Westlaw Gunner
There's something that no "How to Prepare for Law School" book is ever going to talk about, and that is how to maximize your westlaw and lexis nexis rewards points. The "rewards points" concept is a stupid gimmick created to get law students to become loyal users of either lexis or westlaw. You use them to purchase rewards. You want to be a rewards points gunner. Lexis is actually pretty stingy as far as rewards points goes... generally to get 50 points you have ot do a stupid tutorial thing that takes like 10 minutes. To get 200 you have to do a pain in the ass "Lexercise" and e-mail it to the representative... and of course you get 10 points every day just for logging on and doing a search. Lexis does have one huge advantage over Westlaw, and that is rewards options. The Lexis catalogue is HUGE. Westlaw's is really small in comparison, BUT Westlaw makes up for this by giving you a crapload of points through a little back door I like to call "trivia bonuses."
The trivia game is the single best method to rack up free crap in law school (besides all the free food you get for going to stupid activities meetings and such). Here's how it works: You log on to Westlaw, and do a search. You get ten points for this. You hit the sign off button, and click the "play trivia button on the log off screen." They ask you a ridiculously easy question, you get it right, and you get a "bonus 5 points." Here's the real trick. You log in AGAIN, and you'll get another 10 points for the search, log off and do another trivia question. Now you've got 30 points. Do the same thing the next day, and the day after and the day after.... I know you're thinking "30 points a day, that's ridiculous, I'll never get the espresso machine at that rate." Well my friend, that's where the "trivia bonus" comes in handy. Every 15 questions you answer, you get a trivia bonus. For the first 15 you get a bonus of something like 50. For the second 15 you get a bonus of I believe 100, If you answer 45 trivia questions you get 300, 60, you get 500, and so on and so forth. If you manage to answer 105 questions in a semester, you'll get a 2000 point bonus. That plus all the other bonuses + the 30 points a day (although you top out at 150 points a week from logging on and trivia answers) = you and an i-pod at the end of the semester. It takes all of 10 minutes to do this, and you've only got to remember to do it 3 or 4 days a week...
Don't forget to screw these bastards out of as much free crap as you can while you're a student, because they're going to screw you out of way more than a digital camera and a swiss army watch once you're done with law school.
The trivia game is the single best method to rack up free crap in law school (besides all the free food you get for going to stupid activities meetings and such). Here's how it works: You log on to Westlaw, and do a search. You get ten points for this. You hit the sign off button, and click the "play trivia button on the log off screen." They ask you a ridiculously easy question, you get it right, and you get a "bonus 5 points." Here's the real trick. You log in AGAIN, and you'll get another 10 points for the search, log off and do another trivia question. Now you've got 30 points. Do the same thing the next day, and the day after and the day after.... I know you're thinking "30 points a day, that's ridiculous, I'll never get the espresso machine at that rate." Well my friend, that's where the "trivia bonus" comes in handy. Every 15 questions you answer, you get a trivia bonus. For the first 15 you get a bonus of something like 50. For the second 15 you get a bonus of I believe 100, If you answer 45 trivia questions you get 300, 60, you get 500, and so on and so forth. If you manage to answer 105 questions in a semester, you'll get a 2000 point bonus. That plus all the other bonuses + the 30 points a day (although you top out at 150 points a week from logging on and trivia answers) = you and an i-pod at the end of the semester. It takes all of 10 minutes to do this, and you've only got to remember to do it 3 or 4 days a week...
Don't forget to screw these bastards out of as much free crap as you can while you're a student, because they're going to screw you out of way more than a digital camera and a swiss army watch once you're done with law school.
posted by Snubligent at 12:38 AM
8 Comments:
lol I love this tip so much, I am gonna have to share this.
Have you ACTUALLY tried it out?(I'm afraid to ask how did you find the time to do it).
Of course! I just received my Westlaw Bling-Bling in the mail the other day (got a watch out of them). Unfortunately it was made for a gentleman of much a much larger "carriage" than myself, so I have to go get some links taken out.
They tell you all about the points, but most people don't pay attention, or lack the patience to follow through. I gave up on lexis points, but the westlaw trivia thing makes it too easy to rack up free things :) If you remember to do the trivia every day and get all 105 questions, you'll be "earning" something like 7,000 points per semester, which is enough for a 20" color TV, or a tent and a nice watch, or (if memory serves) and i-pod mini.
P.S.
unfortunately i didn't really apply myself to this until the latter half of the 2nd semester, so I only answered 75 trivia questions, whichi s ok, I still managed to get 6,000 points for the year (which was enough for said watch plus something else decent... i havent' decided what to spend the other points on yet)
Yeah, I got my iPod shuffle out of Lexis, along with some other goodies. They always have INSTANT WINS, so it's a good idea to leave yourself logged on all day, and just hit random things every hour or so. Also, always stop by Lexis and Westlaw table - they usually give away points (along with crap you don't need - who needs another travel mug???)
Game the system, yo, game the system.
Yeah. I didn't pay much attention first semester of 1L, but discovered the trivia trick second. Thanks to contests done by the law library staff and the westlaw reps, I've got over 14,000 points in one semester. If I hadn't screwed up on a few trivia questions, the iPod would have been in my hands already.
Lexis is stingy by comparison, but I'm aiming lower with them and will try for a GPS.
Holy smoke! Freebies! And these are good quality stuff (hey, if you can't wear the watch, give it away as B-Day present, or even sell it on E-Bay).
As our family motto goes, "milk the system."
That's pretty funny, I had a couple friends in school who worked Westlaw day and night. I never really got that into it, so they'd ask me to transfer over the couple of points I'd rack up doing actual (forced) research. Too bad I didn't know you guys then, I would have passed them along. :)
I only just did this last year, and I did pretty well for myself, though I missed the jackpot by *one* question - boo! I think I racked up one computer program and 5 nutshells total.
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