Google Legal Search

America has a lot of laws. Some people think it has too many, some people think it has too few. But it definitely has a lot. Many are built and modified over time as a result of precedent in previous cases. How do you research the legal opinions of all those judges throughout the years?

Google has announced that it’s extending Google Scholar to let you do just that. Scholar now has an extra option to search “Legal opinions and journals”. This will allow users to find “full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts” by either case name or topic. You can also explore via “cited” and “related” articles.

This new feature will be useful to students and others wishing to research US law. As always – especially with legal issues – a search engine is unlikely to be a replacement for expert professional advice.

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