Google Enters The Legal Search Engine Market
by Ryan McKeen
Huge tip of the hat to Julie Jones, Associate Director for Library Services and Adjunct Professor of Law at UConn.
Julie linked to my post on Why Android is For Attorneys.
When someone links to this site it shows up on my WordPress Dashboard. Her post made me happy for reasons other than it linked to my site. Big news. Huge news even. A revolution of access to legal opinions is underway.
Google wants to inventory all of human knowledge. At least this is what I heard on a podcast this summer. But I believe it.
Julie writes:
In an interesting, if not completely unanticipated development, Google Scholar has added the capability to search patents, case law, and legal journals.
Wow. Free, easily searchable case law. Available to everyone. Everywhere.
Google Scholar allows a person to limit a search to a jurisdiction. A person can search both federal and state law opinions.
From my limited experience playing around on the site it does not appear as if Connecticut Superior Court opinions are available online. Which is a loss that’s likely the fault of the Connecticut judicial branch and not Google.
Right now some of the search features are a little limited. It’s no Bloomberg Law. But it’s a start. If history teaches us anything about Google it’s that they aim to be the best at whatever they choose to do. Sometimes that takes time.
It wouldn’t shock this lawyer if within five years Google is the number one legal search engine in the country. Google doesn’t want to be a legal search engine. It wants to be your legal search engine.
I’ll looking forward to an app for that on my phone.
