The potential value of this offering is great but it is nowhere close to competing with LexisNexis/Westlaw in its current form. For example, I had clerked for

The potential value of this offering is great but it is nowhere close to competing with LexisNexis/Westlaw in its current form. For example, I had clerked for a federal judge in the Northern District of California in the 1979-80 era. I tried searching for published opinions by that judge and could not get any to come up. I also worked on a large securities class action while at a large firm thereafter and this resulted in a major opinion by another judge in that matter - couldn't get that one to come up either. Don't know if it is me fumbling around with inept searching techniques, or if it is the search algorithm, but I do know that I can easily retrieve these items through the major legal search services. Thus, my initial impression is that this Google service is full of great potential but is still at too early a stage to be of use as a systematic legal search service. As one who supports the idea of law being made broadly available to average people, and as one who pays a lot of money for the Lexis/Westlaw type of services, I look forward to the further development and refinement of this service. For the moment, though, it appears to be still too immature to be of real help yet, at least when one is looking for specific things.