what to do when westlaw expires? Forum

[victortsoi]

So I've extended my westlaw till november after graduation, and recently found a solo who needs help with cases, including research help, for work while I keep looking for a more permanent job. My question is, what do I do when my westlaw expires? Are there any resources for me to be able to do legal research from home?

[Jchance]

Contact Westlaw and tell them about your situation, they might be able to help.

[lawschoolftw]

Check out law libraries as well. Many have expansive subscriptions to WL.

[RaceJudicata]

Westlaw almost certainly will not be willing to help... Ever print something out and notice at the top it says "for educational use only"? It isn't meant to be used for work at a firm. Of course very few people follow this rule.

Also, what kind of firm doing any sort of litigation doesn't have a basic/state law only subscription to westlaw or lexis?

[ditch digger]

Your Bar Association's website should have a free online research database.

[ditch digger]

Also, what kind of firm doing any sort of litigation doesn't have a basic/state law only subscription to westlaw or lexis?

It's a lot more common that you would imagine. A lot of small firm partners are stingy as fuck.

[Icculus]

Westlaw almost certainly will not be willing to help... Ever print something out and notice at the top it says "for educational use only"? It isn't meant to be used for work at a firm. Of course very few people follow this rule.

Also, what kind of firm doing any sort of litigation doesn't have a basic/state law only subscription to westlaw or lexis?

This. If you contact West they may just pull your subscription if they they think you are using it for work.

[lacrossebrother]

Try signing up for bloomberg and/or ravel (lol) and saying youre graduating in 2016.
Sign up for fastcase and casetext for free

edit to add: the fact that it took this many posts to even mention fastcase is absurd. people on TLS are just not that helpful.

[Desert Fox]

[A. Nony Mouse]

Try signing up for bloomberg and/or ravel (lol) and saying youre graduating in 2016.
Sign up for fastcase and casetext for free

edit to add: the fact that it took this many posts to even mention fastcase is absurd. people on TLS are just not that helpful mostly students or working at institutions with Westlaw/Lexis subscriptions, for better or worse.

[lacrossebrother]

fair.
But seriously, both fastcase and castext are tremendous. I actually made a thread trying to encourage TLS users to use Castext and thus contribute to its WeCite engine --effectively a crowd-sourced shepardization tool.

edit to add: I need to give myself more credit for being the most helpful poster rather than degrade the helpfulness of other, less helpful posters.

[MCFC]

No help to the OP, but this story made me think of this thread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/us/ha ... .html?_r=1

Now, in a digital-age sacrifice intended to serve grand intentions, the Harvard librarians are slicing off the spines of all but the rarest volumes and feeding some 40 million pages through a high-speed scanner. They are taking this once unthinkable step to create a complete, searchable database of American case law that will be offered free on the Internet, allowing instant retrieval of vital records that usually must be paid for

[Nebby]

No help to the OP, but this story made me think of this thread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/us/ha ... .html?_r=1

Now, in a digital-age sacrifice intended to serve grand intentions, the Harvard librarians are slicing off the spines of all but the rarest volumes and feeding some 40 million pages through a high-speed scanner. They are taking this once unthinkable step to create a complete, searchable database of American case law that will be offered free on the Internet, allowing instant retrieval of vital records that usually must be paid for

Ivy Leaguers and their Ivory To..... wait. Awesome!

[03152016]

google scholar is good

[ballouttacontrol]

Why can't some reddit/4chan types just download every single thing off of Westlaw from like a handful of student accounts and put it up on piratebay or something? Like why tf has this not been done yet

[fats provolone]

Why can't some reddit/4chan types just download every single thing off of Westlaw from like a handful of student accounts and put it up on piratebay or something? Like why tf has this not been done yet

worked out awesome for aaron swartz

[lacrossebrother]

Why can't some reddit/4chan types just download every single thing off of Westlaw from like a handful of student accounts and put it up on piratebay or something? Like why tf has this not been done yet

if you're just talking about caselaw, courtlistener, casetext, and google scholar have done a pretty job.
and RECAP is a good start on PACER.

[Bron Burgundy]

Find a friend who is still in law school and borrow their account. Buy them lunch, mentor them, or do whatever to get access to their westlaw account.

[Anonymous User]

Find a friend who is still in law school and borrow their account. Buy them lunch, mentor them, or do whatever to get access to their westlaw account.

I was thinking about doing this, but is Westlaw like Netflix or iTunes, where you can only be on so many devices?

[k5220]

Find a friend who is still in law school and borrow their account. Buy them lunch, mentor them, or do whatever to get access to their westlaw account.

I was thinking about doing this, but is Westlaw like Netflix or iTunes, where you can only be on so many devices?

you can only be signed on to one session at a time. you can't even have westlaw open in multiple browsers, so multiple locations wouldn't work.

[Bron Burgundy]

Find a friend who is still in law school and borrow their account. Buy them lunch, mentor them, or do whatever to get access to their westlaw account.

I was thinking about doing this, but is Westlaw like Netflix or iTunes, where you can only be on so many devices?

you can only be signed on to one session at a time. you can't even have westlaw open in multiple browsers, so multiple locations wouldn't work.

That's true, but I was fortunate to find a friend who wasn't working and didn't do law review, so they barely used their westlaw account. There were a couple of time when I got kicked out of westlaw when they logged in. Not ideal, but still better than nothing.