If you frequently find yourself in need of a case for research purposes, to provide to a Court, or simply because you need an electronic copy to download to your tablet, the easiest and cheapest way to find it is to use Google Scholar.
Whether you use Lexis, Westlaw, vLex (formerly Fastcase), Decisis, or some other tool, Google Scholar is likely to be the fastest method to find a case when you know the case name or the citation. You can also use Google Scholar to search for scholarly articles.
- Visit http://scholar.google.com/
- Choose Case law
- Enter Your Search
- Click Search
Confirming Cases While Using AI
I originally wrote this post in 2011, so I will mention an update that you may find useful. If you are using AI to conduct legal research, you can include in your prompt that the tool should link to any cases it cites through Google Scholar. Click the link, confirm you are in the Case law tab, and make sure the case actually exists. Also, if you haven’t read the case, you should do so to make certain it stands for the proposition the AI claimed.
If the case does not show up in Google Scholar, it is still a good idea to do a quick search in Google itself. For example, in Pennsylvania, non-precedential decisions can now be cited for persuasive value, but I have never found one in Google Scholar.
Example Prompt in Perplexity.ai
Below is an example of a simple prompt that will cause the AI to link to cases in Google Scholar. The results are as Perplexity provided them.
“Find five U.S. Supreme Court decisions on attorney-client privilege from the last twenty years, with a direct link to each on Google Scholar”
