Until very recently, access to case law, legal forms, legal treatises, and other legal resources has, for the most part, been limited to those who are willing–and capable–of paying for subscriptions to private commercial databases like Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis.  Things are changing.  We often read of new sites offering free public access to legal information, and, lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about reputable sites popping up all over the place.  So I thought I’d provide a list of some of these sites and a brief summary of their features.

1. Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit whose goal is to create public-domain repository of all federal and state case law.  On their “uscourts” link is this accurate quote: “If ever there was an oligopoly, Wexis is it, and the two companies that share the $6.5 billion market for access to U.S. law fight hard to keep their locks on tight. The lawyers in the big law firms and the salesmen from West and Lexis maintain that those who need access to the law are able to get it at an affordable price, but that is FUD in the extreme.”  The site is a bit difficult to navigate, but still commendable for the amount of information it offers.
2. Precydent.com is a site we blogged about not too long ago.  It’s purpose is similar to Public.Resource: “all lawyers, law librarians, law students, and the general public should have access to state-of-the-art search technology to help them navigate through the large and complex body of legal authority, & judicial opinions and statutes must be in the public domain, in practice as well as in theory.”
3. Altlaw.com is a joint project by Columbia Law School and the University of Colorado Law School to provide “the first free, full-text searchable database of Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports.”  Interestingly, on their about page is this link to other free legal sites.
4. Justia.com is one of the other free sites that Altlaw links to.  It aims to be more comprehensive than the above sites.  Beyond case law, it offers links to other legal forms, experts, statutes, law blogs and even podcasts.  Apparently the site was started by Tim Stanley, who founded FindLaw and then later sold it to West.  Stanley started Justia to provide legal marketing solutions, but, as you can see it has taken on a whole new look and purpose.
5. Docstoc.com is similar to Justia in the sense that they both offer access to legal forms and templates.  But docstoc goes beyond legal forms, billing itself as “the premier online community to find and share professional documents.”  It’s something like a cross between a repository of “professional documents” and a social networking site.
6. Stanford’s IP Litigation Clearinghouse, once launched, aims to address “the critical need for a comprehensive, online resource for scholars, policy makers, industry, lawyers, and litigation support firms in the field of intellectual property litigation.”  It’s a bit more high-brow than the other sites since it’s aimed at those of us who spend far too much of our time working in law.  Anyway, it will be a tremendous resource once it’s active.

Startups and small companies often are staffed by sophisticated individuals who don’t have the capacity to spend lots of money, especially on common legal questions.  Or, sometimes, they simply want to find the answers for themselves.  These sites meet that demand.  I’m going to add links on our blog to most of these.  Please let us know if you’re aware of other good ones.

Tags: free, legal resources, research

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Corporate, Intellectual Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.