![](\"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/files\/2009\/06\/operapgm.jpg\")
Somewhere in the snowdrift of paper on my desk is a program from an opera performance I attended a few months ago.\u00a0 Among other things, it’s a document that tells you what the opera company is doing and who, specifically, is doing it.\u00a0 It\u00a0 also tells you — less directly — who’s paying, and how.\u00a0 Among other things in it, I found:<\/p>\n
You’ll find similar things in the programs of every large and small opera company, symphony, and theater organization — any arts non-profit, really — in the country.\u00a0 That’s not new; all of those things have been around for as long as I can remember.<\/p>\n
What’s that got to do with the LII?\u00a0 Well, in some form or other, all of these things are coming to the LII web site.\u00a0 Some already have.\u00a0 Other things that opera companies have — like admission fees — never will.\u00a0 Here’s why.<\/p>\n
The LII’s core staff consists of six people, augmented by a\u00a0 pool of student editors, programming interns, and others who help us run a web site with over a quarter-million documents and 100,000 unique visitors every day. At any given moment, those same core staffers are responsible for one or two funded research projects<\/a>, a series of consulting jobs, a guest blog, and occasional writing on policy and other matters of academic and public interest.\u00a0 As continually as we are able, we improve our services and our technology.\u00a0 We are spread very thin.\u00a0 About a year ago, we realized that the LII had no prospect of either expansion or field-leading innovation so long as our core staff remains the same size.\u00a0 We had more than fully committed ourselves to the maintenance and continued development of those collections we currently offer.\u00a0 And to some of us it looked very much as though we might end up spending our careers watching others — people with more resources that we can command —\u00a0 doing work that we knew how to do five years ago but could not fund.\u00a0\u00a0 At a time when there is more need than ever for our expertise and for innovation in the field<\/a>, this seemed like a pretty bleak prospect.\u00a0 By nature, most of us here are better pioneers than settlers.\u00a0 And we have a lot of unrealized ideas that we would like to bring to you.<\/p>\n So for us the question was not really one of how to stay afloat; we could, we think, tread water indefinitely, although the Internet is usually unkind to those who lose momentum.\u00a0 The problem was, and is, how to move forward, to continue our longstanding traditions of leadership in the field of legal informatics and service to the public.\u00a0 As a practical matter, this amounts to asking, “How will we get more money?”\u00a0 Real leadership demands not only that we support ourselves as we are now, but that we grow.\u00a0 We need more people to carry on our existing programs even as we innovate in new areas.\u00a0 The answer, it seems to us, lies in making use of our considerable traffic and other assets to support our activities, as well as relying on the continued generosity and commitment of our supporters.\u00a0 So we began thinking about what our opportunities might be.<\/p>\n There are, of course, a lot of answers to those questions.\u00a0 We got very interested in what might motivate people to help us.\u00a0 We have always had a loyal core of supporters (thank you, and thank you again!) who believe in the idea of open access to law, and give us money out of pure belief and generosity.\u00a0 We think that some among our donors are partly reimbursing us for a service we offer to their law practice (yes, all you law-firm librarians and small-firm practitioners — we know you’re out there and we very much appreciate your help).\u00a0 And we think that many, many more might take advantage of an opportunity to do well by doing good.<\/p>\n Right now, such folks can help us — and themselves — by listing themselves<\/a> in our lawyer directory<\/a> and buying a badge showing their support for the LII<\/a>; this (not coincidentally) causes them to be shown more prominently in the directory.\u00a0 Very soon, we will begin recruiting sponsors for specific pages in WEX, everybody’s legal encyclopedia<\/a>, for the LII’s Supreme Court Bulletin<\/a>, and for our larger collections (if any of these interest you, contact us<\/a>).\u00a0 And right along we have been making use of a modest Google AdSense presence to bring in some revenue — right now, those little ads are paying for about half a staff person.\u00a0 When we put the AdSense blocks in place, we half-expected to get some negative reaction from our audience.\u00a0 That has not happened. Indeed, a few people have privately told me that they think that our pursuit of more commercial opportunities is just good stewardship of our donated income.\u00a0 I think so too; that’s because I come from the “pray to God but row toward shore” school of assistance-asking.<\/p>\n No doubt this raises some questions.\u00a0 For instance, what about grants?\u00a0 We seem to fall somewhere in between the agendas of those organizations that support basic science (our work tends to involve applications rather than basic research) and those which have social or policy objectives (which tend to have more urgent priorities than legal information).\u00a0 Almost none provide operating support.\u00a0 So it is a small population indeed. We continue to look for good fits (as we have for many years), but we think that these are very infrequent opportunities that will not provide a reliable base.\u00a0 A second, logical question is whether we are contemplating any kind of user fee.\u00a0 The answer to that is a simple “no”.\u00a0 We are building a business model by which we can find reliable ongoing support for open access to legal information, for practical work in legal informatics, and for the promotion of public understanding of law — at no cost to the consumer. Finally, no, this was not a decision prompted by the recession, or by any drying-up of support from other sources.\u00a0 In hindsight, it looks prescient — but we were driven entirely by our collective need for professional fulfillment and our desire to offer more and better services.<\/p>\n So, finally —\u00a0 my thanks to those of you who have been loyal supporters all along.\u00a0 We can’t do this without you, and we don’t think it’s fair to ask you to do it all for us.\u00a0 To those who would like to work with us in other ways, I look forward to hearing from you.\u00a0 And if any of you have questions or suggestions, I’m always eager to hear from you at tom {{dot}} bruce [[at]] cornell {{dot}} edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Somewhere in the snowdrift of paper on my desk is a program from an opera performance I attended a few months ago.\u00a0 Among other things, it’s a document that tells you what the opera company is doing and who, specifically, is doing it.\u00a0 It\u00a0 also tells you — less directly — who’s paying, and how.\u00a0 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,116],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}