Electronic Databases in Legal Research: Beyond LEXIS and WESTLAW

Abstract

Just twenty-five years ago computer-assisted legal research was little more than a dream when Professor John Horty, of the University of Pittsburgh's Health Law Center, demonstrated an automated system for retrieving state statutes at a meeting of the American Bar Association. In the late 1960's, stimulated by Horty's success, members of the Ohio Bar Association and researchers at Queens University, Canada, began work virtually simultaneously on the precursors of the LEXIS and WESTLAW systems. Now that LEXIS and WESTLAW are firmly established as important and sometimes indispensable legal research tools, other potentially useful electronic databases are attracting the attention of legal researchers.