In late October 2019, Harvard Square’s Out of Town News, the iconic purveyor of newspapers, magazines, and souvenirs, closed shop. The newsstand, and many of the newspapers at its core, are victims of digital technology. Digital editions of Time and the Washington Post have been around since the 1990’s and, for quite a while, both print and digital issues of these publications coexisted. However, demand for the most current information has challenged print newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and reference sources such as almanacs, encyclopedias, and loose-leaf services.

At one time, it was standard for law library management pros to subscribe to loose-leaf services; publications that are updated weekly or monthly, typically, with new pages that are inserted in a binder to keep the information as current as possible. The major publishers of these services are the Bureau of National Affairs (Bloomberg Law), Commerce Clearing House (Wolters Kluwer), Research Institute of America (Thomson Reuters), and Matthew Bender (LexisNexis.) Generations of legal professionals became proficient at using these services, depended on them, and were or are loath to give them up. But give them up they will as firms continue to migrate to digital law library management.

An informal survey of Accufile information professionals shows that virtually all respondents with existing loose-leaf subscriptions plan to discontinue services upon the retirement of loyal users. One respondent noted that many publishers strongly encourage the switch to digital versions by underscoring cost savings in the form of no tax or shipping fees. In most cases, the same content is available on the vendors’ platforms such as Lexis Advance, Westlaw, Cheetah, or Bloomberg Law.

Each subscriber needs to calculate the total cost of access and maintenance, including multi-user licenses, filing, annual price increases, and more. A single print copy will likely cost less than digital access if a vendor only sells firm-wide licenses. While the switch to digital law libraries will require in-house promotion and training, the march to digital only is inevitable and desirable as many attorneys find they are better informed and more current, thanks to a range of online information resources.