Legal Research

Ready for one more post on legal material on Google Scholar?  Sure you are!  The availability of legal opinions on Google Scholar is this holiday season's "shiny new toy" that people can't stop talking about.  Over at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg Lambert sums up his interview with Google Scholar Chief Engineer Anurag Acharya, and the interview is bound to deflate some of the excitement about this new development.  Some key quotes from Greg Lambert's post:

Google Scholar has three people. Not just on the legal portion of Google Scholar, there are three people total on the entire project. Maybe you're saying to yourself that since Google is a search engine, maybe three people are sufficient on a project like this. In my opinion, three of the smartest legal database people in the world, combined with the power of Google might make a great resource tool for legal research, but not a competitor to the existing Wexisberg products.

even more bubble-bursting....

None of the three people that Google Scholar has on this project have a legal research background, and at most are only familiar with some of the basic principles of how legal research is conducted.

and finally...

 . . . there are no immediate plans to expand into areas such as statutes or regulations because of the dynamic nature of such publications.

Greg sums up nicely by saying "enjoy it for what it is," but don't expect a big push from Google Scholar to compete with Lexis and Westlaw.