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Cost-Effective Electronic Legal Research: Low Cost Databases

New Databases Incorporating Advanced Search Technologies

Ravel (owned by Lexis)

Uses data visualization to present results as a diagram showing case results as circles on a chronological grid, which can be arranged by court level. The larger circles indicate how many times the case was sited, showing the key cases at a glance. Lines between the cases show the relationships between them. Users report that they can complete research 66% faster if they start with Ravel, because it gives them an overview of the state of the law.

Paid subscribers can get star reading case clusters, which analyze key passages in a case, and identify subsequent cases which discuss the same topic. Advanced statistics, natural language technology and machine learning are used to create these. The clusters appear directly in the case.
Incorporates law firm client alerts and other secondary sources from the web.

Comparison of Low Cost Alternatives to Lexis & Westlaw

 

Searching

  Boolean Natural Language Fields Search databases together Saves Searches,
Alert Searches

 

Folders
Bloomberg Law Yes - s/, p/ Yes Advanced Searches on the right side All-in-One Search Box

Saves Searches and

Alert Searches

 Yes
Decisis Yes  Yes

 

Yes

 

 .Yes Saves Searches, does not appear to have an app. 

Yes.
Vlex Yes - w/n Yes, but the faq from VLex warns that "natural language searches are much less precise"...than boolean. Date, cite look-up only Yes

Saves last 10 searches and recent documents, even on free app.

Alert feature, but not on app.

 Save documents in favorites. On app, document just saves within the app.


 

Low Cost PACER Alternatives

PACER, the federal court system's online filing and docket system, provides huge amounts of documents from federal cases.  PACER charges ten cents a page.