That's right. I once wrote the code for the now-defunct Courtbot.com, which crawled, stored, and indexed the majority of available U.S. court decisions as they were published. This was years before Google Scholar started indexing opinions.
But even a completely functional Courtbot-style site is really only a competitor to something like Findlaw.com, not Westlaw or LexisNexis. That's because those companies have features that would be difficult to replicate:
- Very complex and comprehensive search options and parameters. This is possible to do but time-consuming and tricky.
- LexisNexis has 15,000 employees, and I suspect a significant number are involved in reviewing cases, summarizing, noting authorities and conflicts, etc. It's not yet possible to replace a trained lawyer reviewing an opinion with a regular expression. :)
- A subscription to LN/WL typically gets you, depending on your package and how much you're paying, far more than just court opinions. You get news articles, journal articles, congressional transcripts, and a slew of databases that can be used to look up info on people, locate assets, etc. A lot of this means licensing deals, and LN/WL effectively gives you a one-stop shop for a wealth of data. Some of this is coming online and is becoming searchable, but not enough to make a real dent.
The one thing that challengers have in their favor is that Lexis and Westlaw are expensive. I've had free accounts because of faculty affiliations or a newsroom subscription, which is grand, but it's cost-prohibitive for many people and businesses. The ABA has published a list of alternatives; note the majority are actually still owned by Lexis and Westlaw:
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/departments_offices/legal_...
But even a completely functional Courtbot-style site is really only a competitor to something like Findlaw.com, not Westlaw or LexisNexis. That's because those companies have features that would be difficult to replicate:
- Very complex and comprehensive search options and parameters. This is possible to do but time-consuming and tricky. - LexisNexis has 15,000 employees, and I suspect a significant number are involved in reviewing cases, summarizing, noting authorities and conflicts, etc. It's not yet possible to replace a trained lawyer reviewing an opinion with a regular expression. :) - A subscription to LN/WL typically gets you, depending on your package and how much you're paying, far more than just court opinions. You get news articles, journal articles, congressional transcripts, and a slew of databases that can be used to look up info on people, locate assets, etc. A lot of this means licensing deals, and LN/WL effectively gives you a one-stop shop for a wealth of data. Some of this is coming online and is becoming searchable, but not enough to make a real dent.
The one thing that challengers have in their favor is that Lexis and Westlaw are expensive. I've had free accounts because of faculty affiliations or a newsroom subscription, which is grand, but it's cost-prohibitive for many people and businesses. The ABA has published a list of alternatives; note the majority are actually still owned by Lexis and Westlaw: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/departments_offices/legal_...