Net Q & A

Question of the Month: December 2002

When are free search engines better for legal research than paid services like Westlaw and Lexis?

Answer

It depends on the job. Neither resource is superior in every situation. Each has distinct strengths and weaknesses. Paid services will be better for some projects, while free Internet resources will be qualitatively superior for some projects.

Some of my law librarian friends will not be happy to hear an endorsement of  free Internet resources, because it plays into their worst nightmare: that the managing partner will tell them to cancel all subscriptions to Westlaw and Lexis because "It's all on the Web, anyway." Well, it isn't all on the Web--but the Web is still the best place for some searches.

The databases accessible via Google are not comparable in scope or quality to those of Westlaw & Lexis, but the Google search engine is clearly superior in some ways. Google's is much easier to use and does an enormously better job of ranking results. On Westlaw & Lexis, results are usually sorted by date, but the Google search engine uses sophisticated algorithms that do a consistently superior job of determining which pages are most relevant to the search request. You don't have to learn or use the complex search language used by Westlaw and Lexis.

For example, I recently needed to compile a list of term of office provisions for federal officials in what are supposed to be non-partisan offices like the FBI director, the Office of Special Counsel, etc. For this particular research project, I didn't necessarily need to find the term limit for every single such official, just a reasonable sample. I began on Westlaw and became frustrated because I couldn't phrase a search request that found anything relevant. I went to Google and found everything I needed in a short time.

One trick helped make the Google search more successful: I limited the search to the Cornell Law School site's U.S. Code section. You can use the same technique for any domain. For example, if you wanted to search the GPO site, and only the GPO site, for the phrase "public key," you'd type the request like this:

site:gpo.gov "public key"

If you can't remember the syntax, just look under the Advanced Search tab for Google searches. Findlaw's Lawcrawler site the same search engine as Google, but its database is restricted to legal sites. In theory this should make it better for legal searches. However, because I am so used to using the main Google site, I seldom think of anything else when it is time to search the Internet.

I'm sure some of my skilled law librarian friends will be glad to explain how I could have phrased search requests that would have found the information I needed on Westlaw or Lexis. However, few practicing lawyers are inclined to master the complex search techniques that would be needed to do so. Skilled practicing lawyers will understand when to using free Internet tools is better.

Jerry Lawson