My February post as a Ms. JD Writer in Residence is up! (This is my rudimentary method of re-blogging it!) The following is an excerpt from my post, which reviewed Ravel Law, a new case law database. Following the excerpt is a link to the whole post on Ms. JD’s site.
In the world of electronic legal research, two names have always dominated the market: Lexis and Westlaw. There are others of course, such as LoisLaw, Fastcase, and Casemaker, and a couple of years ago, Bloomberg Law entered the market. The trouble with these databases is that they’re subscription-based, and even those that tout themselves as low-cost will set you back a hefty sum. Luckily for us, the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) has spawned and inspired a variety of legal research platforms that offer access to statutes and cases without a costly subscription. These platforms range from official codes posted on state and federal government websites to law school born databases, such as Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (an official member of FALM). For this post, I’m going to focus on another, very new, legal research platform born out of a law school and inspired by free access to law: Ravel Law….
Read the rest of this post on Ms. JD’s website.
(This is also cross-posted on my other blog, Legal Research Redux.)
lawbrarianship 