By Brian Malcom
Let me begin by giving credit where credit is due. iPhone J.D. has a terrific post about the new features of Google Scholar. I would definitely recommend checking out the post. I will try to hit the high points here.
On November 17, 2009, Westlaw and Lexis lost a little piece of their stranglehold on legal research. "Google announced that it expanded its Google Scholar service to include free, full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state courts." The federal opinions include tax and bankruptcy opinions and date back to 1924. State opinions date back to 1950. Apparently, "the Google employee who worked on this project as a part of the "do something interesting with 20% of your time here" policy that Google encourages for all of its employees." If he developed this with 20% of his time, I cannot imagine what this programmer could do with 50% or 100% of his time.
Some of the benefits of searchable legal resources through Google Scholar are:
- It's fast.
- It's free.
- It's Google.
- It's streamlined. This is great for a quick search from your PDA or
laptop using a wireless card.
- It's very familiar. If you haven't done a Google search in the past decade,
you may want to check your pulse.
- No login required. This kind of informs "it's fast", but I think it's important enough
to mention again. Logging in can be annoying when you're in a hurry.
- It highlights search terms, but you can turn them off if you follow iPhone J.D.'s tips.
iPhone J.D. writes, "When you find a legal opinion that is relevant to you, you can use the helpful "How Cited" tab to find other decisions that have cited your found opinion. This is somewhat similar to Shepards on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw, although Google does not currently characterize the citing authority to tell you if, for example, another case overturns or distinguishes your case." iPhone J.D. also points out that "[t]his is not the first free caselaw service on the Internet (even though it may quickly become the best), and Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis currently offer a lot that Google is not offering including summaries and headnotes, case histories, formatted downloads suitable for printing, etc."
As of today, the service does not include statutes. But, let's give Google some time and some traffic. I bet if this takes off, Google will devote more the 20% of one programmer's time to beefing up the resources available.
What will this do to overhead of law firms? Well, I have a feeling that major law firms are going to keep their subscriptions with Lexis and Westlaw for now. Google is too new and unfamiliar to trust with the important task of legal research. That being said, I am betting that law firms and clients will begin to pay attention to the Google Scholar page as a low-cost resource for legal research. Clients may even require their attorneys to use Google Scholar or another free resource, in lieu of paying for legal research sources. Small law firms, non-profits and pro bono organizations will likely be the first to take advantage of Google Scholar.
Questions for another day: Is Google Scholar secure? Will Google Scholar store or save your searches? Are there ethical and confidentiality issues with using Google Scholar? If you know the answers, feel free to answer in the comments.