Yes, of course there’s no free lunch Tax dollars pay for the laws and opinions streaming out of courthouses, legislative bodies and agency rulemaking rooms. I don’t mind paying once. But at times I do feel like singing Bernardo’s line from West Side Story, “One look at us [law librarians] and they charge twice.”

Take Witkin’s Summary of California Law, for instance. It’s often *the* perfect starting point, and it is not free. (I do recall a wonderful quote from Bernie Witkin, though. In response to Samuel Johnson’s oft-told quote “Anyone who writes for anything other than money is a blockhead,” Bernie replied (but I don’t have the exact words), “Only a blockhead would write only for money.” )

Here at the Stanford Law Library, a small, private library that doesn’t serve the bar much, some of these expensive treatises are little used, and some never. Law review commentary, however, gets used to a great extent. So it also depends upon the library and its mission.

I do know of a few lawyers who start their research with a law review article. It can be a starting point, maybe not the best starting point, but since everything else is interconnected via citation and citation histories, it can lead to solid research even if in a roundabout way.

However, I worry about the use of the word “free”. Take the Scotusblog as an example, a bog that is written by attorneys who practice at Akin Gump. While it is commendable, someone (i.e. the firm) “pays” for that blog (and they aren’t doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, it must be a tremendous marketing tool for their Supreme Court practice). Additionally, all of the government sources mentioned have been “paid” for by us with tax dollars.

Alternatives to the traditional LX/WEST/”big publisher” model are most welcome, and are sometimes even better…but they probably aren’t free.