our community. We help you to help those who can't afford to pay you to help them or for whom you volunteer your services.
Making Commercial Use of LawMoose
If you practice law, we hope you will want to go further, to use LawMoose for commercial, i.e., "billable purposes." Using LawMoose can enhance your capability to provide services and the efficiency with which you provide them.
LawMoose reference is not the same as traditional legal reference. It is about using the legal and law practice-related resources on the Web in a powerful, integrated way.
On many occasions you may find this can eliminate the necessity of spending much, much more for the information and ideas you need in the course of your delivery of services and the crafting of solutions to your clients' problems.
If you are inclined to agree with these basic positions, we have an even better deal for you than the option to use our Public Edition without charge and without charging.
Beyond the Library ... to the Law Practice Web You'll Find in Our Enhanced Edition
Subscribe as a reference level participant in our Minnesota Legal Web NetworkSM, and we'll give you our very best legal and law-practice related reference content -- many extra topics and many, many extra resources, all selected for their particular relevance to lawyers and those who work for lawyers. Many are uniquely Minnesotan, and many more are just plain valuable in general to anyone practicing law in Minnesota.
Whereas our Public Edition features "Legal Reference Libraries", our Enhanced Edition goes further in scope and quantity of instant knowledge capabilities. There are literally tens of thousands more resources in our subscriber level Law Practice Web than in our public edition and 2000 more topics. Plus you get MooseBoostSM, our just-in-time legal brain booster and search assistant.
We don't say a lot about it publicly. Why? Because it's amazingly useful to lawyers and getting better very, very rapidly. It's no longer in "stealth mode", but it is not something we show off to every casual curiosity seeker or competitor either.
From the beginning, it has been intended strictly for subscribing firms as a way to turbo-charge their use of the Web, make their lawyers more effective thinkers and issue spotters, and to extend LawMoose's capabilities in directions very few legal web sites have been capable of going.
Our Enhanced Edition has more intense focus on Minnesota-specific resources and richer integration of resources spread literally across the Web and across jurisdictions, around the U.S. and across the globe. They have one critical thing in common: you want to have them at your fingertips when you practice law. They are not all legal and governmental, either. They are an integrated blend of information and destinations you may need in the course of law practice.
We built LawMoose for curious and hardworking lawyers and paralegals who would rather work smarter than simply harder, whenever they can.
Because of the dramatic enhancements in our subscriber edition, compared to our public edition, the subscriber reference edition cannot really be called a library or a web site directory.
It is instead a powerful "Law Practice Web SM" of metadata about the Web that we deliver right to your desktop.
Delight Your Clients With the Value and Cost-Effectiveness of LawMoose Enhanced Edition
Of course, your organization's Minnesota Legal Web Network participation at the Reference level carries with it our explicit permission to use LawMoose in the course of your rendering of professional services to others for compensation and, if you wish and they consent, to pass along charges to the ultimate beneficiaries, your clients, not only for the value of your time but for a pro rata contribution toward your out-of-pocket subscription cost.
If you charge your clients for Westlaw, Lexis, and other electonic subscriptions, your clients will certainly be delighted to see you charging them for the far more modest LawMoose fixed period reference charges you incur!
Pay once, use it all you want. It couldn't be simpler. We call it the "health club model" of legal knowledge.
A 21st Century Service for 21st Century Legal Information Needs
You are practicing law in the 21st century. That means you don't have to, and can't really adequately, get by without the power of a specially-tailored, editorially selected, jurisdictionally appropriate, carefully classified Law Practice Web SM and the semi-magic powers of MooseBoostSM at your disposal.
Constantly Expanding ...
Already much, much larger than our Public Edition, the Law Practice Web in our Enhanced Edition literally grows more powerful and better organized all the time. And MooseBoostSMis getting smarter about the world in which you practice law and the concepts with which you need to work in your practice.
Organically Evolving Knowledge ...
The Legal Reference Libraries in our Public Edition are over time being transformed and edited to maximize their value for public use and basic legal education and reference.
Meanwhile, the more specialized subjects and resources one expects to be of principal interest to legal professionals and business entities have largely migrated to the Enhanced Edition. And we're constantly adjusting things here and there to make a better, more interconnected Law Practice Web. So if you spot an opportunity for improvement, let us know, so we can implement it.
It's for all of these reasons that we believe, that if your "business" is law -- or if access to information about law and law practice matters to your business or organization -- you will not really be satisfied or adequately served without access to our Enhanced Edition.
Even Better Than a Conventional Information Product or Subscription ...
If you want to be able to use LawMoose most effectively, we need to establish a mutually supportive, ongoing relationship.
You need a rich, responsive LawMoose. And as its publishers, we need not only your input and suggestions but your support to make LawMoose capable of meeting your needs and expectations.
You'll see, as soon as you start working with us, that your organization's participation in our reference community gives you much more than simple access to another information "product" or subscription.
That is because we can make the "product" itself especially and increasingly useful to you and your organization. And because part of the "product" results from our ongoing interaction.
Together, We Can Shape LawMoose to Better Meet Your Needs
Here's how we can do great things together. You tell us how you want to see the Minnesota Law Practice Web and MooseBoostSMevolve to best meet your needs.
If the World Wide Web has resources you need for your practice, and we do not already take you to them, it is likely that other subscribers will benefit from their addition too.
That's why we're willing to listen and respond, and take action based on your particular suggestions.
You can submit resources for addition easily. You can make suggestions for new topics, and stimulate the growth of the Law Practice Web in directions reflecting your needs.
The difference between our approach and that of the typical large national or multinational legal publisher is that we are building a true, interactive legal knowledge community in which we welcome you as a full and active participant. In fact, that concept of community is a fundamental part of the whole package of value we can deliver.
You Don't Need to Do This On Your Own
Even if you like the idea, maybe you're thinking you should do this yourself?
Actually, no, we suggest that you literally cannot do it in the same way or anything close to the same way as we can do it in partnership with a larger community.
We are in the legal knowledge management and publishing business. We are widely recognized as pioneers when it comes to taming the Web for use in law practice. We do not operate like a law firm. We benefit from research, development, interaction with those who use LawMoose, and our own agenda of continuous improvement of our capabilities. We are configured to do this in ways no law firm, law department, or association is configured to tackle such a project.
Powered by LawSaurusTM
We have a much more powerful and specialized capability to organize knowledge of this sort than your firm or organization or association does, even if your firm, organization, or association has vast resources.
Even if you've invested in "portal" technology, you'll find it may be very inflexible compared to our own LawSaurus capabilities.
We have been using hypertext for law practice for nineteen years now, and we have been developing and publishing ever more powerful legal portals and knowledge platforms since 1998.
We started into the serious portal business by becoming one of a handful of successor publishers of the former U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library, one of the first world law portals.
Along the way, as we moved from publishing the Web's first regional search engine to the introduction of more highly organized knowledge, we have solved problems about how to build and evolve practice-oriented knowledge systems that organizations that deliver legal services rarely if ever tackle for their own account.
Building practice-oriented knowledge systems is an integrated, cross-disciplinary process, combining equal parts of technology, editorial judgment, information architecture, law practice knowledge, and innovation.
As the amount of knowledge to be organized grows, the intellectual skeleton on which the system is based and its ability to evolve and be reshaped become ever more crucial. And LawMoose has great bone structure.
LawSaurus's capabilities let us extend our own. Meanwhile, our continued evolution of LawSaurus enables us to continue to enhance our productivity and accelerate our innovation.
Outsourcing, in the Best Sense
Even if you could tackle such a project on your own, with your own personnel and tools, why would you want to do so, when your resources are limited and the needs for better access to organized information are so great?
We believe the optimum strategy is to concentrate your internal efforts where they matter most strategically to your own practice, in making even better use of your stores of internal knowledge.
Think of our part of the equation as "web knowledge management outsourcing". We do the part outside your firm or organization, while you do the part inside that no one else can do. Result: best of both worlds.
Getting better control on the knowledge one needs to practice law is on the short list of defining challenges for the legal profession in the first decade of the new century. The profession will rise or fall in part on how effectively it rises to this challenge.
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To find out more, call Linda or LaVern at 612-332-0102 or fill out this form.
We'll be in contact with you shortly.
Note:Only qualifying organizations meeting our criteria will be considered or approved for subscriptions.