Crowdsourcing

     After coming across a recent article in the ABA Journal, I couldn’t help but think of a dear friend’s passion for words and hear him say:   “What, may you ask, does that mean”?  The topic of the article was “crowdsourced” legal research, and I immediately realized I needed to consult my friend’s favorite resource, the dictionary.

         Crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

       The ABA article refers to two websites, Casetext and Mootus, which lead the user to cases, law review articles, and many secondary resources on just about any issue.  The majority of the articles link you directly to the case or law review they are referring to, however, if would like to have a case Shepardized or check to see if it is still good law, the Trial Court Law Library offers a service known as Get a Document.  Here you can request up to five documents to be delivered to you either through email or fax.