China Esquire

Online legal research is expensive, and if your clients are like mine, then you know that they don’t like paying for online research like Lexis and Westlaw. Above The Law recently had a post that I thought was worth repeating since I know the China law blogging community usually does not overlap with the legal tabloid/gossip community. I just wanted to pass on this information:

Here are some neat new resources you might find helpful:

1. The Public Library of Law. Here’s a brief blurb, from Ed Walters (the former Covington associate who founded Fastcase):

One of the joys of disruptive technology is that it occasionally allows you to disrupt things. In that spirit, I’m pleased to introduce the Public Library of Law, which debuts today at www.plol.org. PLoL is the world’s largest free law library, with more than 7,100 miles of text in the cases alone.PLoL works hand in hand with our (much larger) subscription library at Fastcase, which features power research tools as good or better than any in the world. PLoL has its virtues as well — it is ad supported and easy to use, and should be a great starting place to find law on the Web.

2. PreCYdent. PLoL isn’t the only free law library on the web. From a tipster:

Have you posted about Professor Tom Smith’s new research tool, PreCYdent? It’s an amazing concept and it works quite well, even though only in its early stages.

A description from Professor Smith:

Right now our library consists of all US Supreme Court cases and US Court of Appeals cases going back to the 1950s (i.e. F.3d and F.2d). Automatic updaters are in place, so new cases are uploaded in slip opinion form as soon as they are released by these courts. We are working on having the last ten years of cases from all 50 states available soon. Everything is in XML.It’s free. We believe that all law that is in the public domain should be available to everybody for free. Personally, I think I paid for it once already around April 15th or so.

3. eDelaware. This last tool is a bit more focused than the others mentioned above; it’s all about Delaware law (of special interest to the corporate lawyers among you). From eDelaware’s press release:

eDelaware is free mobile software that will provide instant access to the full text of key Delaware statutes, along with case law summaries, through a BlackBerry® smartphone device. It is the first mobile software developed by a law firm that allows for seamless, wireless access to important statutes and case law summaries, all of which will be updated so as to provide the most current content possible.

Good stuff. As clients grow more cheap cost-conscious, expect free and/or low-cost research resources to grow in importance.

UPDATE: Thanks to Will Lewis of Experience Not Logic for this update. Free online Chinese legal information can be found at Invest in China, which specifically posts Chinese statutes in English here.

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