Learn how the Free Law Project, led by cofounder Michael Lissner, is using technology and data to expand access to legal information. Discover CourtListener and RECAP, their flagship projects providing free court orders and filings. Hear about their mission to promote transparency, support investigative journalism, and revolutionize the legal sector through innovative tools and partnerships.
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Quick takeaways
Free Law Project aims to drive competition in the legal sector through free access and innovative technology.
Expansion plans include adding state court documents and parallel citations to enhance research capabilities.
Sustainability is ensured through diverse funding sources, including API access fees and donations.
Deep dives
Role of Free Law Project in Providing Legal Data
The Free Law Project focuses on providing free access to legal materials and enhancing legal research and innovation through technology, data, and advocacy. The organization aims to drive competition in the legal sector by collecting and sharing data openly, offering bulk files, and making APIs available for diverse legal purposes, such as tax work and in-house counsel support.
Expansion of Data Collection and Legal Access
The Free Law Project has a vast case law collection spanning from colonial days to 2018 and is actively working towards expanding to include state court documents. Their initiative to add millions of parallel citations aims to enrich the legal data available to users and enhance research capabilities, potentially offering a comprehensive search experience.
Charging Model and Sustainability Initiatives
While offering case law data for free, the Free Law Project charges for API access and database entry, catering to business users' needs for specialized access. The organization emphasizes sustainability through diverse funding sources, including donations, corporate support, memberships, and paid services like API access, ensuring financial stability and future growth.
Technological Innovations and Future Plans
The Free Law Project's focus on open-source tools and AI integration drives innovations like the SITATOR tool for finding bad law and alerts for PASER data, enhancing legal research efficiency and data accessibility. Future plans include transcribing oral arguments for searchability and developing a comprehensive legal research platform for pro se litigants and solo practitioners, improving access to legal information.
Collaboration and Donor Support
The Free Law Project collaborates with other legal data providers to enhance public access, aiming to carve out specialized niches while promoting transparency and equal access to legal information. Donor support, highlighted through the organization's website, plays a critical role in sustaining the project's mission and driving future initiatives toward empowering individuals and organizations with free legal data.
Since 2010, the nonprofit Free Law Project has been working to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive using technology, data and advocacy. It may be best known for CourtListener, its flagship project that houses an immense collection of court orders and opinions, and for its RECAP suite, which is the largest free collection on the internet of court filings and dockets.
But there is a lot more to the Free Law Project, as you will hear from our guest on today’s episode, Michael Lissner, the Free Law Project’s cofounder, executive director, and chief technology officer. Lissner started the Free Law Project while earning his master’s degree at the University of California Berkeley School of Information, with the assistance of cofounder Brian Carver, who was then an assistant professor at the school and who is now copyright counsel at Google.
Since then, the Free Law Project has expanded into a multifaceted source of legal data and tools, all with the goals of providing free access to legal materials and developing technology to enhance legal research and innovation.
The Free Law Project’s data also supports a range of academic research and investigative journalism, including having provided data that fueled the recent Pulitzer Prize awarded to news organization ProPublica for its reporting on the financial conflicts of Supreme Court justices.
Thank You To Our Sponsors
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