Law Technology

Case Law on Google

By Bryan Sims

The big news that broke last week was that Google Scholar now allows you to search state and federal court opinions. The official announcement is here. I think this is awesome. In general, I believe that making information more available is a good thing. Making our laws freely available and easily searchable is a great thing, for both attorneys and nonattorneys.

Now, I don’t think that Google Scholar is going to replace West or Lexis anytime soon. Although, like Carolyn Elefant, I have concerns for other providers of legal research. Carolyn explains:

As I see it, Google’s free legal research services won’t put a dent in LEXIS or Westlaw, at least not for a long, long time,  Instead, they pose a threat to what I’ve collectively termed the “second city” providers like Versuslaw, Casemaker, FastCase or Loislaw.  Right now, most lawyers are able to access those services for free or cheap through deals with the bars – but will bars continue to support those subscriptions when there’s a robust free option available?  My heart goes out to these companies because they served as an oasis for solos when no other options, save the law library and manual research, existed.  Yet I don’t see all of them able to survive the Google onslaught.

Of these, the greatest concern is likely for those companies whose market is primarily individual attorneys and individual law firms, rather than those companies that provide services to attorneys as a bar association member benefit. Nevertheless, I expect that Google Scholar will eventually affect the business models of these companies. Also, I would not be surprised if Google continues to improve their service and eventually draws a not insignificant portion of the West/Lexis customers away. Yes, there are those who use West and Lexis for their specialized databases. However, those who aren’t using the specialized databases may, in the near future, decide that it is not worth the amount being charged by Lexis and West.

For other thoughts on this announcement, you can check out the rest of Carolyn’s post, as well as posts by Crime and Federalism, TechnoEsq, Lex Tek, Ernie the Attorney, Jim Calloway, and Rick Klau.

[Update]

Check out this analysis of the service from Law on My Phone.

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Full post as published by The Connected Lawyer on November 23, 2009 (boomark / email).