Law in Contemporary Society

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WestlawKiller 7 - 09 Jul 2010 - Main.DevinMcDougall
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 Ok maybe not, but has anyone used Google Scholar to search for legal opinions? It's still quite primitive, but it has "how cited" similar to shepard's and keycite, all of the cites within the texts are conveniently hyperlinked, and a search for libel and public figure in New York cases brought up most of the same cases I found using Westlaw for my moot court brief. Did I mention it's completely free?

If this type of technology gets better and stays as readily accessible, why will we need to pay high fees for Westlaw and Lexis Nexis? Someone asked in class how we can cover costs working on our own, but I think it will only get easier and cheaper to do the kind of work lawyers do, and this is one example of how this will happen.

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 @Ashley - I have been using this site for a while and appreciate it quite a bit. I think that the thing that I find most exciting is the access to recent Supreme Court decisions. Now, anyone can access these opinions by simply typing the party names into Google. This may seem trivial to law students who understand what a citation is and are used to pulling up cases, but for someone who simply wants to learn more about a decision they read about in the news, this is a great tool. While the site is quite useful for lawyers (especially those of us working in the private sector who have to pay for Lexis/Westlaw), it is also incredibly useful for non-lawyers trying to understand the decisions that are shaping the law as we know it. I'm excited to see what the future holds.

-- DavidGoldin 06 Jul 2010

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>		This is not exactly a Westlaw killer - but it does relate to free access to government documents. Recap - the firefox extension that turns Pacer around.

From the FAQ:

What is PACER? PACER stands for “Public Access to Court Electronic Records.” It is the website the federal judiciary uses to make public records available to the general public. You can use PACER to access legal documents relating to thousands of federal court cases.

Who uses PACER? Although PACER is officially available to the general public, it is mostly used by practicing attorneys. The site is difficult for non-lawyers to navigate, and it has a “paywall” that requires users to pay significant fees for the documents they download from PACER.

What does RECAP do? RECAP is an extension (or “add on”) for the Firefox web browser that improves the PACER experience while helping PACER users build a free and open repository of public court records. RECAP users automatically donate the documents they purchase from PACER into a public repository hosted by the Internet Archive. And RECAP saves users money by alerting them when a document they are searching for is already available from this repository. RECAP also makes other enhancements to the PACER experience, including more user-friendly file names.

-- DevinMcDougall - 09 Jul 2010


Revision 7r7 - 09 Jul 2010 - 04:30:35 - DevinMcDougall
Revision 6r6 - 06 Jul 2010 - 23:06:52 - DavidGoldin
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