Valerio No Title
| Jurisdiction | Vermont,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 2002 No. 06 |
| Publication year | 2002 |
June 2002. Valerio No Title
Matthew F. Valerio, Esq.
The Vermont Bar Association has recently entered into a contract to provide the most significant member benefit in the history of the Association. In April, the VBA Board of Bar Managers approved a contract with Lawriter, Inc., to provide state-of-the art online legal research for each association member through the Casemaker Web Library for the cost of a $25 per year dues increase. For those in private practice, in either small offices or solo practices, the availability of the Casemaker Web Library through the VBA website will serve ninety-percent of your research needs at a miniscule fraction of the cost of traditional commercial Web-based legal research products. After meeting with leaders from the Ohio State Bar Association and executives from Casemaker this winter, it became apparent that the VBA had to act.
Casemaker will provide VBA members with a historic-to-current federal and state case and statutory online law library based upon a consortium concept. Casemaker had its origins when, in 1994, Lawwriter and the Ohio State Bar Association collaborated to create a CD-ROM based legal research tool for OSBA members. In 1999 the offering became a Web-based consortium, where each state bar association that affiliates itself with the consortium gains access for its members to the Casemaker online library of every affiliated state. Once Maine joins the consortium (an event which is expected soon), all New England states will be represented, making the New England regional library fully accessible to all VBA members. Federal materials and statutory and case law from Ohio, North Carolina, Nebraska, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Indiana, and Michigan will also be available.
When researching the appropriateness of joining the Casemaker consortium, members of the Board of Managers and VBA staff contacted other state bar associations who had already signed on to the program. Other association representatives speak with unbridled enthusiasm when describing the reaction of their members to Casemaker. Contrary to my personal experience with cyber research tools, none of the member associations contacted reported any significant problems with the use and operation of Casemaker. All associations reported an increase in membership, with their...
To continue reading
Request your trial