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Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

librarylab.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#31

Post by smallreader »

DannyBee wrote: post #20

They have to digitize, in part, because all of the states have exclusive publication/etc agreements with westlaw or lexis or .... So you can't get a feed of cases from pretty much anywhere, and often, you aren't allowed to bulk download, etc. Plenty of folks have digitized all the data harvard is talking about here. They are not first. Carl malamud, for example, has scanned all the federal reporters and tons and tons…

You need pre-internet cases from the era before courts had websites. Also, court rules generally require citation formats that use page numbers from the official reporters. In the past, the West has actually unsuccessfully tried to claim copyright to its page numbers (West Publishing Co. v. Mead Data Central, 799 F.2d 1219).

There is a lot of other editorial content that actual legal researchers really kind of need, but which they are going to redact because it isn't part of the reported decisions and is owned by the publisher. (Things like unofficial syllabi, indexed lists of holdings, subject matter, etc.)

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#32

Post by wtvanhest »

smallreader wrote: post #28
wtvanhest wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want free access to all the law, YC's Casetext.com provides it and they provide it for free for everyone right now. Try searching for cases that interest you, and you can read about them and lots of comments from attorneys. Disclaimer - I know most of the team, but I think anyone would agree after reviewing casetext.com, ravel and the other companies trying to do this that casetext is by far the most open and…

There's actually several others. "Free the Law" is not even the first Ivy League entry in this space. Cornell has the Legal Information Institute ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ) which is entirely free. In the for-profit space, FindLaw has been around forever. There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though. It's not simply a matter of indexing all the decisions and…

> There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though.

I have a few friends at big law and they have 100% access to Westlaw or Lexis which means they do not need any of the alternatives at this point. That said, many, many, many small to mid-sized firms cannot afford access to Westlaw or Lexis which is why these various initiatives and companies are so important.

At a fundamental level, these services all help improve the odds you will win a case when hiring a smaller law firm. A lot of people comment here about how there are not society improving companies anymore (uber for food delivery), but I am a believer that each of these companies in this space are fundamentally important to our society.

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#33

Post by zekevermillion »

wtvanhest wrote: post #32
smallreader wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually several others. "Free the Law" is not even the first Ivy League entry in this space. Cornell has the Legal Information Institute ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ) which is entirely free. In the for-profit space, FindLaw has been around forever. There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though. It's not simply a matter of indexing all the decisions and…

> There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though. I have a few friends at big law and they have 100% access to Westlaw or Lexis which means they do not need any of the alternatives at this point. That said, many, many, many small to mid-sized firms cannot afford access to Westlaw or Lexis which is why these various initiatives and companies are so important. At a fu…

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#34

Post by wtvanhest »

zekevermillion wrote: post #33
wtvanhest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though. I have a few friends at big law and they have 100% access to Westlaw or Lexis which means they do not need any of the alternatives at this point. That said, many, many, many small to mid-sized firms cannot afford access to Westlaw or Lexis which is why these various initiatives and companies are so important. At a fu…

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

Casetext makes the law 100% free...

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#35

Post by tzs »

stonemetal wrote: post #10
tzs wrote: post #2

They are projecting to have Federal and CA, NY, MA, IL, TX done in 2016, and the rest of the states in 2017. I'm curious why those particular states are being done first. In particular, I'd have expected Delaware to be in the first group, because so many public companies are incorporated there, and so the decisions of its courts on corporate and stockholder issues have major national importance. Offhand, I can't thin…

There is quite a bit of IP law handled in Texas thanks to patent trolls in East Texas. So I can see there being some interest in getting it covered. MA? Maybe it is interesting from a historical perspective since it is one of the older areas of the US.

Those patent cases are in federal court and so will be part of the Federal collection, not the Texas collection. The Texas collection is decisions of the Texas state courts, not Federal courts that are located in Texas.

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#36

Post by tzs »

zekevermillion wrote: post #33
wtvanhest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's still nothing yet that really competes with Westlaw or LexisNexis for professionals though. I have a few friends at big law and they have 100% access to Westlaw or Lexis which means they do not need any of the alternatives at this point. That said, many, many, many small to mid-sized firms cannot afford access to Westlaw or Lexis which is why these various initiatives and companies are so important. At a fu…

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

> Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party?

You don't. What you have to purchase through a private party is electronic access to the annotations that the private party adds to the cases. If you just want the public domain cases you don't need to purchase anything from a private party.

First, there is PACER [1]. PACER is not free, but it is pretty cheap and it is owned and operated by government, not by a private party. The documents retrieved through PACER are usually public domain, and so once someone gets a particular case they can legally share it. I don't have a link handy, but I believe there are startups that gather together cases contributed this way to build a growing body of PACER material that you can get without having to pay even the small PACER fees.

You can also get the material for free at government and school law libraries that are generally open to the public.

[1] https://www.pacer.gov

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#37

Post by kemitchell »

wtvanhest wrote: post #34
zekevermillion wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

Casetext makes the law 100% free...

Big fan of Jake and his team. Pretty sure they're stuck licensing case data, like everybody else. That means no unrestricted bulk downloads of permissively licensed case data for end users.

That data is "free" insofar as you can read it on Casetext without payment. That's great---I do it a lot---but it's a far cry from what Public Resource aimed to do and what Harvard has now promised to do.

In some situations, like Lexis Nexis' relationship to the State of California, there were are are already "walled garden" interfaces where you can go to read and download case law one case at a time. That hasn't opened the playing field for viable, comprehensive alternatives to Wexis, which is probably why Wexis can be convinced to offer them.

If and when the data become truly open, I can't wait to see where Casetext goes.

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#38

Post by kemitchell »

DannyBee wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #6

No, not "freely accessable online", not until the 8 year exclusivity agreement with Ravel expires. It's a pay service with a free tier.[1] "Under the Harvard-Ravel agreement, Ravel is paying all of the costs of digitizing case law. HLS owns the resulting data, and Ravel has an obligation to offer free public access to all of the digitized case law on its site and to provide non-profit developers with free ongoing API…

Note that most of the states use lexis or someone and have exclusive rights deals with them as publishers. You can't really easily get feeds of cases (you can get the reporters, and then scan them, but this is not up to date). So whatever they do will be out of date.

If you haven't seen CourtListener, you should!

It's incomplete, in that most court website feeds don't have Bluebook citable pagination. The US Supreme Court and a few states with strong neutral citation rules are exceptions, but, alas, not the rule.

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#39

Post by kemitchell »

DannyBee wrote: post #20

They have to digitize, in part, because all of the states have exclusive publication/etc agreements with westlaw or lexis or .... So you can't get a feed of cases from pretty much anywhere, and often, you aren't allowed to bulk download, etc. Plenty of folks have digitized all the data harvard is talking about here. They are not first. Carl malamud, for example, has scanned all the federal reporters and tons and tons…

I also tried and failed to "buy out" existing scans for permissive public licensing about five years ago. I actually approached the Law Library Microsoft Consortium, which none of the librarians I knew were even aware of, and couldn't get anywhere.

Frankly, even now, with Harvard announcement in hand, I doubt I could. It just wasn't a thing the institution knew how to do. "Does not compute."

I'm sorry to hear things have gotten worse.

Re: Free the Law: all U.S. case law online

#40

Post by toomuchtodo »

tzs wrote: post #36
zekevermillion wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? Ignorance of the law is no defense, but I have to pay to relieve that ignorance? Come on!

> Why is it that in a "Democracy" we have to purchase access to the law through a private party? You don't. What you have to purchase through a private party is electronic access to the annotations that the private party adds to the cases. If you just want the public domain cases you don't need to purchase anything from a private party. First, there is PACER [1]. PACER is not free, but it is pretty cheap and it is ow…

RECAP: https://www.recapthelaw.org/

Scraps PACER when you use it, injects the docs into the Internet Archive.

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