| Item Title: | Public Defender's Office - Thomas Reuters/Westlaw Agreement | | Submitted By: | William R. Cox, Interim Chief Public Defender, Public Defender's Office (915) 546-8185 | | Subject: | Approve and authorize the County Judge to sign the contract with Thomson Reuters for Westlaw online legal research services for the Public Defender's Office in the amount of $14,187. Funding is available in GF-PUBLICDEFEND-BOOKS&SUBSCRPT and SG-PDMENTH20-OPERATING EXP. (Contract No. 2019-0731) | | Background: | This contract is under the current state contract rate, with legal research service provider Thomson Reuters/Westlaw. This agreement will cover not only all of our current attorneys, but all provide access for all of our support staff, investigators, social workers and mitigation specialist at no additional charge.
Over ten years ago, we determined that online legal research services were the most effective way to provide our attorneys the tools they need to stay current on developing legal issues and perform legal research. Unlike printed legal research books, which only one person can use at a time, may be misplaced, require significant amount of physical storage space, and are extremely costly and labor intensive to maintain, online research materials can be accessed by numerous individuals simultaneously, are always current, and require no storage space for printed books.
| | Fiscal Impact: | Under Lexis contract we were paying $1,600 per month (or $19,200 per year). The new agreements with Thomson Reuters provides more licenses for online person search services and reduces our cost by 7.4% to $1,482 per month (or $17,784 per year).
The Westlaw legal research contract covered in this item is for $1,182.25 per month or ($14,187 per year).
Funds are available in
GF-PUBLICDEFEND-BOOKS&SUBSCRIPT
COGF-1000-0000000-431-20-21005-0001-00000-600206-
and
SG-PDMENTH20-OPERATING EXP.
COGF-7178-0002020-431-20-21005-0001-00000-600000- | | Recommendation: | Approve.
| | Prior Action: | Commissioner's Court approved the bid award covering this contract to Thomson Reuters, item 17, on Monday, October 29, 2019.
| | Strategic Plan: | 2019.PEO.8 | | Strategic Plan Information: | The new contract with Thomson Reuters furthers the County’s goals of professional, financially sound government by providing Public Defender team members the computerized tools they need to represent clients effectively while also obtaining the needed services in a cost effective manner.
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