Legal Research

Ambrogi discusses ?online legal research revolution?

By Jason

Robert Ambrogi has written a great article over Law.com called Online Legal Research Revolution.

He discusses the recent release of free legal research tools like AltLaw, PreCYdent, and The Public Library of Law, all partially powered by the release of federal case opinions by Public.Resource.Org.

These developments have already raised some interesting questions for the future of legal research, and here are a few of my questions which I think will be interesting to watch:

• How will Lexis & Westlaw remain relevant in the coming years as free services catch up? Lexis and Westlaw aren’t going away any time soon. At the very least they both offer collections of content which simply can’t be found elsewhere. But seeing free services chip away at what would seem to be their bread & butter (case law), certainly raises questions about the future of these large legal publishers.
• How will these free services add value, and maintain authority to compete with Lexis & Westlaw for the hearts and minds of attorneys? Lexis & Westlaw have over 100 years of service to the legal industry behind them. They have an authority which is almost unquestioned by attorneys. In addition, these new tools will have to begin adding value to their services, including full Boolean searching, complex field searching, and maybe even Shepardizing/Keyciting services to become truly competitive.
• How will the retirement of the baby boomers and the rise of digital natives affect legal publishers? The history and authority of Lexis and Westlaw may not mean much to digital natives who have lived their whole lives in the age of the PC and online information. Despite hooking them in law school, digital natives may not have the same loyalty to the traditional legal services, which could bode well for these new online ventures.

 Interesting times we live in…

Full post as published by Jason the Content Librarian on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).