COMPUTER-ASSISTED LEGAL RESEARCH
Technology that allows lawyers and judges to bypass the traditional law library and locate
statutes, court cases, and other legal references in minutes using a personal computer, research software or the INTERNET, and an online connection.
The two largest computer-assisted legal research (CALR) services are WESTLAW, offered
by Thomson Corporation’s Eagan, Minnesota based West unit, and LEXIS, offered by Reed
Elsevier’s Dayton, Ohio-based Lexis Nexis unit.
Both services provide on-line access to the fundamental tools of the legal profession—court opinions, federal and state statutes, federal regulations, administrative law cases, and other lawrelated materials. Their extensive databases are updated frequently, providing attorneys with the most up-to-the-minute developments in U.S. law.
CALR systems contain thousands of databases.
In addition to primary source materials, they offer access to business and economic journals, national newspapers, law reviews, federal
tax abstracts, and financial data and materials.
Specialized databases for narrower topics such
as taxes, SECURITIES, labor, insurance, and
BANKRUPTCY are also available.
When CALR was first developed in the
1970s, it borrowed Boolean search techniques
from the field of computer programming. A
Boolean search looks for a particular term or
group of terms in a specific relationship to one
another. CALR Boolean searches can include
limits with respect to time: for example, court
opinions are always dated, so an attorney can
use a Boolean search to look for cases released in
a given year or in a range of years.
CALR service providers have also created
plain language search systems. Under the plain
language approach, an attorney simply types in
a search in the form of a question.
The following two samples demonstrate the
difference between a Boolean search and a plain
language search for the same issue: whether a
successor corporation is liable for the cleanup of
toxic waste left by a prior owner of the property.
The two examples reflect WESTLAW notation;
the notation for LEXIS would be similar.
Boolean search
(successor /5 corporation) /p (toxic or hazardous
or chemical or dangerous /5 waste) /p
clean! and da(aft 1/1/90)
Plain language search
is a successor corporation liable for the
cleanup of hazardous (toxic) waste?
The sample Boolean search looks for the
combination of successor within five words of
corporation, in the same paragraph as the combination
of toxic or hazardous or chemical or
dangerous within five words of waste, within the
same paragraph as clean or cleanup or cleans or
cleaned or cleaning (the exclamation mark in
clean! causes the computer to search for all
words with clean as a root). Cases are limited to
those dated after January 1, 1990.
Boolean search results usually are listed in
reverse chronological order (the most recent
case first). A plain language search ranks the first
20 documents that best match the search. The
first ranked document is the one that most
closely matches the terms in the search. A document
will be ranked higher if the terms appear
more often in that document.
Advances in computer technology have produced
another innovation in automated research:
voice recognition research. With this method, a
search query is dictated either in plain language
or by using Boolean terms and connectors. After
the simple commands are spoken, the researcher’s
exact words appear on the computer screen and
the requested documents are retrieved. The keyboard
is not used at all during the search.
Legal researchers have the option of using
CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory)
libraries, although these have become less popular
in the early 2000s. A personal computer,
CD-ROM drive, and specific software are
required. Some CD-ROMs allow for access to a
CALR online service (these require a modem).
Lawyers are also using the Internet, the public
access electronic network. Because many
statutes, court opinions, and LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
materials are online, the Internet is
becoming a valuable resource for business and
legal research. It is also used for document transfers
and client E-mail.
Recent Developments
Most judges, lawyers, and law librarians continue
to rely on the traditional fee-based giants
of online legal research––Lexis, Westlaw, and
Loislaw (owned by New York-based Aspen Publishers,
Inc., a subsidiary of Dutch publishing
company Wolters Kluwer). However, more
law-related professionals are turning to free
Internet sites to conduct their legal research. A
number of Web sites now provide free access to
a variety of legal materials that include federal
and state case law, codes and regulations, treatises,
law reviews, scholarly articles, mainstream
news stories, as well as legal forms, public
records, and attorney directories.
Examples of Internet sites that provide free
access to at least some of these legal resources
are numerous, though the depth and breadth of
coverage offered by each site varies. Among the
myriad of such providers, FindLaw generally
remains the benchmark for comprehensive
quality. Many law school Internet sites also provide
free access to a wide variety of information.
One such example is the Legal Information
Institute, a site maintained by Cornell Law School (www.law.cornell.edu). This site provides
a range of primary and secondary source
materials, as well as directories to locate additional
information on the Web.
FindLaw provides multiple channels to
access information from its portal and caters the
information to specific types of end users. These
include channels for legal professionals, students,
businesses, and the public. Material specific
to these targeted audiences is made
available as well as resources for all users, such as
cases, codes, articles, and guides. Within each
channel users can drill down to the area of law
that interests them.
For example, students can look at outlines
and examinations for a variety of legal courses,
view employment opportunities, or learn about
study skills. Business people can gain insights
into starting a business, review different types of
business organizations, and look into bankruptcy
provisions. For the general public, topics
include employment, immigration, personal
injury, education, estate planning, and real estate
law. FindLaw also continues to provide an excellent
federal case law database that is searchable
by title, citation, and full text. All cases from U.S.
Reports from 1893 to the present are included.
While boatloads of legal information can
now be obtained on the Internet free of charge,
the information typically consists of unanalyzed,
non-value-added material such as primarysource
documents stripped of the editorial
enhancements provided by pay services. Such
enhancements include case synopses (editorially
created summaries of the procedural history
and holding of a case), case headnotes (editorially
created snapshots of each court ruling in a
case), statutory annotations (editorially created
indices listing every case that has interpreted or
applied a particular statute), and legal citators
(editorially created reference guides telling users
whether a legal authority may still be cited in
court as good law), among others. Because these
editorial enhancements can be so valuable in
making legal research more efficient and successful,
most law-related professionals remain
willing to pay significant subscriber and user
fees to access them.
FURTHER READINGS
Ebbinghouse, Carol. July 1, 2001. “Portals to the Future of
Legal Information.” Searcher Magazine.
Jatkevicius, James. March 1, 2003. “Free Lunch: Legal
Resources from Plain to Polished.”. Online Magazine.
The Lawyer’s PC: A Newsletter for Lawyers Using Personal
Computers. 1983– . Colorado Springs: Shepard’s/
McGraw-Hill.
“A Show-Stopper from WESTLAW.” 1992. California Lawyer
(November).
“Three New Services for Lawyers on the World Wide Web.”
December 27, 2000. Law Office Technology Review.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Computer Law Association; Internet; Law Review.
