Alaska Employment Law

It’s a disappointment

The Bar Association has introduced Casemaker, a new legal database free to individual Bar members (but costing the Bar Association ca. $30k/year).  It’s available here (you’ll need your Log-in and Password).

The Employment Law Section reviewed Casemaker’s features yesterday, with the assistance of Law Librarian Catherine Lemann.  Casemaker didn’t make a good initial impression on me, at least in its current state.  No wonder neither Westlaw nor Lexis has adjusted prices in response to the Bar Association’s move.

If Casemaker is to become worthwhile, it will have to fix the following problems quickly:

Time restrictions
Federal District Court opinions are available only from 2005, starting with 401 F.Supp.2d.   Court of Appeals cases are available only from 1993, starting with 1 F.3d. 

Multiple jurisdictions
It’s impossible to search opinions in all federal courts at one time.  You must search three separate databases: District Court, Courts of Appeals, and Supreme Court.  Similarly, it’s impossible to search opinions from all state courts at one time.  You must conduct 50 different searches.

Currency information
Casemaker doesn’t indicate the date of the displayed statute or regulation, and, worse yet,  relies on unofficial sources that do not post the current version of the statute or other authority.   

Citations
Casemaker tells you what subsequent cases have cited the opinion, but not whether the opinion has been overruled/modified/criticized, and not which aspects of the opinion have been subsequently cited.

In sum, Casemaker may be fine for retrieving a case that is outside your Westlaw or Lexis subscription database, but seems markedly deficient in almost any other respect that matters in legal research.  The Bar Association should drop it and save the money unless the sponsors upgrade the service.  If the Association retains Casemaker as is, it should alert Bar members as to its deficiencies.