Law Office Management
Jan. 2, 2009
Search Freedom
Lawyers looking to save money on legal research have new options.
A new breed of free, online services is emerging to help lawyers with their legal research. In 2007, for example, Carl Malamud launched Public.Resource.Org, part of his ongoing effort to amass a free, online collection of government materials for the public. Today his site includes court of appeals decisions dating back to 1950 and all the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. But the Public.Resource.Org website offers no search function: You can download the material, but you need to know what you?re looking for. Precydent.com, another free site, lets visitors search on all the documents contained in Public.Resource.Org and other sources as well, such as court websites. To test Precydent?s search functions, CEO Thomas A. Smith, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, asked several law professors to list the cases that should come up in particular example searches. He then compared the results obtained on Precydent against those from commercial services. Precydent, according to Smith, delivers results that more closely mirror the law professors? lists. Other emerging free services include AltLaw.org, HyperLaw.com, the Public Library of Law (PLoL.org), and the Legal Information Institute. AltLaw?a joint project of Columbia Law School?s Program on Law and Technology and the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Law School?offers a database of U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate case reports. HyperLaw, which began publishing court opinions on CD-ROM in the early ?90s, is developing a search site. PLoL.org, maintained by Fastcase, claims to be the largest free law library in the world. And the Legal Information Institute, a project of Cornell Law School, provides free access to decisions from many courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the circuit courts, the U.S. district and bankruptcy courts, and some courts of special jurisdiction. As for the two commercial services that lead the market, both LexisNexis and Westlaw maintain that their fee-based services are worth the price. Free services can offer excellent results in a particular niche, says Allan McLaughlin, a senior vice president at LexisNexis, but he predicts lawyers will still turn to commercial services for comprehensive searches. For example, ?[i]f you?re a lawyer that practices in real estate, family, and small-business law, that one [free] tool is probably not going to work,? he says. ?Services like ours and West?s have a breadth and depth that is unparalleled. A lawyer trying a complicated, interwoven case needs to be sure to turn over every rock possible.? Thomson Reuters, West?s parent company, offers a free service of its own?FindLaw?but its target market is casual users rather than attorneys. ?We recognize that there are free and low-cost services that meet different needs,? says Andy Martens, senior vice president of new product development at Westlaw. ?We focus on those who need the information to be up-to-date and clean.? Westlaw employs 1,200 attorneys to process more than a thousand decisions each day, writing headnotes and summaries that help users? search process, Martens says. ?Legal information has been available for free on the Web for a long time,? he adds. ?We will continue to make Westlaw the best option for legal professionals.?
Usman Baporia
For reprint rights or to order a copy of your photo:
Email
jeremy@reprintpros.com
for prices.
Direct dial: 949-702-5390
Send a letter to the editor:
Email: letters@dailyjournal.com