Thwarted by the Man

I was this close to actually getting something I wanted with my Westlaw Rewards points.

For those who have no idea what I'm griping about, West and Lexis are the two big publishers of casebooks, reporters, study aids, and other legal paraphernalia. Each runs an online search service, for which firms pay dearly. (Our Lexis trainer said it might cost $10 to run a party name search and $250 to run a search on terms. Moral of the story: spell it right the first time. Yipe.) While we're students, however, the searching is "free", or at least included in our tuition, and the West and Lexis reps give us candy and branded goodies. Why? Their companies are desperately hoping that someday we'll be managing partners willing to fork over megabucks for an online service, and that our law school experience will give us warm and fuzzy feelings about one company or the other.

To foster the warm and fuzzies, each service also offers students rewards on a point system. Do a search? 10 points a day. Complete a weekly activity? 150 points. Attend a training course? 400 points. Buy a West casebook from the site? 500 points.

Given that I already have my casebooks for the semester and I'm not a huge fan of mostly self-explanatory training (and I, erm, like my long homework break in the middle of the day. Yeah...), my point accumulation has been slow to this point, but I managed to rack up a 1,230 total this morning. "Hooray!" I thought. "Shopping time!"

See, the thing is, I have a taste for bad TV, and West was offering Paranormal State: Season 2 for a mere 1,200 points. It's kind of fun to watch undergrads running around old houses, jumping every time the floor squeaks, with their stable of demonologists, psychics, priests, and resident pagan for help. Mindless, but fun.

I'd noticed before that the West shopping categories said "DVDs - 2400 point minimum", but I'd assumed that meant that the DVDs went for, well, at least 2,400 points. Imagine my surprise to find a few that didn't. (Check out the stand-up comedians for more.) And so, with joy in my heart and a slight quiver of excitement in my mouse finger--I was actually getting something for my time!--I moved to Checkout.

Where my hopes and dreams of seeing Paranormal State in the next week died.

As it turns out, that 2,400 point minimum doesn't refer to the base price of the DVDs, but to the amount one must spend on DVDs to have them shipped.

Looks like I'm back for Training: Part II. Crud...