There was widespread celebration in the legal community yesterday as word of Google Scholar’s launch of a substantial collection of US case law spread across the internets.  Now what?

Only time will tell how the availability of this critical body of public content will shake things up in the legal world and in the legal information industry.  But the winners, losers, and implications might not be what everybody thinks:

• The availability of free primary law sources is not going to have its biggest impact on products and services that the legal profession itself uses. That market needs a lot of value-add beyond just access to the law (including advanced finding tools, secondary legal content, and workflow tools), and the existing players are well positioned to continue providing it. Thomson Reuters (Westlaw) and Reed Elsevier (Lexis) are likely more concerned about Bloomberg than Google in their primary legal marketplace. However, open access to legal sources will spur the creation of new markets for legal information among consumers, but even more so among non-lawyer professionals who need to understand a narrow field of that they work with all the time. Expect to see new products and services built on top of the free legal information that will make the law more accessible to those new markets.
• The people who should worry about this news are lawyers. They are about to be “Web-MD’d.” Clients will begin coming to them with reams of print-outs, thinking they know the law, the same way doctors are always hearing from self-diagnosing patients who think they can spot their disease by reading stuff on the Web. New-found access to formerly hidden legal information will do for potential legal clients what WebMD and the Web has done for patients – arm them with information, and build a thirst for more information that’s targeted to them, rather than to the lawyers.  Lawyers, like doctors, will have to redefine their role and authority in a world where everyone thinks they’re an expert.
• Still to come will be the question of how Google will develop the “how cited” and “cited by” features. Already you can see some cases where legal journals and non-legal sources from elsewhere in Google Scholar are linked in. It’s fairly crude right now, but Google or others could develop some really interesting cross-linking between the cases and other published material in and outside of the legal industry. Think of what Google has done with maps, and how many different kinds of information could be linked into court opinions: geographic information; the identities of parties, lawyers, and judges; and external links about the subject matter of a given case. What Google is showing us today is only a sliver of what’s possible.
• While much of a lawyer’s work requires the bells and whistles embedded in the full research offerings by the major research players, there is no doubt that many searches in case law are preliminary “fishing expeditions;” first stabs at identifying a case or a legal principle that applies to a legal issue.  It is pretty clear that many lawyers will begin to conduct that first-stage, low-risk research in free services including Google Scholar.  This has two implications: that there will be continued price pressure on the big providers for search offerings ; but also that there will be increased pressure on the newer, inexpensive players such as Fastcase and Casemaker.  Those players will have to continue to innovate in functionality, user experience, and service in order to maintain their hard-won positions as legitimate alternatives to the big two players.

6 Responses to “Winners, Losers, and Other Implications of Case Law on Google Scholar”

1. Laura Bergus wrote on 18 Nov 2009

   I think the WebMD phenomenon is huge, and probably terrifying for practicing attorneys. However, I believe there will be a net gain for consumers and, as you point out, non-legal professionals. One thing to keep in mind as far as clients and “self-diagnosis”: the relatively-recent proliferation of primary statutory sources online (and the common practice of governments and other agencies directing the public to this raw law) doesn’t seem to have been such a problem. I think giving people the other side of the law — the interpretive side that has up until now been hidden from them — can only help in the long run.

   Your last point is also very powerful, and I’d add that for people like myself (who have grown up with Google search’s methodology), the preliminary research that will now happen on Google Scholar will likely be much more efficient and yield higher-quality results than the clumsy fishing I do on Westlaw or Lexis, even if I move on to the finer-tuned, value-added products from there.

2. gyi tsakalakis wrote on 18 Nov 2009

   Google vs. Lexis vs. Westlaw more articles: http://ow.ly/Dsc3 , http://tinyurl.com/5nbvkk , http://ow.ly/Dsc4 , http://ow.ly/Dsc5 , http://ow.ly/Dsc6

3. Jim Calloway wrote on 18 Nov 2009

   I think the WebMD phenomenon is likely to be insignificant. As I noted in a recent blog post ( http://jimcalloway.typepad.com/lawpracticetips/2009/11/debate-on-the-free-access-to-law.html ) Oklahoma has had all of its apellate court opinions and statutes in a free online database accessible to everyone for over a decade now at http://www.oscn.net. There have been no reports of people printing off caselaw to bring in. After all, how much of law school was on pure legal research and how much was on theory, vocabulary, interpretation and such?

   What has been interesting is the impact of having court dockets online for the public to view. People learn of suits against them before they are served or learn of motions before their own lawyer who has not yet recevied notice via U.S. Mail. Only the largest eight counties in Oklahoma have this now, but the plan is to expand.

4. Carolyn Elefant wrote on 18 Nov 2009

   I tend to agree with Jim’s point about the Web MD issue, but I hear you on the Fastcase/Casemaker point, as I blogged at MyShingle – http://www.myshingle.com/2009/11/articles/legal-research-and-writing/free-legal-research-by-google-what-it-means/ Though I am a huge proponent of free legal research, I believe that if Google develops this tool, it will put the second city services like Fastcase, Casemaker, Versuslaw and even Loislaw out of business. This pains me because I hold enormous loyalty to these companies for going to the ends of the earth to develop free legal research products at a time when it was nearly impossible to do so. Today, Google has the advantage of courts’ publication of cases online as well as search data. But those little guys were the first to assault the WEXIS duopoly, reinforced by the courts – and I feel like this is going to harm them most of all. I agree, not much likely to dent LEXIS or Westlaw.

   See my posts for other ideas. BTW, thanks for the excellent commentary. So many people discussing this topic just kind of jumped on the “game changer” bandwagon – you have some real thought here.

5. John wrote on 02 Dec 2009

   West and Lexis are more afraid of Google than Bloomberg. Blaw has been a bit player and even if the new launch gains traction at least it is behind closed (license fee required) gates. Not to mention that Bloomberg took (5?) years to launch a sort of nice rotating flash presentation of small text-only slides. Google is potentially more dangerous because it is free, it is open, and if Google wants to it can quickly respond to user needs and evolve a basic offering much more quickly than West or Lexis can with their legacy staff and systems. If Google has enough case history and adds the right user interaction with the data (think Google maps, tagging, annotation, etc.) it could become the best source of easily searched precedent. And then there’s the possibility of who know what kind of mash-up. West and Lexis both have more to offer in the way of manufactured and sub-licensed content but a new, open, comprehensive and more usable set of precedent would certainly hurt.

   West and Lexis must keep thinking “where’s our value?”

6. Outsell Inc. :: Lex Disruptus » Blog Archive » New Fastcase App: Free Law is Breaking Out All Over wrote on 26 Jan 2010

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