There are four different types of things that can be purchased with Lexis points: (1) things from Amazon, (2) gift certificates, (3) study guides, (4) other items from Award Cafe. The points have roughly the same value everywhere, but sometimes they’re worth a little more than others. I looked up a bunch of products on Amazon to find that points used for electronics are worth slightly less than for anything else. Points used for gift certificates are always worth more than those used at Amazon, and gift certificates worth more than $10 always provide the same value. (Though the $10 ones aren’t as good of a deal, they’re still worth more than Amazon items.)
“Study Guides” (the only guides offered are the Understanding Series) are the best value, and the “other items” available through the Award Cafe seem to be the worst.
Here’s a value graph of several items. You can also download the data here.
As you can see from the chart, each Lexis point is worth about $0.015 - $0.017, with points used for study guides worth a little more. If you don’t want a study guide, the gift certificates are the best value, or so it would appear…
However, I think that the Amazon items are probably as good a value as the gift certificates because my prices in this chart don’t account for shipping, which is included when Lexis points are used.
In any case, Lexis is paying about $1.19 per week to students that log in every day. That's a pretty low figure.
Westlaw calculation tommorrow...