Legal Software: Bruce: Caselaw is Set Free, What Next?

miercuri, 22 octombrie 2014

Bruce: Caselaw is Set Free, What Next?

Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute has posted Caselaw is Set Free, What Next? , at the Google Scholar Blog .

Here are excerpts from the post:

[...] Google Scholar’s caselaw collection is a victory for open access to legal information and the democratization of law. [...]

Five years ago, when Google Scholar added judicial opinions to its portfolio, it created an immediate sensation among lawyers. Small-office and solo practitioners were the most vocal about it; they had always had a difficult time affording the services of commercial publishers, even in print. And now there was access to a significant chunk of material that had previously been lodged firmly behind paywalls. It was linked and searchable, and still better, it offered a version of the citation-tracking and evaluation features that lawyers knew and loved in expensive commercial systems. It had first-class sorting and filtering features. It had Bluebook-form citations for each case [...]. Nobody in the open-access arena had tried such a thing, and probably only Google could have. One commentator said that, “Google fired (arguably) the loudest…salvo in the battle for free access to caselaw… and it apparently came as a tweet”.

Scholar’s immediate impact on the legal profession was owed in large part to its technical virtuosity. It was an unusual display of ingenuity used to democratize services and features whose value had mostly been known only to lawyers. [...]

[...] it was a sign that freely accessible legal information was technically advanced and more than sufficient for many if not most professional needs. Most of all, it signaled that free legal information was something to be taken seriously. It sent that signal at a time when circumstances compelled the profession to pay far more attention than it otherwise might have. Scholar not only brought us a new and capable collection, it brought a new level and quality of attention to the entire open-access enterprise. [...]

Google Scholar’s caselaw collection offers features — such as citators — that are a step toward the “system of books” that would fully integrate primary legal sources and commentary into a practical resource for public understanding and professional practice. The legal-information ecosystem on the Web as a whole is moving in that direction. As that progresses, the benefits to everyone affected by law — which is to say, everyone, period — will be enormous. We will move beyond making law available on the Web to making it truly accessible on the Web — not just discoverable, but understandable. [...]

For more details, please see the complete post.

HT @LIICornell