When touring the Westlaw facilities many years ago, we were taken to a large room full of “Reference Attorneys” — those folks, lawyers all, who would offer suggestions of how to best use Westlaw, and even formulate a query when you were having difficulties finding the correct answer for your research question.In the midst of her little explanation to us, the Research Attorney Department Head would look at one of a series of lights that were displayed at various places around the large room. As she spoke, the solid green light turned off, and the yellow light turned on in its place. Subsequently, a red light displaced the yellow. She continued her speech. Then, as I recall, the red light began to flash and the Department Head excused herself to us, walked to the nearest desk with a telephone, and picked up the call of someone waiting for assistance.She later explained to us that Westlaw standards were that no one should wait more than some ridiculously short time — 90 seconds is my recollection, but that may be off a bit — and when that mark was reached, the red light began to flash, and answering the call of a customer took precedence over a group of distinguished visitors. This afternoon I began checking out some Westlaw features, with comparisons to other systems, and decided to call the Research Attorney line. 800-Westlaw still worked, but after providing partial password information to the automatic greeter — something Westlaw didn’t have in earlier days — I waited on hold. And waited. And waited, for five or six minutes, at least. The Research Attorney who finally answered knew his stuff and provided the information I needed without difficulty. But before hanging up, I mentioned the tour, the light system, and the “on-hold” time limit. He laughed, told me the light system and the “on-hold” standard was still there, but apologetically noted that the volume of Research Attorney requests had been increasing in the last year, it sometimes took longer than desired for a phone to get answered, and Westlaw was looking to increase its Research Attorney staff.I don’t know how much experience is required, or what the job pays, but if you haven’t been able to nail down one of those $160K big city / big firm jobs, a tour at Eagan might lead to an interesting career. The weather in eastern Minnesota is often “brisk” to say the least, and you have to be there a while to get an indoor parking space, but the people are nice, the facilities are good, and there are a lot of folks who love it.
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