Corporate & Securities Law

Google Targets Legal Search

By John Wallbillich

Google announced today a long-anticipated move into legal search. From their Official Blog:

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

This new resource is couched in terms of allowing average citizens to access legal information. Some of those citizens may also work in law firms and legal departments.

I thought this would happen about four years ago. Please consider the “Law 2.0″ references therein youthful exuberance.

Full post as published by The Wired GC on November 17, 2009 (boomark / email).