How Long Before Ravel’s Commitment to Free Law Unravels After the LEXIS Acquisition? – My Shingle

"Remember Ravel  – that cool legal research system that was ever so generously scanning every book in the Harvard Law Library to make it all available online at no cost?  In yesterday’s big legal news, LEXIS announced  that it had acquired Ravel, and will incorporate Ravel’s offerings – both its free Harvard caselaw file and its analytics tools –  to expand LEXIS’ existing suite of products.

As for the Ravel-Harvard free caselaw that the New York Times and everyone (well,  except me) was drooling about? According to Bob Ambrogi’s  post on the acquisition, LEXIS remains committed to continuing access to Ravel’s free library.

Let’s just say that I’m skeptical.  For starters, LEXIS really didn’t have a choice over whether to continue free access.  That’s because Harvard and Ravel agreed to release the entire database for use by anyone within eight years – long before LEXIS came on the scene.  As a result, the obligation to make the Harvard library files free was presumably a condition of the deal.

Moreover, it’s one thing to agree to make caselaw available at no cost; it’s quite another to devote the resources to continually improve free resources.  Google Scholar  is the gold standard of free – and it keeps getting better with age  because its database of cases is automatically updated and its search engine grows smarter each time it’s used."