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Many acquisitions librarians have wondered, on law-lib and elsewhere, if steep increases in the cost of law books over the last decade have been the result of publisher mergers. Having heard these complaints and seen examples of the rapidly escalating prices, AALL contracted with economist Mark McCabe to complete an analysis of prices in the law book industry. In this very appropriately titled session, McCabe, on the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology, discussed the preliminary results of his research that examined the cost of legal materials over the years 1990-2000. In this study, McCabe's chief objectives were to examine general prices, the impact of market consolidation, the response of libraries/librarians, and the role of electronic distribution within the law book market. McCabe, is well qualified to undertake such a study for AALL, as he completed a similar price analysis of biomedical journals for the Association of Research Libraries. His research for ARL confirmed that significant price increases had occurred, in many cases a doubling or tripling of subscription rates, and yet library demand for the journals went down only 3% in a ten-year period. Upon beginning his research into the law book market, McCabe wondered if he would see a similar trend.

McCabe's study of legal publications looked at the price and holdings of 481 legal publications over the decade 1990-2000. The titles selected fell neatly into eight categories: codes, reporters, digests, citators, encyclopedias, loose-leaf services, newsletters, and treatises. At the time of his AALL presentation, McCabe had completed an analysis of 335 titles. Codes, digests, and other unique titles were excluded from his preliminary results. Holdings and usage information was collected from fifty-eight law libraries including representatives from academic, government, and firm libraries. Price information was obtained from the publishers, Georgetown University Law payment records, and Ken Svengalis' Legal Information Buyers Guide and Reference Manual. The findings shared in this session were very much a work in progress however, his initial conclusions showed that prices in the law book market have doubled in the last ten years while library holdings have remained stable. On average, academic libraries did not respond to the doubling of material prices by canceling titles. In fact there was a small increase in the average number of all 335 titles held by academic libraries in the ten-year period. Meanwhile, findings revealed only a 7% decline in the average number of all 335 titles held at law firm libraries. So, with his preliminary results in, it appears that in spite of an overall doubling in the cost of legal publications, library holdings have remained consistent and that law librarians, similar to their colleagues purchasing biomedical journals, did not cancel titles even as substantial price increases occurred.

McCabe's study also attempted to assess the impact mergers, i.e. Thomson's purchase of West in 1996, had on overall prices in the legal publications market. Using a regression analysis and the differences in differences approach, McCabe assigned a unique variable for each title to capture the pre and post merger effects in markets. His research showed that the West-Thomson merger was associated with a 22% price increase. In contrast, Reed Elsevier's major acquisitions in the 1990s of Michie, Shepards, and Matthew Bender were not associated with any measurable price impact on the individual products. He commented that various factors may account for merger effects including changes in product costs, demand, or market power. Some of the titles a company owns may have become less valuable. One example of this is Shepard's citators, which, with their inclusion on Lexis.com, may be less valuable as a print resource now than they were ten years ago.

At the end of his presentation McCabe was asked if law libraries soon should expect a break from major price increases. He responded that prices would continue to increase sharply as long as librarians continue to accommodate the increases within their budget. Librarians acting together and making significant cancellations would force publishers to re-examine their price strategy and slow rising prices. Other comments from the audience discussed the SPARC initiative and if SPARC produced journals would bring down prices in the journal market. McCabe responded that with only ten journals, SPARC's presence in the market is not significant enough to compete in a major way with commercial publications. The individual SPARC titles may force price competition on a title by title basis, but to have a major effect on pricing there will need to be many, many more journals produced by SPARC.

Overall, Mark McCabe's presentation proved to be an eye opening study of recent pricing trends in legal books and serials. Quite simply, the discussion of his work in progress was one of the most compelling and significant sessions held in Minneapolis this year. The law library community awaits the final, completed report of this study to be published next year by AALL.

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