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Meet Lexis Web

By Jeralyn, Section Law Related
Posted on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 02:26:21 PM EST
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For lawyers and reporters on legal events, meet Lexis Web. It's a free search engine of legal stuff, but it also gives you the last five years of case law free, through lexisone.com. It's like a google search engine for law, with the added benefit you can access huge amounts of material free, including the last five yars of caselaw.

No sign up required for the search engine. If you do have a lexis account, and you want to do research in greater detail, you can log in right in from your search results.

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    Meet Lexis Web | 10 comments (10 topical)

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    Great!! (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by befuddledvoter on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 02:36:27 PM EST
    Thanks!

    Interesting (5.00 / 1) (#2)
    by andgarden on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 02:37:39 PM EST
    Not a fabulous result on my first try, but it's beta.

    Lexis and Westlaw give law students all you can eat accounts, which is awesome and dangerous at the same time.

    I am not getting caselaw results (none / 0) (#3)
    by eric on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 03:17:41 PM EST
    just other types of hits.  How do I get caselaw?
    go register (none / 0) (#6)
    by wystler on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 03:46:52 PM EST
    here

    Parent
    thanks (none / 0) (#8)
    by eric on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 04:02:06 PM EST
    I was thinking that there was a way to search without registering.

    Parent
    Complement for earlier case law (none / 0) (#4)
    by NMvoiceofreason on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 03:25:46 PM EST
    For those of use not fortunate enough to have a lexis/nexis account (or westlaw) there have previously been two alternatives: http://www.precydent.com/ and http://public.findlaw.com/

    Personally, precydent is better unless you like the findlaw for professional's signup proctology exam.

    Thanks, Jeralyn, for helping to make the law that belongs to the people a little more accessible to the people through your continuing efforts to educate us and explain it to us.

    Public should NOT have to pay for access to cases (none / 0) (#5)
    by jerry on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 03:46:30 PM EST
    This is a very useful search engine, but I take issue with only allowing five years of access to caselaw.

    I'm way out of my league here, but with my very brief experiences, I think westlaw, etc., is a giant raid on the taxpayer as well as on my civil liberties.

    Any public court record should be made available to the public, for free.  I think it's nonsense that various transcripts and other records regarding to the law are made available only on a pay for access basis.  It is a reason why legal fees are high, and it helps only to create a priest class of lawyers.

    I'd love to see Brewster Kahle (of the Internet Archives) take this on.

    Everything is free (none / 0) (#7)
    by eric on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 04:00:17 PM EST
    just head on down to your state law library.  Most states and courts also seem to have online access, as well.

    Westlaw and Lexis are premium, private services that have added value by digesting, key numbering, sorting, and annotating the law.  It is a tool created for lawyers.  There is no problem with charging for it any more than there is a cost for buying legal reference books and digests, which is the way that we used to do all of our research.  And online legal research has nothing to do with taxes or civil liberties.

    As a member of the "priest class", I can tell you that the cost of access to legal resources has little to do with legal fees.  In fact, I would venture a guess the the efficiency of Westlaw and Lexis save on costs because less time is needed to perform the research.

    Parent

    Digital Divide (none / 0) (#9)
    by jerry on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 04:15:49 PM EST
    The people should not have to head down to the law library to access these records.  Many people, for many reasons, find it very difficult to get to the law library.

    I have at times, on the net, encountered articles that pointed to various legal records kept safely behind the priest's paid wall.

    I would like to see Brewster Kahle take this on, because if the basic public records (stenographer's transcripts and various orders and motions?) were made available electronically to the public, I am certain we can recreate reasonable facsimiles of the indexing, and numbering, and cross-referencing.

    Parent

    Jeralyn, Thanks (none / 0) (#10)
    by cpa1 on Fri Sep 12, 2008 at 08:35:47 PM EST
    Small practitioners need reference and research material to level the playing fields.  Just this week on two cases involving valuations the experts on the other side used incorrect information and without buying the services, Ibbotson's SBBI Valuation Yearbook and RMA Statement Studies, I and the two respective Courts wouldn't know the difference.  These aren't terribly expensive books but when you add their cost to the NY Law Journal, data bases on discounts and premia, books on compensation and earnings in all fields, it gets very expensive, especially considering the large firm needs only  one of these books the same as the sole practitioner does.

    That is one reason why the use of neutrals is dangerous because without someone looking over their shoulders, they can say anything.

    I'm not exactly sure how to use Lexis One yet because like some of the others, I am getting lots of "There was an error executing the query: There was an error parsing the results."  Plus, when it does work, just like Google, there are lots of ads for law firms.

    Meet Lexis Web | 10 comments (10 topical)

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