Google Scholar - Guide Review of Google Scholar as a Legal Research Tool

A review of Google Scholar is essential for lawyers choosing a legal research tool or service for their law practices. While it may be better known for providing access to scientific journals, Google Scholar also provides free legal research at speeds that seem to exceed those of any other legal research service. Although some attorneys have scoffed at the idea of Google Scholar ever replacing traditional high-priced services such as Westlaw Westlaw or LexisNexis, many lawyers are starting to use Google's free legal research database as the starting point in their legal research projects.

Google announced the addition of legal opinions to Google Scholar on their blog in November of 2009 in a post called Finding the laws that govern us. The service provides the full text of legal opinions from both state and federal courts, with the opinions being fully searchable through the Google Scholar search engine. With Google being the dominant search engine already, it should surprise no one that applying their technology to legal opinions has been very effective.

I started using Google Scholar about a month after it was released, initially just trying it out as a faster way to access cases than logging into my legal research service. Over time, the Google caselaw database has grown larger and access to it seems to have become even faster. It has become so convenient to use Google Scholar that it is usually my starting point when looking for caselaw on a particular topic. While it still has certain limitations that prevent me from using it exclusively, the speed and accuracy of the service has been able to satisfy most of my research needs.

Some of the strengths of Google Scholar for legal research include:

• Case citations are hyperlinked to the case
• Search results are fast and accurate
• The relevancy of search results to search queries are as good, and sometimes better, than those provided by the commercial legal research services
• The "How cited" tab delivers every case in every state and federal appellate court that has cited the case being reviewed, as well as any citations to the case in scholarly documents that have been indexed by Google Scholar. This is a fast way to find other cases directly on point with the issue being researched, as well as a way to see how other jurisdictions are addressing the issue that makes the case important. This tool was not part of the original release of Google Scholar's legal research software, but it has been an extremely useful addition. This feature is one of the main reasons my use of Google Scholar has escalated over the past year.

Google Scholar is not without it's weaknesses. Some of the drawbacks to Google Scholar include:

• Search results are based on Google's system for ranking search results, rather than the actual importance of a case. As legal opinions are not typically written for search engine optimization (SEO), this does not always return the best results first. Further, the SEO value of a case does not necessarily equate to it's value as legal precedent.
• There is no way to fully Shepardize cases. The "How cited" tab will return a list of every case that has cited the case being viewed, as well as citations in scholarly articles, but it does not indicate whether or not the case is still good law. A researcher can only make that determination by reading the cases that cite to it.
• Google Scholar lacks an index tool for spotting important legal issues. For example, Westlaw provides Keycite results which provide an index of the issues involved in a case in a short summary. This allows a researcher to quickly determine whether the case is relevant, and also provides a key number system to search for more cases involving that issue.
• Statutes and rules of procedure are not hyperlinked and are not included in the search database.
• The database lacks older cases. When Google Scholar was first released, federal caselaw only went back 80 years and state caselaw only went back about 50 years. The search results seem to go back somewhat further now, but anyone needing access to older case law will still need to turn to other legal research services.

Lawyers who insist on having all of the bells and whistles of the commercial research tools may not be satisfied with Google Scholar. Switching to Google Scholar as a primary legal research tool may be particularly less enjoyable to older lawyers who have grown accustomed to having all of the extra tools provided by services like Westlaw and Lexis. However, attorneys looking to save money on legal research and who are comfortable relying on their own ability to fashion search queries will be extremely pleased with Google Scholar. And since Google Scholar is free, there is no cost or risk involved in trying it out.

While not quite ready to handle 100% of an attorney's legal research needs, Google Scholar poses a formidable threat to the established legal research companies. Although it may never eliminate the need for such services, it is very likely that Google Scholar will force them to lower their prices to a more competitive level. Attorneys will not be willing to continue paying exorbitant prices for legal research when they can get the same information for free.

If you have tried Google Scholar, we would like to hear your opinion about it. You can post your own User Review of Google Scholar by clicking here. Or, if you want to share your opinion about other legal research tools, you can share your User Review of other legal research software programs by clicking here. You can also vote for your favorite legal research tool in our reader poll.