Upsetting The Applecart Of Legal Research – Are we entering a golden age of legal research innovation? By Robert Ambrogi

If you had to pick the most staid area of legal technology, you might choose legal research. After all, Westlaw and LexisNexis pretty much set the standard for online legal research long ago, and many of the smaller research services that have come along since are essentially less-comprehensive variations on the same theme. Yet within a few days of each other earlier this month, there were three major developments pertaining to legal research, each of which suggests interesting new directions for legal research. In fact, after I wrote about the three developments on my Lawsites blog, it prompted Ed Walters, the CEO of legal research service Fastcase, to tweet, “Might we be entering a golden age of legal research innovation? Sure feels like it.” Of course, innovation in legal research has been going on for a while now. Middle-tier services such as Fastcase and Casemaker are frequently refining their platforms and adding new features. Startups such as Casetext and Ravel Law have introduced innovations that even the big players have emulated. Startup ROSS is bringing IBM Watson’s artificial intelligence to legal research. Still, all three of these recent developments signal possible new directions in legal research. Let me review them briefly…”