Steven Minor, author of the SW Virginia blog, recently mentioned that the Virginia bar is considering a proposal to include online legal research as a membership benefit. Fastcase has submitted a bid to be the service provider. There is an article about this in the most recent Virginia Lawyer's Weekly newspaper (subscription only).
While I am not a member of the Virginia bar, I have an indirect interest. If the Virginia bar provides online research capability as a membership benefit, the D.C. Bar and the Maryland State Bar Associations are more likely to follow suit.
As I've said before, I think it is a no-brainer for any state bar association to offer this as a benefit. The Washington Lawyer has also recently run an article on this. To me it is just common sense that a bar association would secure inexpensive access to online legal research for its members. It can only raise the overall quality of service for all members of the bar to have unlimited, low fee or no fee access to online legal research. It will potentially reduce costs and overhead for the bar membership, and will encourage pro bono services. It ensures some competition in the market for online legal research. Imagine what Lexis and Westlaw might cost if there is no other competition. It also would be a great incentive to join a bar association, where membership is voluntary. It seems like a natural extension of the traditional function of the bar association in providing law libraries for its members.
Virginia is considering Fastcase, which has fairly good national coverage and, last time I checked it out, had a clean, simple interface and offered boolean and natural language searching.
Apparently Casemaker previously also submitted a bid to the Virginia Bar. The bar associations of 22 states have now adopted Casemaker. However, according to the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the bar association withdrew its request for proposals after another legal publisher, Geronimo Development Corp. which publishes the CaseFinder CD/online legal research system, threatened to file suit. Geronimo explains its position on its website -- it is concerned that as a Virginia-specific product, its business will be destroyed if the Virginia State Bar Association offers a competing product as a zero cost benefit of membership. The Virginia Attorney General's Office disagrees, and among other things cites the market experience where other state bar associations offer similar programs.
To me it looks like CaseFinder has greater Virginia coverage than FastCase, since it includes selected Circuit Court opinions and workers compensation commission decisions, and perhaps more. Plus a CD based service would be available when a firm's internet access is down.
After this dispute arose, according to the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the Virginia Supreme Court passed a rule directing the state bar association to provide online research services to its members, which apparently was designed to provide a state-action exemption to any antitrust claim.
Then the bar association reissued its RFP, and Fastcase submitted the only bid. It isn't clear whether Casemaker and Versuslaw were scared off by the threatened antitrust suit. It remains to be seen what the Virginia State Bar will do.
Courts in most jurisdictions are not only publishing their opinions electronically, but are incorporating powerful search engines into their websites. Likewise, administrative agencies like the Virginia Workers Compensation Commission are offering that service. With each passing year, the body of law that is available online and searchable at zero cost is increasing. Given that, it is hard to imagine that Geronimo's threatened antitrust suit will go anywhere, but I have no doubt it would be hideously expensive.
