Last month, Google debuted a service that allows anyone to search for legal opinions and legal articles. On it's official blog, Google states that "Starting today [November 17, 2009], we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar."
Why should you or I care that Google has developed a product that allows free searches of legal opinions? Well, legal opinions are law. As judges decide cases, they make rules that we have to follow. So, if you can't read those laws or search for the right ones, you can't follow them or try to change them if you disagree with them. Or, as the Google blog puts it, "Laws that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective arguments to change."
Check out Google Scholar - Legal by heading to www.google.com/scholar. Click on the button that says "Legal opinions and journals" and search away. Have fun.
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