Above the Law are claiming the credit as they were the first to report the story.. but as well as our HOB report we learn from ATL that the? Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at UC Berkeley were pretty nonplussed by Lexis’ stupidity.
ATL reports that they issued the following statement
Hi APALSA Members,
Lexis Nexis was offering an ?Asian Angels? calendar as part of its Rewards Program where students can cash in Lexis points for products. See:
http://abovethelaw.com/2009/09/sexy_lexis_nexis_reward.php
Lexis Nexis has since removed the calendar from its website.
It is terribly offensive that a provider of professional legal research tools would distribute a product that promotes sexualized representations of Asian women. Such demeaning representations contribute to sexual violence targeted at Asian women on college campuses and in the broader community. This product has no place in a professional or educational environment.
I encourage you to e-mail [REDACTED], Boalt?s Lexis Nexis Representative, to let the company know that such conduct is unacceptable. She can be reached at [REDACTED]. I have asked Lexis to let me donate my points to Asian Women?s Shelter, an organization that serves API victims of domestic and sexual violence (www.sfaws.org).
and Lexis’s feeble response form a “spokesperson” — it wasn’t us ..honest.. it was that darned rewards programme supplier we outsourced the job to.
Thousands of items are merchandised through the LexisNexis Rewards site via a service from a third party vendor. We work with the vendor to filter and exclude inappropriate products from our site. The item that appeared last week was clearly not in line with the professional nature of our company, clients or users and we took immediate steps to remove the item from our site.
We are working with the vendor to ensure that no inappropriate products appear on our site in the future.
Beware the pitfalls of outsourcing work to others and not checking what they say do or have. Lexis & West are making cost savings by outsourcing staff and services and we’d say we are beginning to see the results filter through… the law librarian email from West and now this hiccup. We’d imagine some clients paying large bills are thinking.. if they can’t control their awards programme or in the case of West they can’t control what jnr marketing staff are up to – what hope do we have in the future for the veracity of our legal content if cuts keep occuring.
Well.. if we were a client that’s what we’d be thinking
Here’s the full ATL piece? http://abovethelaw.com/2009/09/lexis_grounds_the_asian_angels.php
