51 RI Bar J., No. 2, Pg. 5 (September, 2002). Casemaker: Making Technology Work For You.

• Author: Michael A. St. Pierre, Esq.

Rhode Island Bar Journal

Volume 51.

51 RI Bar J., No. 2, Pg. 5 (September, 2002).

Casemaker: Making Technology Work For You

Casemaker: Making Technology Work For YouMichael A. St. Pierre, Esq.President, Rhode Island Bar AssociationIt is rare for a bar association to be able to introduce a product or service that lawyers will use daily in their practice and that will save potentially thousands of dollars in overhead expenses. In late fall 2002, the Rhode Island Bar Association will introduce an exciting new member benefit - the Casemaker online law library. This free, exclusive RIBA service is an easily searchable, continually updated database of case law, statutes and regulations. Unlike the commercial research services, there will be no monthly or hourly fees for Rhode Island Bar members to use Casemaker, and access is unlimited,

24 hours a day.Excitement over Casemaker began last winter when the Bar Association President and President-Elect began negotiating with Lawriter, Inc. to provide state-of-the-art online legal research through our web site. For those of you in private practice, in either small offices or solo practices, the availability of the Casemaker Web Library will serve 99% of your research needs. We anticipate it will cost the association less than $20.00 of your annual dues to provide you with that service, a miniscule fraction of the cost of traditional commercial web-based legal research products.

With this available through our website, many firms will likely find that Casemaker is the only legal research tool they will ever need. Others will find that Casemaker allows them to reduce the cost of their other legal research materials significantly. Some of the larger firms, who can afford commercial online services, may wish to maintain their contracts with large national online service providers but by using Casemaker first, they limit or reduce per-minute or per-hour charges substantially.

Casemaker will provide you with a historic-to-current federal and state case and statutory online law library based on a consortium concept. The library will include a citator, which...