When I’m out visiting with my friends in corporate law departments, we may talk about recipes, fishing, or the weather…but the conversation always comes back to “how can we do things better to save money?” It's one of my favorite topics because at Altep, we've been creating methodologies and processes that eliminate waste and save money for more than a decade.
However, as good as we are, there are even more ways that corporate law departments can serve the budget. One intriguing possibility is the availability of free and searchable case law databases. The latest good example and useful resource that I’ve come across is altlaw.org.
The altlaw site promises to “make the common law a bit more common.” It is a joint project by the law schools at Columbia University and the University of Colorado. It provides opinions from the last decade or so from the federal appellate and Supreme Courts. The coverage included 173,378 cases at the time of this writing.
It is not as convenient or flashy as the pay-per-case sites (you know who I’m talking about), but the price is friendly ($0.00) and it does allow you to search by case name and perform full text searches. They even want to offer West Reporter Citations in the future. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think.
James Crane is an attorney, consultant and author with extensive experience in e-discovery management. In his practice, James has defended corporate clients in a variety of complex matters including multi-jurisdictional class actions and internal corporate and government regulatory investigations.
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