Research Q&A
By
Chuck Lowry, Director
of Client Relations
Q.
I was interested in billing rates and I went to the search
tree, but the database interface kept asking me what firms
I wanted to get the information for. I was just poking around,
looking for some parameters and trying to get a general idea,
so I wanted the information for all the firms available. What's
the best way to do that?
A.
One of the features of your subscription is that
you not only can ask the database specific questions, you
can download raw data as well. It is a simple matter of getting
the entire spreadsheet for the most recent survey on billing
(or diversity, pro bono, financials, or whatever you’re
looking for).
After
you’ve entered your username and password, go to the
Lists
& Rankings heading in the right-hand column. When
you click on the hyperlinked word “here”
in the second paragraph, you will be taken to a page which
lists the spreadsheets available for the rankings and surveys
that populate the database. When you have identified the survey
you want, you can choose to download and save the Excel®
spreadsheet to your own PC, where you can search it or sort
it or add columns to it as you need to.
For
technical reasons, only the most recent surveys are downloadable
directly from the site, but premium subscribers are able to
request spreadsheets from prior years, to the extent they
are available.
If
you have questions about how to use the ALM
Research Online database for your specific research projects,
email Chuck Lowry.
