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.

---

@Art - I don't know if you've looked at LoisLaw - but it is a low cost system for legal research. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of Lexis or Westlaw and still isn't free, but from what I understand, it is more and more of a challenger to Lexis/Westlaw. I'm not super familiar with it, but I figured I'd at least bring it up on this thread. People who are familiar, feel free to comment about it.

-- DavidGoldin 21 Apr 2010