It was only a matter of time before Google turned its attention to the law – and we now have Legal Opinions on Google Scholar which opens up access to full text legal opinions from US federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts and via a Cited By feature links to other cases and articles on Google Scholar that cite them. Though court opinions in the US are not protected by copyright, they were hitherto only readily available for comprehensive searching via services such as Lexis and Westlaw.

For a good primer on its features, see Don Cruse on the Supreme Court of Texas Blog.

You can also use Google Scholar / Legal Opinions to follow up citations of judgments that are not themselves indexed in full text, including those from other jurisdictions. For example, one will readily find citations of leading cases such as Hedley Byrne and Donoghue v Stevenson, and more recent cases of course.

The development is hyped by Anurag Acharya, the Distinguished Engineer (sic) behind the development, on the Official Google Blog, saying: “We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all.”

I don’t buy this empowerment argument. It’s absolutely right that citizens should have access to the laws that bind them and any initiative that makes them more accessible is to be welcomed. But to empower the average citizen you have to go the extra mile, explaining the law and helping them navigate it. Lawyers and legal researchers have spent years learning the law and acquiring the skills that enable them to navigate and reliably interpret primary law and precedent.

Nevertheless, Legal Opinions on Google Scholar is going to be useful for (mainly US) legal research, though it will be some time before it challenges the likes of Westlaw and LexisNexis!

Nick Holmes is joint editor of this Newsletter.

Email nickholmes@infolaw.co.uk.