1. Understanding Lexis Advance® Pricing and Law Firm Bill-Back Practices
This presentation provides a high level overview of Lexis Advance pricing and Law Firm Bill-Back Practices.
Bill back practices vary greatly among law firms. We highly recommend you connect with your employer’s Librarian or other appropriate contact for details on the firm’s LexisNexis plan and their bill back policy.

2. Who Pays for Your Use of Lexis Advance® at the Firm?
There are two types of costs associated with your research on Lexis Advance: Costs to your firm Costs that some firms choose to charge to their clients 1 2
There are two types of costs associated with research on Lexis Advance:
Cost to the firm, typically in the form of a flat rate subscription pricing plan, and
Cost to clients if the firm chooses to charge their clients for research conducted related to their case. This is an individual firm choice and highly customized.
I will explain both of these costs in more detail.

3. During your Summer Associate work and the first 6 months after you graduate, you are entitled to use your Lexis Advance Law School ID at no cost to your firm or clients.
Free Summer Associates Access:
First, as reminder, you should take advantage of free access to Lexis Advance per the summer associate or graduate access programs.
Always check with your firm’s contact as some prefer you use a firm ID v. your academic access.
Free access for Graduates:

4. When using a Law Firm ID, the vast majority of your research will not cost your firm additional money.
99.9% of documents accessed on Lexis Advance are included in the firm’s flat-rate subscription
When accessing content within your firm’s subscription plan, your firm will not incur any additional charges. In fact, 99% of the documents you need to access will likely be in your firm’s plan. Note other activities that are included in the firm’s subscription including searches, Alerts, and Shepard’s reports. Some firms may choose to bill clients back for these activities, but LexisNexis does not charge extra for them.
100% of all other activities (eg Searches, Alerts, and Shepard’s reports) are included in the firm’s subscription.

5. Approx. Monthly Cost for a Solo Attorney
Firms work with LexisNexis to include the content they need in their flat-rate subscription.
Example subscription options a typical Small Law firm will consider:
Included Content
Approx. Monthly Cost for a Solo Attorney
Option 1:
Single State Primary Content
Eg Cases, Statutes, Administrative Materials
$100
Single State Primary Content
Federal Primary Content
Secondary content specific to the firm’s practice area
Option 2:
$225
All State Primary Content
Federal Primary Content
Secondary content specific to the firm’s practice area
Public Records
$275
Option 3:
Firms subscribe to the content they need to meet their research needs. As a result, subscription pricing plans are affordable for a solo practitioner, in addition to small and large firms.
Note: During contract renewals, a variety of factors are considered, with primary focus on the firm’s content needs. Usage does not impact subscription costs.
Add-ons, such as Lexis Practice Advisor®, Lexis ®for Microsoft Office®, Search Advisor, Newsdesk, Securities Mosaic, ALM, Tax Analysts, Wall Street Journal, etc
Option 4:

6. If Outside of Subscription
If you ever need to access content outside of the firm’s subscription, you will first be notified of the cost.
If Outside of Subscription
Document Access Charge
Primary Law Agency & Administrative Materials, Bill Text, Cases, Codes, Court Rules, Dockets, Statutes and Legislation, Registers, etc
News (26,000 sources)
National News (Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post )
Regional News (AZ Business Gazette, AZ Capital Times, AZ Republic)
Newswires (Dow Jones, Associated Press, Business Wire) $2 $3
Secondary Materials (Tier 2)
Most Matthew Bender titles, Jury Verdicts & Settlements, Law Reviews and Journals, Jury Instructions, Jurisprudence, Emerging Issues, CLE Course of Study Materials, Dictionaries, Treatises, Legal News, etc.
$50
These are standard retail rates by content type. Remember, that less than 1% of documents are accessed outside of plan. Meaning, wherever you work, the content you need is likely within your subscription plan.
There may be times you need to purchase an “out of plan” document. Notice they are highly visible as you have to click the Get it Now button to access.
Example: Attorney Jones has a single state primary law subscription plan. She runs a search within her state’s cases on her solo ID and accesses a Shepards report. Does Attorney Jones incur any transactional charges for her firm? – No, Shepard’s and her search are included in her subscription;
Note: her firm may choose to charge their client for the report by allocating some of their subscription costs to the Shepard’s report. More on this in the following slide.
Example: Attorney Smith runs a search within News and in his results list, there are items that say “get it now for $3”. He clicks on one of those documents. How much did Attorney Smith’s search cost? - $3 for the transactional access and the original search is free because he can always search within Lexis Advance for anything. Because the particular document he wanted was outside his plan, Lexis alerted him of the cost and he chose to access the document for $3.
Note: Attorney Smith’s firm may choose to charge their client for the search by allocating some of their subscription costs to the search activity. More on this in the following slide.
Secondary Materials (Tier 1)
Premium Matthew Bender titles (Chism, Nimmer, Colliers, etc) and CCH materials
$90
The only way to access a document outside the firm’s subscription is to click the “Get it Now” button which always displays the price:

7. If Outside of Subscription
Sample screenshot of Get it Now as displayed in Lexis Advance when using a law firm ID.
If Outside of Subscription
Here’s how the Get it Now button looks when viewing search results on Lexis Advance, for out of plan content.

8. Common Bill-back Models
40% of firms choose to bill their clients for online research. There are an infinite number of ways that firms can choose to bill clients for online legal research activities. Here are some of the most common:
Common Bill-back Models
Details
Firms discount rates by an average of 50% when allocating Document Access Charges back to their clients.
The average bill-back rate is $40 when firms choose to bill-back for the search.
Some firms bill-back only for primary law research and do not bill back for analytical content such as Matthew Bender titles.
Document Access charge Only
Document Access charge plus Search charge
Primary Law only 1 2
It’s entirely the firm’s choice to bill back research to their clients or not, and it’s highly customized if they choose to bill back. Here are three of the more common ways firm’s bill back legal research activities (review slide).
It’s acceptable for firms to bill clients for research conducted on their behalf. They are often trying to recover their subscription costs. However, a firm cannot bill back more than what they are paying for legal research per ABA guidelines. 3
LexisNexis provides firms with an application called PowerInvoice that allows them to customize their bill-back model and download usage data into their invoicing system.

9. Sample screenshot of Client ID screen
If Outside of Subscription
Here’s a view of the Client ID screen using a law firm ID. After signing in to Lexis Advance, attorneys are prompted to enter the Client ID and a research description so they can track research conducted on behalf of their clients and for bill back purposes if applicable.