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Chapter 6 - Computer Concepts and Legal Applications

Law Firm Information Sources

Within any legal organization there are generally three law information hierarchies: on-line databases, CD-ROM, and printed materials. Traditionally, print material has been the main source of information. However, with the phenomenal emergence of the Internet and proliferation of CD-ROMs, law firm information sources have changed dramatically in the last few years.

On-line legal databases have been available since the 1980’s but legal publishers’ high prices kept most practitioners away from these services, other than to perform initial case listing research. Today, in some respects, practitioners continue to use books since they are not being charged by the minute. With the advent of the Internet and CD-ROM, prices of electronic access to caselaw and written materials have changed considerably. This has required legal organizations to rethink what type and combination of legal materials will comprise their libraries - electronic and/or print. The available sources include on-line databases, CD-ROM, and printed material.

The dream of a virtual library through which all legal and non-legal information is provided digitally is very close at hand. The goal for firms is to intermix the different materials format - paper, books, CD-ROM, CALR, and the Internet to find efficient and cost effective solutions for the users.

On-line Databases

Text Box:  On-line databases are any information stored in computers located anywhere in the world that can be accessed through the use of another computer. When you call into the database, you are “on-line”. On-line databases are available in both legal and nonlegal areas.

With the emergence of the Internet, on-line databases have grown in use and popularity. For example, the Arizona Legislature has made available for FREE on the Internet the Arizona Revised Statutes and Constitution. These statutes can be searched by using an on-line full text search engine and then downloading or printing the material you want. This site also offers session Laws (chapters), Bills (Printed and Engrossed versions), Adopted Amendments, Calendars (Caucus, COW, Third reading, etc.), Committee Agendas, and Bill overview (Status of Bill). The site address is www.azleg.state.az.us/. This is but one of thousands of legal Internet WWW sites where valuable legal and nonlegal information can be found. For an excellent compilation of state and federal sites see eLawExchange section entitled Litigation Links (www.elawexchange.com) for a listing of WWW Internet search engines and legal and nonlegal sites for the legal practitioner.

Legal Database Services. There are generally considered to be two groups of online databases: CALR (Computer Assisted Legal Research), and Web online materials. Though the CALR materials can be accessed through the Internet, there is a distinction. The three largest CALR’s on-line fee legal database services are LOIS (www.loislaw.com), Westlaw (www.westlaw.com), and Lexis-Nexis (www.lexis.com). We think of these three services as being primarily law related. However, they have greatly expanded their secondary legal and non-legal resource materials. Lexis-Nexis provides extensive on-line information on cases, statutes, SEC filings, bill tracking, medical databases, law reviews, patents, and jury verdicts, among many other databases.

Westlaw offers jurisdictional materials, news and information, practice area materials, texts, and periodicals. Also, Westlaw has several hundred additional database files available by their addition of Dialog. They also have added the materials from the Dow?Jones News Retrieval databases, providing access to several hundred newspapers and other valuable material on-line.

Search engines for legal information. There are thousands of informational databases available on-line. These databases contain valuable information for your cases. Whether it is a commercial, domestic relation, child support, products liability, or environmental toxic tort case, legal and factual information for your case is available. Some of these on-line databases are free to search to your heart’s content. Others cost hundreds of dollars per hour to search, which places a premium on efficient search techniques.

However, there is no common “search engine” that is available to search all of these databases. Some valuable on-line databases are coupled with full text search engines that are difficult to use because of outdated command structures.

The first generation, and still used today, are the Boolean logic and structured commands search engines that are difficult for the end user. Newer search engines employing techniques such as natural language, relevance, or word frequency, ranking, and automatic thesaurus features are now being used by many databases. For example, some search engines use natural language. as the search protocol. Users can formulate their query in a natural language sentence structure. Thus, the search phrase “I need information about the responsibility of a rescuer of distressed property” will be sufficient as a search query. It then ranks the documents according to relevance. Relevance depends upon how many times a word occurs in a document, the documents length, and other factors. TThis type of search can be used for CD-ROM or on-line services.

Search Engines for the WWW. There are several full text search engine WWW sites on the Internet to assist you in locating specific factual or legal information from any of the thousands of WWW pages. Many of these search sites have “indexed” the web sites to provide quick results to your search requests. They are essential to locating legal and nonlegal information, if you do not already have the web address or URL. The most popular search engine sites include:

Some of the more popular WWW Search Engines;

  • Google - www.google.com
  • Yahoo - www.yahoo.com

Also see Chapter 4, Searching the Internet for further tips.

Excellent sources for how to search on-line databases are the law librarians at law schools or at law firms in the community. The law librarians association is taking aggressive steps not to be left behind with the paperless changeover, and could emerge as the future “information brokers” of the computer revolution.

 

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