Legal Education Commons: open source access to 700,000 court decisions

noted!  if you are going to law school, and need to read a case for class, here's a source for 700,000 cases and case notes. 

Legal Education Commons Launches with Open Access to 700,000 Court Decisions LEC is an online source for legal academia to freely find and share open educational materials.   Chicago, Ill., January 26, 2008 – Starting today, legal educators will have the capability to search, make use of, and share more legal educational materials than ever before. The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (“CALI”), in collaboration with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is launching an open, searchable collection of resources designed specifically for use in legal education: a “Legal Education Commons” (“LEC”). “All teachers of law have materials and notes they use in teaching,” says John Mayer, CALI Executive Director. “Many freely share their materials with colleagues, but there has never been a singular searchable, taggable space to serve that function for the entire legal academy,” he explains, “until now.” The LEC is available online at www.cali.org/lec. FINDING TEACHING MATERIALS IN LEC The Legal Education Commons launches with over 700,000 federal court decisions readily available to its users. This initial collection of cases from public.resource.org makes the LEC one of the largest gatherings of case law freely available in one place under a creative commons license. CALI has also donated 300 original illustrations from its popular online tutorials, “CALI Lessons,” making the Legal Education Commons the first and largest pool of free images designed specifically for use in legal education. SHARING TEACHING MATERIALS IN LEC While the LEC opens with an extensive collection of court cases and images, it can expand its collection of resources only through contributions and donations from the legal education community. CALI implores faculty and staff at CALI member schools to share any files from personal collections that may facilitate learning amongst the legal education community. “Especially as we increasingly garner more participation and sharing from legal educators,” says Mr. Mayer, “the Legal Education Commons will be a great, non-commercial tool for those who are both teaching and learning the law.” Faculty and staff at CALI member schools may upload nearly any type of file – from most text documents to presentations and MP3’s as large as 50 MB – and share it with the LEC community under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. The Creative Commons license allows the author to retain copyright in the material, but allows others to use, share, and make derivative works so long as proper attribution is made and the derivative is licensed under this, or a compatible, license. If you would like to find current LEC resources or upload and share your own files, visit www.cali.org/lec. ABOUT CALI CALI is a non-profit consortium of U.S. law schools with a mission to improve legal education through innovation. CALI was incorporated in 1982 by the law schools of Harvard and the University of Minnesota. Today CALI has offices at the law schools of the University of Minnesota, Chicago-Kent, and Emory. The consortium welcomes membership from law schools, paralegal programs, law firms, and any organization that wishes to learn more about the law. Over 200 US law schools are a part of CALI . More information is available at www.cali.org. ABOUT JOHN MAYER John Mayer is an expert in the use of technology and innovation in legal education. He has served as the Executive Director of CALI since 1994 and has worked in the field of technology/innovation in legal education for over 20 years. Mr. Mayer has a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University and an MS in Networks and Telecommunications from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is available for comments and questions related to legal education and technology. Contact John at jmayer@cali.org. ### Contact: Austin Groothuis CALI 312-906-5303 agroothuis@cali.org