Harvard Law School Library Project to Provide Free Online Access to U.S. State, Federal Court Decisions Named “Caselaw Access Project”
From the Harvard Law School Library’s Et Seq. Blog:
The Harvard Law School Library is pleased to announce “Caselaw Access Project” as the formal name for its long-running project to help make U.S. state and federal court decisions freely accessible online.
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The Library began this project internally in 2013 under the name “Free the Law” as a pilot to explore the feasibility and viability of digitizing its nearly comprehensive collection of over 42,000 bound volumes of published court decisions. In 2015, the Library publicly announced the initiative and its unique partnership with Ravel Law, a legal research and analytics platform, to transform and provide free public access to the millions of court decisions within these volumes.
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Through our discussions with Mike [Lissner of the Free Law Project,] however, it has become evident that the similarity of our projects’ names has been a needless impediment. While our projects are similar in vision and values, they are distinct. They differ in important respects. While we continue to pursue avenues for collaboration, we are eager to prevent confusion or misunderstanding, and we believe publicly naming the Harvard-Ravel initiative the “Caselaw Access Project” will help us achieve that goal.
Direct to Complete Blog Post (Learn About Some Free Law Project and Caselaw Access Project Collaboration)
See Also: 40 Million Pages: NY Times Reports on the Harvard Law School Library’s “Free the Law” Digitization Project (October 29, 2015)
Filed under: Digital Preservation, Libraries, News, Reports, School Libraries

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.