What Will You Do When Research Is No Longer Free?

Three years of law school can lull you into a blissful state of ignorance when it comes to the high-priced reality of legal research. After all, you’ve been given free rein to poke around in Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg, running searches that may or may not get you what you’re looking for, without regard to the underlying price structure of the materials you’re searching. Then when you graduate and continue sloppy research practices in the real world, you could be surprised at the whopping database bill you’ve just run up for your client. Librarians and other information herders like to call this problem “cost-effective legal research,” or lack of it.

Shawn G. Nevers discusses this issue in his article “Becoming a Cost-Effective Researcher” in the December issue of the ABA’s Student Lawyer. He suggests several ways to become aware of this problem and prepare to face it in practice:

  • Practice effective research strategies while it’s still free.
  • Learn the cost structures at your job or future employer.
  • Get to know the free and low-cost alternatives.

We have an extensive Cost Effective Legal Research guide that gives you search tips and guidelines, a basic explanation of law firm cost structures, and lists many of the free and low-cost alternatives like Google Scholar, Jureeka, Cornell Legal Information Institute, Casemaker, Fastcase, and Versuslaw. We also periodically offer seminar sessions and in-class lectures on cost-effective legal research. Be on the look-out for sessions like these in the Spring semester.