Monday, April 21, 2008
Updates on Free Case Law
I've had several posts in recent months about various efforts to move caselaw into the public domain and, once there, to make it more accessible. I also had a recent article about this in Law Technology News, Online Legal Research Revolution. Now, some updates:
- IT Conversations interviews Carl Malamud, the man behind Public.Resource.Org and a long-time crusader to bring public information out of the darkness.
- David Hobbie at his blog Caselines puts public-domain search engine PreCYdent to the test and "was stunned" by the results. "I have never seen such a highly relevant set of search results on any electronic case search engine. Not in Westlaw. Not in Lexis. Not anywhere."
- Meanwhile, PreCYdent has moved from alpha to beta with a release it describes as more stable. Its recent newsletter (sent to everyone who registers) says it is working hard to extend its database to all state jurisdictions. It has also added a Government Printing Office archive of 1.3 million documents and a database of legal forms.
- Public.Resource.Org has been adding a collection of state cases and codes.
- Public.Resource.Org has added most of the cases from the first Federal Reporter series, which supplements the F.2d and F.3d series posted in February.
Labels: caselaw, public domain
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:59 PM,
