June 12th, 2008
Open source opens access to the law library
Back in my salad days as a tech reporter, when I was green in judgment, I covered a local entrepreneur who got a lock on the courthouse.
His business plan was to put local court records online, then sell access to law firms. Back then legal records, if on computer at all, were stored on giant tape drives. He got the local courts to copy the tapes for him, on an exclusive basis.
Nice business. It made his fortune. I was genuinely thrilled for him.
While the Internet has opened up access to most data, legal records have remained a tidy little racket. Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis have it all tied up in a neat little bow.
Or they had. Because now Google-like algorithms and cheap Indian labor are letting new companies grab for hunks of that duopoly:
- Casemaker provides basic case law and opinions.
- PreCYdent offers opinions, statutes, lists of lawyers, and a very Google-like interface.
- Fastcase specializes in case law, with both federal and state cases.
These services are dramatically under-cutting the incumbents on price, and giving the general public access to legal cases for the first time. Forbes calls the result open source law but that’s a misnomer. It’s basically lower-cost competition.
They may be forgiven the hyperbole, however, after talking with Carl Malamud over at Public Resource. This is a free, publicly-accessible case law database with (as you can see) something of a sense of humor about itself.
The seal at the top is replicated in gray at the center of the site’s home page, and tilts its head when you mouse over it. A list of resources online and in the process of coming online is at the left, with other open government resources at the right.
Open source, as a rule, abhors monopolies, and its competition eventually drives prices toward zero. We’re still a long way from that in the legal research field, but it’s getting cheaper, and more accessible, day after day.
The online law library is no longer closed to you
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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