WY lawyers now can access Casemaker
Wyoming State Bar joins 25 other State Bar Associations in Casemaker legal research consortium
by Wyoming State Bar
April 16, 2007
(Cheyenne) - The Wyoming State Bar today announced that it has joined 25 other State Bar Associations in the Casemaker Consortium. Casemaker is an online legal research tool that will provide Wyoming lawyers free, unlimited access to numerous libraries of state and federal case law, statutes, court rules, and much more.
“Lawyers spend a great deal of time doing legal research,” said Joseph B. Bluemel, President of the Wyoming State Bar. “Unfortunately, they also spend a great deal of money for access to the information they need. The Bar’s leadership is excited to be able to offer this comprehensive assortment of legal resources to Wyoming lawyers at absolutely no cost to them - no strings attached.”
Each state bar association defines the materials required to be in their individual state libraries. Casemaker not only provides and maintains extensive legal libraries for the 26 Consortium states, but for all 50 states.
In addition, Casemaker’s federal library is included as a free membership benefit. It provides users with access to the U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations as well as opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court from inception.
The Wyoming specific library consists of case law from 1924, all Wyoming Acts, Wyoming Statutes, and Attorney General opinions from 1978. There are also extensive sets of rules for trial court and appellate court procedure. Other legal resources include the Code of Judicial Conduct, Rules Governing the Unauthorized Practice of Law, the Wyoming Lawyer and more.
Wyoming lawyers will access Casemaker through a password-protected page of the Wyoming State Bar’s website. Casemaker has been designed to accommodate any practitioner or judge. The online libraries are organized so that even novice users can quickly find and review the cases or codes that they require. Anyone who can “surf the net” will have the ability to efficiently use the site with virtually no training. Very useful features are included such as a Thesaurus term expander that will automatically look for synonyms of key words.
In the summer of 2005, TechnoLawyer.com conducted an on-line survey of its members. Casemaker tied with Westlaw for second place in this nationwide vote in the category “Favorite Legal Research Tool”. Only lawyers from 20 states had access to Casemaker at that time making it quite impressive that Casemaker was rated so high when competing services had voters in all 50 states. Surveys conducted in various Casemaker states revealed that Casemaker was used as the primary legal research by more lawyers than any other publisher within those states. The Wyoming Casemaker will be accessible from the Wyoming State Bar website on April 16, 2007.
Related Links:
Wyoming State Bar, www.wyomingbar.org
Casemaker Legal Research, www.casemaker.us
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