Colorado joins Ohio Casemaker

Columbus Business First reports that the Colorado Bar Association has joined the consortium of state bar associations led by Ohio. The addition of Colorado brings to 18 the states participating. Each state's appellate court opinions are added to the electronic database, and members of the bar associations of each state have access to all of the other state's opinions. Casemaker is the brainchild of the Ohio State Bar Association, whose goal is to have all 50 states' opinions included.

The legal research product is interesting because it is moving into a space that is below the threshold of the mega products like Thomson Westlaw and Reed Elsevier's Lexisnexis. Sites like Aspen's Loislaw, Versuslaw, Quicklaw, Fastcase, and National Law Library are providing 50 case coverage in various ways and with varying enhanced tools already. Getting the case law as a member benefit for the bar association creates substantial additional value by giving the members what is essentially a free option for part of their legal research needs that is far more reliable than what they might have on the Internet.

Kudos to our home town (Cincinnati!) Lawriter Corporation for providing the technology backbone to Casemaker.