Debate on Free Access to Law

An interesting debate over free access to law is now occurring in the legal blogosphere.

Thomson Reuters, owners of West Publishing, a major U.S. legal publisher, and the Westlaw computer assisted legal research (CALR) service, recently published video comments about the free access to law movement by Professor Robert Berring of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, and a well respected expert on legal research. In the video Professor Berring praises the free access to law ...

movement for increasing competition in the CALR market and compelling Westlaw and its main rival in the U.S. market, Lexis.com, to innovate. Yet Professor Berring also criticizes the free access to law movement as fleeting, and as providing insufficient metadata to enable high quality legal research.

This week Professor Daniel Poulin, Director of CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, responded to Professor Berring’s comments, on the sLaw blog, and yesterday Professor Tom Bruce, Director of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, published his response on his B-Screeds blog.

Ed Walters, Esq., CEO of Fastcase, Inc., has offered to convene a meeting of the participants of this debate.

Those interested in digital legal information or public access to legal information may find this debate particularly informative and timely.

Posted in Commentary, Technology developments Tagged: Bob Berring, Computer assisted legal research, Daniel Poulin, Digital law libraries, Ed Walters, Fastcase, Free access to law, Legal information institutes, Legal metadata, Lexis.com, Public access to legal information, Robert Berring, Thomson Reuters, Tom Bruce, West Publishing, Westlaw

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