Newspaper Articles

This collection of articles was published in the Detroit Legal News from 1995-1997. All were written in the infancy of the modern Internet, before the landscape surrounding Internet legal and business issues began to develop. Access to the Internet largely consisted of dial-up connections on a 14.4 kbs modem or slower. Both the technology and state of the law have evolved considerably since these were first published.

How to Search for Legal Resources on the Internet

Originally published May 29, 1996

Imagine the largest library in the world with all of the books scattered across the floor. Welcome to Internet research.

The Internet is an information mecca with primary and secondary materials available on virtually every topic imaginable. There are literally hundreds of millions of pages of text accessible via the Internet.

For the legal researcher, the current offerings include searchable versions of the U.S. Code, Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations. There are also popular federal acts, recent federal circuit court opinions, pleadings from high profile cases and a number of secondary materials written by academics, practitioners and others.

A tremendous amount of scientific, historical, governmental and business resources are likewise available on the Internet.

The material is scattered among thousands of computers around the world, often buried in files whose identifiers give no clue to the content. However, there are a host of research tools that are beginning to make the information more readily accessible.

Many legal researchers are familiar with WestLaw and LEXIS on-line research. The Internet is currently no substitute for these services as a research tool for analyzing common and statutory law and accessing popular law related publications.

In terms of content, Westlaw and LEXIS have state and federal case law, statutes and regulations, archival law review articles, specialty publications, and a host of other offerings. The information is highly organized and accessible through search tools incorporating sophisticated Boolean logic.

By contrast, there is a limited - but growing - amount of primary legal material available on the Internet. Few states have posted (or allowed posting of) case law and statutes. Much of the federal case law (such as the 6th Circuit offerings) is of recent vintage only.

Copyright concerns and the "free" nature of the information have kept a significant amount of valuable legal resources off-line.

In addition, slow access speeds, less sophisticated search tools and the lack of organization spawned by the decentralized nature of the network can make finding relevant information a time-consuming challenge.

Despite these shortcomings, the Internet is an appealing research vehicle because of the cost. Aside from equipment and relatively inexpensive access charges, the vast majority of the material is available free of charge.

Internet research is conducted using specialized Web directories, "search engines" or more complex text-only directory services such as Gopher and Veronica.

Web directories are compilations of hyperlinks to resources available on the Internet. For example, the USC Law Library site (at http://www.usc.edu.dept/lawlib/legal/titlelst.html) contains hyperlinks to federal legislation and treaties, the Code of Federal Regulations, and updated U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Opinions.

To access the desired information, you simply click your mouse on the appropriate link. The information can be viewed, downloaded to your computer or printed.

Search engines are free of charge (and to a lesser extent subscription based) tools located within a site or accessed by typing a URL in your Internet browser (such as Netscape Navigator).

There are several major search engines. These include Alta Vista (http://altavista.digital.com), W e b c r a w l e r (http://webcrawler.com), Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), InfoSeek (http://guide.infoseek.com) and Excite (http://www .excite.com).

The search engine displays a bar where the query is typed in plain English or with limited Boolean operators (and, or, not, near). The search engine will generate a list of links and - depending on the search engine - brief descriptions of the information.

Search engine providers get literally millions of "hits" daily. As a result, they are attractive to advertisers who offer links to sites containing information related to their products and services. The advertising revenue allows search engines to be available to the public free of charge.

The major search engines use different search techniques and priority schemes. They also differ in database size (Alta Vista being the largest with over 20 million pages of text) and resources they access. For example, some engines offer access to Gopher and Usenet sites while others do not.

While, there is a lot of overlap, plugging the same query into different search engines will typically lead to different results. If you are having a problem locating a particular resource (particularly an obscure one) or are getting an overload of irrelevant links, try a different search engine.

Some search engines are topic specific. For example, the C/Net search engine (http://search.com) offers access to a number of specialized databases, including legal resources.

Finally, larger Web sites, such as Nasdaq (http://www.nasdaq.com) and the SEC's Edgar, which offers securities information on every publicly traded company in the U. S. (http://www.sec.gov) have search engines that help locate resources within the particular site.

The widespread availability of search engines is a relatively recent phenomenon. Internet research has historically been undertaken using Unixbased text-only tools such as Gopher and Veronica. While these tools offer access to a wider variety of materials, they are more difficult to master than Web-based search engines.

While Internet research can be a slow and frustrating process, the development of software such as Quarterdeck's Webcompass (which combines various search engines under a single query and automatically updates information) and increased attention on "smart agents" (which constantly seek individually tailored information), coupled with the expanding information base, will likely lead to increased usage of the Internet as a legal research vehicle.