Fair Practices Overview AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers

AALL Adopts Guide to Fair Business Practices

The American Association of Law Libraries adopted the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers to address misunderstandings that arise between publishers of legal materials and customers purchasing these materials. As a service to its members, the largest, most influential customer group for legal information, AALL has developed these practical guidelines for legal publishers to follow and to document the expectations that librarians have in their dealings with publishers.

The AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers was in part a response to the Federal Trade Commission’s rescission of their Guides for the Law Book Industry, in 2000. In the rescission notice, the FTC stated: “[A]ssociations such as AALL . . . can adopt guides of their own to educate sellers and purchasers about the information purchasers of legal reference materials need to make purchasing decisions. Indeed, eliminating the guides may provide the incentive for these associations to develop their own guides that address their members’ most important concerns.”

The AALL guide states five general principles, each accompanied by specific examples of both best practices and practices to avoid.

Principle 1: Truthful and Accurate Communication
Publishers should engage in truthful and accurate communication with their customers or potential customers.

Principle 2: Disclosure
Publishers should provide full disclosure about their products, services, prices, and transactions insofar as allowed without violating contractual agreements or revealing proprietary information.

Principle 3: Fair Dealing
Publishers should engage in fair dealings with their customers.

Principle 4: Customer Satisfaction
Publishers should seek to ensure customer satisfaction by honoring representations, answering questions, and resolving complaints and disputes in a timely and responsive manner.

Principle 5: Product Quality
Publishers should create products that are capable of withstanding reasonable use by customers.

Currently, the AALL Fair Business Practices Implementation Task Force is charged with monitoring the ongoing interpretation, revision, promotion, and evaluation of the AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers, and is working cooperatively with the AALL Committee on Relations with Information Vendors. The members of the Task Force are:
Kay M. Todd (Chair)
Michael Beaird
Kamla Hedges
Linda Kawaguchi McLane
Judy Lauer
James Mumm

Copies of the guide are available from the American Association of Law Libraries and the full text is available at: www.aallnet.org/about/fair_practice_guide.asp.