West Legal Directory
WEST LEGAL DIRECTORY
The West Legal Directory™ (WLD) is a searchable on-line directory of law firms, judges, and attorneys in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Canada, and Europe. WLD is not available in print. It is available on westlaw®, West CD-ROM Libraries™, and at FindLaw (<www.findlaw.com>), the most popular legal portal and research site on the internet. (Find-Law was purchased by Thomson West in 2001.) WLD contains information regarding private, government, and corporate offices and attorneys, as well as profiles of courts, judges, and law school professors. Law student resumés are accessible to potential employers, but not to other law students or professors.
First introduced in 1989, WLD provides access to a vast amount of information. More than one million profiles are contained in WLD, including profiles of hundreds of thousands of attorneys. Every attorney is offered a free basic listing that includes attorney name, firm name and address, telephone and fax numbers, areas of practice, bar admissions, and law school. For a monthly fee, attorneys can obtain an expanded listing that includes career accomplishments, such as educational achievements, published works, and service awards. Law firm profiles include the information contained in a basic listing along with names of representative clients, business references, and pro bono activities. Judicial profiles include educational background, past positions, memberships and affiliations, published works, classes taught, honors received, and significant cases decided.
WLD updates its profiles daily on WEST-LAW and FindLaw, and quarterly on CD-ROM. WLD information may be searched in the WLD database, or in component databases. Component databases, such as WLD-MN, WLD-TAX, and WLD-JUDGE, allow users to narrow their search to legal directories designed for particular geographic locations, practice areas, or professional titles. WLD may be searched using the Terms and Connectors search method or fill-in-the-blank templates. In addition, FindLaw's web interface allows users to employ simple and advanced search methods.