BEV BUTULA: Google Scholar expands its reach (and links)

By: BEVERLY BUTULA//March 12, 2012//

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Google Scholar is a free option for researching case law. I have discussed this feature of Google in the past and personally find it a nice starting resource. Well, Google recently announced a change to how the search engine lists a particular case’s citing references.

Once a researcher identifies a case of interest, they can follow the “how cited” tab to obtain a list of other cases that cite to it. “[I]nstead of sorting the citing documents by their prominence, we sort them by the extent of discussion of the cited case. Opinions that discuss the cited case in detail are presented before ones that mention it briefly.”

It is important to remember that they still offer no way to determine if the case is still “good law.” For this, the fee-based legal subscriptions still are the best option.

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