Resources - Site review - LexisNexis fine tunes legal eagle database. When we last looked at LexisNexis Butterworths service we felt it was far from intuitive - and that it would slow down lawyers in a hurry. Eira Hayward finds that judicious fine tuning has transformed the interface, improved navigation and added useful customisation options.

LexisNexis has long been known for the vast range of its legal content, but, last time we looked at its new LN Butterworths service, getting access to that legal content wasn't the most intuitive of experiences. When IWR reviewed the online legal service in March we found that, while there was a lot that was good, there was also quite a lot that could have been better. Screens were busy, there was a lot of "visual noise" (something LN itself acknowledged), and occasionally we got confused by the way the information was presented.

It seems that the feedback LN received from its customers ran along the same lines. In July this year the company relaunched the service, promising that the new product was the "culmination of more than two years of extensive customer consultation, rigorous testing and a significant financial investment by LexisNexis worldwide to provide the next generation of online information".

CLEARER AND LESS CLUTTERED

A great deal of effort has been spent on improving the product's design to make navigation easier. The home page when you first log in is certainly less off-putting than the previous version; it is much more clearly laid out and less cluttered, with better signposting. As before, it gives you the option to either search for a specific document or perform a general search. You can also perform a search through cases, legislation, commentary, forms and precedents or journals, either going through one at a time or all together.

There are four tabs across the home-page screen. These show Search, Practice Areas, Alerts and Sources. The practice areas are employment, family, litigation and personal injury, and law practices can limit their use of the service to these individual practice areas if they wish, and pay accordingly. In the top left-hand corner of every screen on the service is the LexisNexis "burst of knowledge" icon - apparently known by everyone who works for the company as the "cricket ball". Clicking on this at any time takes you back to the home page.

CUSTOM LINKS ON HOME PAGE

A big plus is the ability for users to customise their home page. At the bottom of the home screen are a series of "quick links" through to cases, commentary, journals and so on. These can be customised so that users can quickly skip to the reference documents and information they use most frequently - "speeding up the everyday business process" as LexisNexis says.