Google Legal Scholar

For those of us really "living under rocks" somewhere…. Back in the middle of last November (Nov. 19, 2009 to be precise) Google Scholar was expanded to include free access to court cases and other legal information. Scholar, itself, was introduced back in 2004, "indexing the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines."

An article first posted by the San Francisco Bar Association last December reported that the legal aspect of Scholar includes "U.S. Supreme Court opinions since 1791 and U.S. federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 in its database. The database also includes U.S. state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950. Cases are cited in Bluebook format, include internal page numbers, and are cross-linked within the database. The service also crawls other free case law providers and provides links to cases on these sites. In addition to case law, Google scholar provides links to secondary sources, such as law reviews and journals." That article was re-published with permission on LLRX.com that same month.

"Google Scholar's free search has drawn praise and criticism," the article reports. "On the positive side, it employs the clean, simple, and fast user experience that Google is well known and admired for. The service does not require a login, allowing users to very quickly check a case name or cite. The search engine works very fast--there is no perceptible delay or lag when returning search results, and results are posted in publicly accessible hyperlinks, making sharing cases very easy. Searches can also be saved if the user logs in. And, of course, the price is right -- users can search, view, and print these cases for free.

“Most reviewers agree, however, that Google Scholar will not replace commercial legal publishers such as LexisNexis® or Westlaw® any time soon. The value in paid services lies mostly in the editorial work they provide on top of caselaw -- e.g., headnotes and cite checking features. While Google's 'How Cited' tool provides some interesting perspective on how the case has been cited and used, it is probably not a replacement for the Shephards or KeyCite system. Something else to keep in mind -- Google Scholar is limited to case law, and does not include statutes or regulations (though those are available for free elsewhere on the Internet)."

More information about Scholar's legal availabilities & concept, basic instructions, and links to some earlier comments and criticisms were posted on google's official blog (Here )