With this new agreement with Fastcase, Texas attorneys are the first to receive access to both Fastcase and Casemaker as a free benefit of their membership in the Bar.

The State Bar of Texas had previously offered its members free access to Casemaker. Texas attorneys will continue to receive free access to the Casemaker legal research service, along with expanded premium Casemaker services at no cost.

Carole Levitt's new book, Internet Legal Research on a Budget, contains chapters detailing how to use Casemaker and Fastcase most effectively.

“We are thrilled to offer this free research tool as an additional benefit to Texas attorneys alongside our popular Casemaker service,” Trey Apffel, 2014-15 State Bar of Texas president said in a press release announcing the agreement. “Part of our mission at the State Bar of Texas is to provide superior online resources and benefits to members which help them better serve their clients. We believe this agreement helps us achieve that.”

Lawyers in 48 states and the District of Columbia have access to free caselaw research as a member benefit via either Casemaker or Fastcase. Only California and Delaware do not offer such access.

The post State Bar of Texas Offers Members More Access to Free Legal Research appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Recently, in response to query on Twitter, we created a Google-powered search of Pennsylvania statutes. This got us thinking about other states that offered access to their statutes online, but did not offer the full flexibility and/or familiar search options offered by Google's Web search. 

So, we started poking around a bit, looking for other state statutory materials onto which we might superimpose a Google-powered search. Our second Google-powered statute search covers Texas's statues and Constitution.

The Texas legislature offers an excellent search option for its statutes and Constitution at http://linkon.in/dqLvV5. There, you can browse or search the entire Code, or search individual Titles or the Constitution. Your keywords are even highlighted in the search results. While the Texas Legislature search does a nice job with Boolean and phrase searching, our test searches seemed to indicate that one weakness was in the exclusionary AND NOT/BUT NOT search - particularly when trying to exclude a phrase.

The Google-powered search we created for Texas statutes and Constitution allows for the exclusionary search using the minus sign ( - ).

Based on the dozen or so test searches we ran setting the search up, it seems to catch all of the statutes' content - but all of the usual caveats/disclaimers apply.

Let us know if you find any Titles in particular it does not return.

Google-Powered Search of Texas Statues and Constitution

The post Google-powered Search of the Texas Statutes (and Constitution) appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.