The fifth anniversary of Google scholar has come and gone without much of a whimper. Truth be told, most librarians are resigned to the fact that GS is unlikely ever to address any of its major deficiencies or work with information professionals to improve its “index” (and I use that term very loosely).
Last week, however two librarians — the Law Librarian and another legal eagle the Adjunct Law Prof — outlined the biggest developments to occur at GS in recent memory: new search features to locate U.S. case law, opinions and patents.
The Official Google Blog said that…
“Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read opinions for US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791 (please check back periodically for updates to coverage information). In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available. Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.”
A number of law librarians discussed this development; the Law Librarian (see #1, #2 and #3) and the Adjunct Law Prof. Brian Leiter also explained that law review articles are searchable on Google Scholar.
I’ve discussed the limited access to legal and business materials on the web before; as a proponent of open access, I find it irksome that legal, business and government materials are not more accessible (despite free case law at Findlaw.com).
For U.S. federal materials, you can consult Bulk.resource.org and now of course Google Scholar. Try typing in whiplash, cases, court of appeal to see the materials available. At Google Scholar‘s homepage, from the new leftside pulldown, select “legal opinions and journals” to search a specific subset of the database. These new features consolidate Google Scholar‘s reputation as an “all-purpose” browsing tool (and little to bolster its reputation as a search tool for proper searching).
Yvonne Chan
lse721
Pingback: Google scholar is five (5) and ‘legal’ http://blogs.ubc.ca/dean/2009/11/google-scholar-is-5-and-legal/ | Bally
Google has not provided information about how it collects this case law, so we do not really know how comprehensive its collection is. We also do not know how frequently the case law information is updated. These shortcomings do substantially limit its use for legal professionals. That being said, it is a massive undertaking to collect and update U.S. case law, so it is probably not reasonable to expect any free service to be comparable to expensive professional services like LexisNexis and Westlaw. Google Scholar’s case law search is hopefully a sign of great things to come.