And compete we do. Over the years, we have added databases, added features and kept our prices low to stay ahead of other small companies who have challenged us head-to-head. Larger companies with multi-state products, coveting our state-specific market segment, have introduced scaled-down versions of their products in an attempt to compete with us. The result of all this competition has been better products at lower prices for Virginia practitioners.

The VSB wants to change this.

The VSB intends to purchase one legal research system from one supplier and make that system available at no charge to every VSB member. The proposed system will include fewer databases than Lexis or WestLaw, and thus will not be competitive in the premium market segment. The proposed system will contain almost every database in CaseFinder and will be in direct competition in the Virginia-specific market segment.

But there will be no "competition." The VSB’s plan eliminates competition. Virtually every potential purchaser in the Virginia-specific segment of the market is a member of the VSB, and under the VSB's plan, every one of them will receive the VSB's research system for free. CaseFinder is a good product, proven in a competitive marketplace for fourteen years, but neither Geronimo, nor anyone else, can compete with Zero.

You and I and 25,000 other Virginia attorneys are not regulated by any government agency; we regulate and govern ourselves through the Virginia State Bar, an unincorporated association. When the General Assembly and Supreme Court created the VSB in 1938, they did not name our masters; to do so would have denied self-governance. Rather, the VSB was created as a democratic and representative association in which sovereignty was vested in the individual members.

As members of the VSB, we elect a representative body, the VSB Council, to whom we delegate our authority. We agree with each other to be bound by the decisions made by a majority of those representatives. When the VSB Council acts, it can only exercise the authority we have delegated to it; it is exactly the same as if all 25,000 members of the VSB were sitting in one room, acting in concert.

As explained in greater detail in our lawyer's letter to the VSB, the goal of the antitrust laws is to promote competition. When all of the buyers in a market, who ordinarily compete with one another, band together to buy collectively from one supplier at a set price, other suppliers are unable to compete and competition is destroyed. As the U.S. Supreme Court has already held, the VSB constitutes a collection of lawyers who compete with one another, and any attempt to collectively fix prices is illegal.

As our lawyer also pointed out in his letter to the VSB, the 1996 JLARC report commissioned by the General Assembly specifically concluded that the VSB should not be purchasing or sponsoring any computerized legal research service. The report said that doing so "raises potential issues regarding unfair competition." The report also warned that the Bar's involvement in commercial products and services places vendors at a "competitive disadvantage due to the mandatory nature of the Bar's membership." In other words, this independent report raised the same antitrust concerns our lawyer raised in his letter to the VSB.

Geronimo has provided accurate, comprehensive, affordable and timely legal research to the members of the VSB for many years. We hope to be able to do so for many more years.

Sincerely,

O. R. Armstrong
President

Elizabeth J. Oyster
Vice-President