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Democracy in the Dark?
Posted by
michael
on Thu Feb 13, 2003 12:11 PM
from the headlight-of-an-oncoming-train dept.
from the headlight-of-an-oncoming-train dept.
scubacuda writes "Melissa Bar has written an insightful article on how Westlaw and Lexis Nexis restrict public access to case law databases. She writes, '[T]he courts and the court's words belong to us. In more ways than one, the American people have already paid for the case law produced by our courts. Commercial vendors must not be allowed to highjack our law or dictate who may have access to it. By refusing to allow public libraries to purchase electronic subscriptions that can serve their patrons, Westlaw and LexisNexis are closing the door on information.' Individually purchasing the documents over credit card is incredibly expensive, making it virtually inaccessible to most library patrons."
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Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
What Lexis-Nexus and WestLaw have done is collate and cross-reference this incredible volume of data. Why shouldn't they be compensated for performing an immensely useful service by the people who use the service?
If you want to see prohibitive expense, imagine what it would take to accumulate a law library with all of this information in print.
It is your right to represent yourself, but there's no law that says that effective lawyerin' has to be easy or cheap.
Parent
Don't put words in her mouth, please.... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
And for those who say that the law is always available in hard copy volumes, I say that you can probably count on one hand the number of attorneys who don't, at some time, do research sweeps of Westlaw or Lexis Databases at some time during the research process. The volume of case law is simply too large and it's too easy to miss precedent if you rely only on hard copy.
It's not fair to let only certain parties have access to this information in electronic format - it's not bomb-making information after all. I would also argue that it's not fair for Lexis and Westlaw to set the prices for these databases beyond the reach of public institutions like libraries. As her article describes, these two companies essentially have a lock on the markeplace. Last I heard, extortion still wasn't legal.
Parent
Re:Don't put words in her mouth, please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. However, "not fair" is not the same as "not legal." I think that they have a moral imperative to allow access from public libraries, but I see no way in which they have a legal obligation to do so.
I don't see how this is extortion.
Parent
Re:BUY, = 1 License (Score:4, Interesting)
For the same reason that I buy the vast majority of books from Borders - convenience and time. I don't have time to schlep down to the library to pick up the latest book, even assuming there isn't a long waiting list for it. I buy a resource that is also provided free because my time is worth more to me. Perhaps I also want my own copy as well.
"And since this is a service that is of specific purpose, like reference materials, they could stand to lose a lot of money."
Ah, my heart weeps for Lexis and Westlaw. They could also stand to make some money. Public libraries should be treated like any other potential Westlaw or Lexis client - if they can pay (and there is no indication that they can't) - they should be allowed to buy access to the legal databases - even if it's only one user at a time. The author of the article is saying that Lexis and Westlaw won't even sell access to the public libraries.
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Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
But there is something to be said for the wisdom of designing and implementing an affordable and useful public transportation system.
No one's suggesting that the companies in question give out free CD sets of the data to any dork who requests it, just that they offer the data to public libraries for reasonable fees (or free if possible, but the article does allow for the possibility of having libraries pay fees).
Also, there is no mention in the bill of rights of a right to transport. There is mention of a right to legal representation, and given what I've seen of the lawyers they'll give you if you can't afford one, representing one's self (or doing one's own legal research for the court appointed lawyer), while generally considered not ideal ( whomever represents themselves has an idiot for a client is the way I've heard this put fairly often) may be the most intelligent and reasonable option in some cases, and the only one which gives the justice system a prayer of working the way it should.
Parent
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Who was it said..." Probably a lawyer. They sure don't want you not using their services. Law shouldn't be so unapproachable that normal people can't understand it. Normal people should be able to understand the laws they live by. Other than the procedural formalities of being in court, I don't know why an intelligent person shouldn't be perfectly capable of representing himself, pro se.
Parent
Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever *read* the procedural rules for your state? The superior court rules for my province run for 652 pages. There are at least five separate rules, each with between ten and 30 sub clauses, that govern how to file and serve a writ to begin an action. The two rules that govern how to schedule and appear on a simple procedural motion run for 13 pages.
These rules weren't put in for fun - they're there because in each case there has been some disagreement in the past about what had to be done when, or how, or who was entitled to what, so they spelled it out in a rule. You need extremely detailed rules in litigation because by definition the parties don't really like or trust one another.
Ever read Lon Fuller? Lawmakers are trying to walk a very fine line between overtechnical impenetrable detail and ambiguous generalities, with lawyers there to help people when they the lawmakers stray too far to one side or the other. If a law is too detailed, no one who is not trained in the area really understands it. If it isn't detailed enough, you need lawyers to explain how the courts have interpreted the ambiguity.
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Re:Sooo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the wording of law, its intrepretation and practice becomes so impenetrable so as to require the expertise of specialized practitioners whose sole purpose is exerted to this function, law itself moves beyond the apprehension of citizens: They can no longer avail themselves of its protections by their own accord and understanding, and so become subject to its application and abuse by those same specialists at all levels within its purview.
At that point, law is removed from the province of the citizenry, and becomes the means whereby its elite practitoners, possessing the wherewithal to spend the time to learn its intricacies, can benefit from its ever increasing elitism, created such over time, to the detriment of the citizenry.
Just my opinion.
dj
Parent
Cetainty vs. Clarity (Score:4, Insightful)
At least in this country, the role of the bar in mediating the interpretation and application of law has been recognized as having a constitutional aspect - the legal profession is required for the rule of law, upon which any constitutional society, is based to function. This is why solicitor-client communications are privileged. Is there an aspect of elitism? Probably - in Canada, solicitor-client communications are privileged, but doctor-patient and priest-penitent communications aren't, except on a case by case basis. I don't have a problem with that personally, but I suspect many would.
Parent
Re:Laws should *NOT* be accessable to common peopl (Score:4, Insightful)
A good example is copyright law. It applies to everyone. Do you know how many people in the United States have absolutely no idea what *is* and *is not* okay according to copyright law? (Forget ethics, morality, whatever, we're just talking about the law itself.)
One author who I used to be fond of has taken to sending C&D letters to young teenagers who happen to run 'adopt-a-pet' websites loosely based on her work. She, of course, has the lawyers. They don't.
IF A LAW APPLIES TO A PERSON, THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND IT.
It's that simple. There should be no question in the mind of whether X, Y, or Z is covered as 'fair use'. There should be no question of whether it's okay to play your stereo outside--as I've heard people discuss lately, due to vaguely-worded noise statues. There should be no question of what the legal manner of passing on a highway is. (I've never yet seen anyone do it, but last I checked, Ohio had circumstances in which you're legally required to honk your horn first.)
You can't get in trouble for not knowing the mechanics of how a bridge works. (Well, you know, usually.) You *can* get in trouble for not understanding how your laws work.
Parent
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who has dealt with lawyers (especially corporate contract attorneys) knows that the analogy of law to code or lawyers to programmers doesn't get very far. Every attorney (that I've ever dealt with) will take every chance he can to completely rewrite a contract. Granted, there's a lot of ways to write a conditional in a program, but how many coders want a complete rewrite after every code review?
The majority of lawyers are shitty coders. They produce so much ambiguity and so many "unintended" side-effects, sometimes I get the feeling they do it on purpose.
If anything, lawyer speak should be a severe sub-set of english to remove any ambiguities. Actually, it should be more like symbolic logic than latin. That way anyone who's taken high school geometery would have the tools necessary to interpret most law. Those who've taken a logic course in their college's philosophy department would be able to understand nearly all of it.
Of course, now that makes $0.04 in pot...anyone else?
Parent
This relates to my theory on lawyers, and why they (Score:5, Funny)
In contrast, I look at my bookshelves, and see a hodge podge of O'Reilly books, Dummies books, Various OS Bibles (yeah, heretical, I know), few of which match, and few of which are leather bound.
I'm hoping that once IT stabilizes, O'Reilly can come out with a huge set of matching leather bound tomes that would make an imposing background for my IT work. Then I can charge $100/hour.
Of course, that would cost a lot, raising the barrier of entry, just like Lexus/Nexus does.
Ummm... (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't want to pay for it, look up the information yourself...
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite seriously, I do not understand one bit the 'logic' of the person that submitted this story.
None of the sources cited prevent anybody from looking up and copying the paper copies, electronic versions from other sources, or anything else. They only limit the use of their own work!
How this gets morphed into "Westlaw has an electronic copy therefore I should have it free" is beyond me.
No kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't understand that there was time, effort and money put into creating and maintaining these databases. The combination of an entitlement-oriented attitude and a lack of basic economic principles makes Slashdot seem like one big whine-fest sometimes.
The information is available to all with no cost (or whatever cost the government may charge), just not through these services. You are paying for convenience.
Parent
Lexis-Nexis (Score:5, Insightful)
Lexis (Nexis is for news; now I guess they're calling themselves LexisNexis) and Westlaw don't have a monopoly (duopoly?) over the public domain information they publish, nor do they just regurgitate public documents. They provide editorial enhancements such as headnotes (flagging various legal issues), in some cases data input (not all of gov't is electronically available, esp. scads of older ones), various ancillary services such as notification when an anticipated case is decided, and, most important of all, a very powerful keyword search engine that blows away any of the free online tools (for example, you can specify how far apart two search terms can be, and other dependencies). You can quickly access hyperlinked services, like a database that will show you every time a given case was mentioned in later decisions, and whether it was mentioned in a good light, disapporvingly, or overruled. These other services are valuable, but could be cheap if they were sold in large volume rather than a select few.
For all this, they are very expensive. Very very expensive. LexisNexis and Westlaw are like a really cool drug that's coming off patent -- now anyone can do it. So let's run them out of business. I think it's a great idea, but we have to pay for somehow. For example, I'm surprised the author give short shrift to the laborious OCR scanning these companies did of old cases. Not only do the cases have to be scanned, but the resulting files have to be marked up for things like page numbers. The information is free, copying it is not -- even RMS says that.
It is more urgent than the author makes it out to be: it is becoming nearly imperitive to have access to these databases to practice law. Judges really do expect you to know about that case that came down 12 hours ago. The volume of decisions published increses exponentially. When the time required to hunt down the books becomes more expensive than the cost of using the database, a rich firm luxury becomes critical.
I think we shouldn't ask "how can we force these guys to lower prices" but "why isn't there an affordable public database of this material". Not just a server crammed with decisions, but also an affordable method of searching it. There is just so much data now that the Library of Congress card catalog is obsolete.
It would not be too much to expect the subscriber to contribute their own processing power to the task, or even to somehow distribute encrypted duplicates of various documents around the Net to make a huge, redundant, high performance database. Besides helping litiagants, this would also help the courts by fostering better lawyering, and help the people to learn about the law for itself.
Why not do it right now? Oh yeah, this would be really expensive. But as firms like Google have shown, there are high-performance distributed solutions that work.
Parent
Re:Ummm...[??] (Score:3, Insightful)
We only pay for the trials, not the searchabilaty of the proceedings. If you have a problem with that, why don't you write a DB that has all that info in it so we can all search it for free? Oh yeah, it costs lots and lots of money! And no, I'm not paying any more commie taxes just so you can search a database of case trials.
Re:Ummm...[??] (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/ [cornell.edu]
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/law/ [uchicago.edu]
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Re:Ummm...[??] (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Ummm...[??] (Score:5, Informative)
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Rights (Score:3, Informative)
Electronic Access vs No Access (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic Access = Better Living. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, you have to call the Department of Transportation and find out who towed your car (DOT, or Sheriff). From there, the agency can tell you which pound it is in (one of five locations). Once you are there, you stand on line for close to an hour on a good day and if you don't have the correct combination of documents and the payment in full ($250+), you're screwed. Even if you have all of this, it usually takes the clerk a good 10-15 minutes to look up the ticket number to even begin processing your paperwork. If you're missing information, you have to fill forms and wait on line again. Usually the people you see having these problems are working class, ethnic (white & non-white) peoples who complain that they weren't "told that on the phone" and find themselves waiting on line for hours.
Because I was able to go and get a print out of all of my towing info online [nyc.gov] - including the elusive ticket number - I was able to show this to the clerk, pay the charge, and be out of there in under 30 minutes. Needless to say, everyone else on line was pissed. Before I left, I spent a couple of minutes explaining to people how to go to the library and look up their info online.
This might seem inconsequential to you, but for me, it was the first time I had seen the digital divide as something real. Having electronic access to a searchable database at the tips of my fingers saved me time and energy that I was able to put towards more important work. It was a weekday, but I had only lost three hours of work and fortunately I'm salaried. If you consider that a good portion of the people standing on line were probably hourly employees who were probably missing work, which means that they weren't getting paid, electronic access makes a huge difference.
Parent
EU Example (Score:5, Informative)
I don't always agree with the EU decisions, but:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/search/search_casThis is how the EU handles it - case law in a free searchable online database.
Should be free like speech AND like beer (Score:4, Insightful)
A better resource for the layman (Score:5, Informative)
My roomate who is a corp lier in NYC uses findlaw.com when he is doing casual research, since he normally has to bill his Lexus time out to a client at a huge fee.
Google Law anyone?
"The only thing I enjoy more than doing the crossword puzzel, is actually finishing it."
Quit Whining (Score:3, Interesting)
Trolling as an artform.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lexis Nexus and Westlaw don't own a monopoly on the law, but they do have a monopoly on publishing it via the internet. The only thing that I would like to see is ability for more companies to be able to publish the law, creating competition for these seach engines.
It's expensive to keep all that data online , easily referenced, and searchable. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to gouge us. More competition in this area would be good.
Also, these guys should really talk to google, Lexis Nexus lets you search for free, (though payment is required for viewing). What about a search on Google that mixed references to the law in with your normal search results?
Need a service? Expect to pay for it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are not like google, where google just creates a large cache of webpages. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw also provide analyses of the various cases in their databases, as well as a list of every case that has ever cited the case that you are currently read and whether those cases agreed or disagreed with the outcome. The citatations can be extremely important to have because a lawyer does not want to cite a case that has been overruled by a higher court. To provide this service takes money, alot of money. It takes alot of employees to manually check everything is typed in perfectly and it takes alot of computer equipment to run the who database.
Building a business on publlic information (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is this: The government either outsources the electronic publication of their information, or these companies hired people to go out and scan the public documents.
If it is the latter, then they have every right to charge access to their database- they've complied the data on their dime! However, if the government outsourced the publication, then the database should fall into public domain.
I recall one other database which did title searches on property, which were built completely from public data, and was sold back to the county and state because such a tool did not exisit until then, and to redevelop such a tool wasn't worth the effort (at the time). The data was public domain, but the relationships inside the DB was not.
it's the rendering that's copyrighted (Score:5, Insightful)
Lexis and Westlaw were going strong back then, too. As tempting as it may have been to just lift their versions of the documents we wanted to publish, we didn't. Their versions were copyrighted, just like a map maker can copyright a map. Following with that analogy, their versions (I believed) even contained intentional, hopefully harmless typographical errors to prove up theft. They also added value by providing analysis and indexing (keyword, etc.) that were totally absent from the public text.
So the point is -- contribute! There are dis-aggregated (free) sources for most of the public information anyone could want. The trick is bringing them together and providing useful analysis. We've done (IMO) a great job of that at LII, and there are other sites as well. When you start to appreciate the labor involved in providing such a service, you start to see why Lexis and Westlaw charge...
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying for convenience (Score:4, Insightful)
The public is not deprived of access to the actual law-- every law school, almost every courthouse, and many large universities have collections of case reporters, statutes, and other legal materials in book form. Are they as easy to search as an electronic database? No. But they are available and can be used without charge, and, in the hands of a knowledgable person, used as effectively (if not more so*) as databases.
Contrary to the author's position, the internet has made the law much more accessible to regular people than it was a decade ago. Free databases may not have all of the old cases that pay services do, but they represent a huge step forward when compared to pre-internet days. Moreover, for most people untrained in the law, old caselaw is of much less use than current decisions.
*Databases like Lexis and Westlaw are, in some ways, harmful to non-lawyers. It is easy to simply plug words into a search query and assume that the result is reflective of the law on a particular issue. In fact, careful analysis of legal precedent is difficult, and to the untrained, legal databases can yield results that are more misleading than traditional book research, where points of law in a particular category were grouped together, allowing a researcher to see the development of trends or dissenting views.
Public vs. University Libraries (Score:3, Informative)
When I went to college, the entire school was eligible for the university's Lexis-Nexis site license. This didn't mean just the law school... this meant everybody. Software was available that I could have loaded on my PC, and I could have searched from my dorm room.
The university's library computers (and computer labs) had the software on them as well.
Now here's the interesting part -- if you were a resident of the surrounding towns (not affiliated with the university in any other way!), you were eligible to use the library -- and all its' resources.
Yes, that included Lexis-Nexis. (And JAMA, and The Lancet, and a hundred other publications that cost more than some cars.)
I have no illusions -- Lexis-Nexis was getting a considerable amount of money for allowing such use... far more than they'd ever be able to wring out of a public library. The university needed the subscription, it was just a happy circumstance that everyone else benefited.
Here's to libraries with deep pockets.
Open Source vs. Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it that so many proponents of OSS don't carry their philosophy over to free economic activity? Rather than complain about how Westlaw and Lexus Nexus should lower prices or give their information for free, why don't you start up your own searchable database? Why not get a group together to do so? That's how it works in capitalism folks.
If they truly are "gouging" us with prices, and the entire service could be offered considerably cheaper, then offer it yourself!
What Westlaw and Lexis Actually Do (Score:5, Insightful)
Westlaw and Lexis provide an incredibly valuable service: they make the millions of judicial opinions actually useful for lawyers. Basically, they are like the google for judicial documents, except that in order to index all this information, they have to use teams of lawyers rather than pigeon clusters. We do not yet have sufficient technical knowledge to index judicial opinions, and so for now this process is very labor-intensive.
For example, Westlaw and Lexis have teams of lawyers to read over every decision as soon as it's handed down. They have to parse through the legalese to make a judgment about whether the case narrowed some precedent or broadened it. They need to find the most important passages in the opinion and put those clippings into conceptual pigeonholes (the "West Topic and Key" classification system defies comprehension). They need to write little summaries for each of these important passages so that lawyers glancing through thousands of query results will know whether something is relevant (these "Headnotes" are difficult to write). None of these tasks are easy. Not only can we not yet automate them, but a person not trained as a lawyer won't even recognize the relevant things to pick up on. Westlaw and Lexis really do spend an enormous amount of *expensive* human capital (these lawyers don't come cheap) to do the human indexing of the semantic web of legal documents, and that's what they are charging for. Law firms gladly pay up because using the index form Westlaw or Lexis gives you such an advantage over your adversary if he's stucking doing research with law books that he has no chance. The big lawyers these days never touch law books -- they are too disorganized and slow.
Thus, these companies have not "hijacked" the actual collection of case opinions. Even if they wanted to, they can't. Judicial opinions and statutes, like other governmental work products, enjoy no copyright protection whatsoever. This is why you are free to post as many gigabytes of Supreme Court opinions for free downloading as you like.
But just getting the opinions is useless. Either we come up with a technical means to index these documents as effectively as the teams of lawyers at Westlaw (very difficult) or we decide that in the public interest we need to use some of our tax money to support a public interest effort to make a similar database for the public (even more difficult).
And on the other other hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider a divorce case. Names, addresses, financial records, employment records, etc, etc.
Home assesment value, taxes.
Now match that against the (sometimes) public bulding permits. Home floorplans and dimensions.
Armed with a little research from the comfort of his own home, a would be burgular or stalker could case the home of a recently divorced woman, figuring out vulnerable access points, when she's at work...a photo from Terraserver [terraserver.com], and you can sometimes see fences and tree lines.
Do the job with no one the wiser.
Some things should be hard to get.
a very ignorant article (Score:4, Insightful)
Westlaw and Lexis have a search system which make web search engines look like a children's toy. Also, theattorneys who review _each_ of these cases provide lengthey head notes and check to make sure that each case is still good law. This is all very expensive to maintain.
If they were to allow public libraries to use these systems, lawyers would just send their clerks (who are generally students) to the local public library. How will they then make any money? If they go out of business, you are right back to using books. Not an easy task for someone who does not know what they are doing.
Private entities, such as corporations (gasp!) and individuals are free to purchase these services.
As someone who uses Westlaw every day, I am very grateful for its existence. It would be a shame if some whiney, "everything should be free" leftists ruined such a great resource.
monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)
It rains from the sky and runs through rivers, so I could get it at no charge from there. Why doesn't the store give it to me for free?
They're restricting public access to the water!
Missing the POINT! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems with Westlaw and to a lesser degree Lexis/Nexis are NOT that they are claiming to own the law -- OR the ability to search their damn databases...
1) Many jurisdictions sign contracts for these companies to be the *official* source of caselaw and statutes, and while some of the jurisdictions make adequate provisions for full and open public access, many don't and that leaves folks with minimal resources in very bad positions with regards to access. they don't make it easy to get info when they're not required to.
2) And this is a biggie... While West Pub. isn't claiming copyright on the actual law itself, they do claim copyright to the citation system. i.e. how one refers to a case when you're writing a brief, etc. Many jurisdictions *require* you to cite using a West method. When another service tries to duplicate this, West sues their asses off. So you can't do research someplace else and then be able to properly cite your sources unless you use the West service to get the proper cite. Sure, you can go to the library and find the West dead-tree version and get the cite, but that pretty much kills all the benefit of electronic research don't it??
I don't lay the blame with the publishers... they're just capitalist swine like the rest of us trying to maximize their $$ (albeit in a fairly ruthless fashion if you ask me...), I blame the various govts for supporting these pseudo-monopolies for so long... the legal publishers and the legal policy makers are so deep in bed with each other it is sickening... hmmmm... wonder why there hasn't been more reform before now...
my
Page numbers are copyrighted. (Score:4, Informative)
Without a Westlaw page number, it is very difficult to cite a case in a court. Our law librarian used to rage on about this.
Public Access to Our Own Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Such services should be publicly available, but rather than force the companies to give them away I would rather see the government hire these companies as contractors to produce public access systems. Certainly don't give them ownership of information, but by all means pay them to do the job of organizing it and to produce access engines that the public, including libraries, can use.
It seems incredible that people have to pay someone $100/hour to tell them if something they want to do is legal. Yet the list of legally hazardous activities grows constantly as the law gets more complex. This is something computers can definitely change, and case law databases are only the beginning. Imagine a legal expert system that would listen to your situation and give you a competent legal opinion, whether it's for a criminal defense or adding a second story to your house. I doubt that such systems will exist anytime soon, but I hope that when they do the government will have the foresight to buy them from the developers and make them freely available.
Just like RIAA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ms. Barr was not asking for unlimited access, although concurrent access is not a popular option for commercial software publishers these days. More importantly, she was asking for unmediated access - which Lexus evidently feels is inappropriate for the unwashed masses.
How is this different from the RIAA flexing it's muscle to stop file sharing? Aren't those also copyrighted works? Aren't the record publishers also entitled to reasonable profits? (Yes, I'm playing the devil's advocate here.) It's seems the
Law - the original open source system (Score:5, Insightful)
Be forwarned, IAAL. However, I am not associated with either company.
While the law itself is open and available to everyone free of charge, its analysis does cost money. This is similar to the situation with various linux distributions. The OS is free, but if you want expert help, you have to hire someone unless you are an expert yourself.
Free sources of law in Washington State: Washington State Cases, Laws, Regs, etc [legalwa.org] Laws, Regs, etc. [wa.gov]. These are even searchable.What you get with Westlaw (I'm most familiar with it) and Lexis (I presume) is a very powerful search engine, coupled with analysis generated by those companies. By looking in the free sources published by the government, one can access the law (statutes, cases, etc). For statutes, Westlaw provides not just the text of the law, it also provides a short synopsis of most cases which have interpreted that law. West does a similar thing with case law and organizes its headnote information by "key number". All of that analysis speeds up research - but it is generated by someone who works for the companies - not for the government.
The point is, Westlaw etc. are merely adding value to something that is freely available to make it more useable. That's what any number of open source software companies do - just in a different context.
Oh give me a flippin' break . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everything is free as in beer!
Eternal Vigilance Etc (Score:4, Informative)
In about 450 BC the Plebians won one of the earliest and most significant victories for equality in the western legal tradition. They forced the publication of the laws. The laws were inscribed on twelve tablets and made accessable to all citizens. This established a pinciple which, has survived to this day, that the law ought to be published. (Twelve Tablets) [csun.edu]
Even so there are several new and non-so-new developments that have really undermined this ancient victory for equality. The law has become so complex that no one really knows what all of it says, and only a privileged class of experts really know what any small part of it says. So we are again in a position where most people have no direct access to the law, and where there is a privileged class that serve as intermediaries between the people and the law. This new development of effectively copyrighting parts of the law, or limiting access to legal databases, is really just a continuation of this trend. It stengthens the hold that the wealthy have over access to the legal system.
Public, but not free (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like that (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like saying the water company shouldn't be allowed to charge for a natural resource which is rightfully everyone's. Again, you're paying for the service of bringing it to you.
Globe199
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Re:Lawyers........ (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooooo what again would be their motive for doing a good job? More on this later...
Most people who go through law school do so so that they can be another tobacco lawsuit lawyer
Wow, you must not know many lawyers -- MOST lawyers don't end up being litigators. I don't have numbers in hand, but I'll hazard a guess by saying an overwhelming majority of lawyers are paper pushers. And most litigators I know are Public Defenders, DAs, and so forth. Most *lawyers* I know are property lawyers, divorce lawyers, etc. These are people that are paid fairly for hard work in the interpretation of *extremely* complex rules and laws.
most of the time frivolous
Do you have data to support this? I agree that we need tort reform, but I also know some people that received well-deserved judgements for damages from bad car accidents, assaults, and other physical and emotional harm that occured because of intent or negligence. Don't believe that everything you see on '60 Minutes' is representative of our legal system.
Hell most that aren't could be resolved without lawyers
Umm...most are settled without lawyers, that's what small claims court is for.
The only people in favor of letting lawyers make whatever they want to charge are the same people who see the government as the perfect hammer, fit for every nail produced by man or nature
I have no idea what this means or what these two things have in common. Lawyers don't make 'whatever they want', they make what people are willing to pay them. It's a complex, often time consuming job, and the command a high price for their work and talent. What's next, engineers shouldn't be paid so much, doctors, city workers? Why should lawyers be singled out? Part of the reason socialist cultures tends to mire in mediocrity is because people don't have any reason or reward for their ambition.
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