Free Access to Federal Cases

Want to retrieve the full-text of US Supreme Court and Circuit Court of Appeal cases … for free? Now you can. Services like Westlaw and Lexis charge a lot for this service. But a new service called www.AltLaw.org puts these cases out there where they belong, in the public domain. The service is still in beta (i.e., the bugs are still being worked out), and I wouldn’t recommend you rely on it just yet for your mission-critical law briefs. It’s still slow and could be more user-friendly. But did I mention, it’s free? Westlaw and Lexis, take that! Thanks go to the folks at www.inter-alia.net for the tip.