IT and Law: Legal sites plan revamps as rivals undercut price

Westlaw and LexisNexis companies, the dominant services in the market for computerized legal research, will undergo sweeping changes in a bid to make it easier and faster for lawyers to find the documents they need.

The changes to the research services are a reaction by Westlaw and LexisNexis to lower-priced rivals and arrive at a time when law firms are working to cut overhead. Both companies also want to cater to a younger generation of lawyers accustomed to slick Web services and the search interfaces presented by companies like Google and Microsoft.