Google Scholar Legal Content

Note: while many of the following features are not currently available in Google Scholar, we mantain this entry for historical and intellectual grounds.

Google Scholar Legal Content Star Paginator

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Google wrote an extension for Google Chrome that adds inline star pagination
“Cited by” command, and
Inline star pagination for Google Scholar legal content

Google wrote an extension for Google Chrome that adds inline star pagination

This free extension for Google Chrome Web browser, created in 2009, may be a useful tool for legal researchers who used to use page numbers inline in Westlaw or Lexis. The Google Scholar Legal Content Star Paginator extension, like some legal journal indexes, inserts Westlaw and LexisNexis style page numbers in line with the text of the case. For researchers, this tool brings familiar star pagination to the case law available on Google Legal Scholar. When researchers use Google Scholar for basic legal research, this extension will put star pagination into your Scholar results.

Traditionally, case law added to electronic databases sometimes came from printed law reports, with page numbers. Those are hard to represent in online databases since most cases are a stream of text, without pagination. Star paging appears so that you can tell where the print page occurred in the online document: an asterisk (star) next to the page number.

The extension takes the normal page number placement on Google Scholar and moves it into the text. In general, the cases in Google Scholar would be able to recognize where the pagination goes.

“Cited by” command

The “Cited by” feature or command, a light version of Shepard’s and KeyCite which links articles and cases to later articles/cases which cited the earlier publications, works like those Citations. It lists all cases citing your case, and gives a one line reference to the citing case. But the “Cited By” results appear to be displayed only by the later documents’ own influence (i.e., the most-cited results themselves appear at the top). This makes sorting through subsequent citations difficult for influential documents.

Case law results include “star paging” , hyperlinks to other cases which are cited in the opinion, and a “How Cited” tab which works similarly to the “Cited by” feature for articles. Attempting to retrieve cases on a particular topic can get overwhelming-use the Advanced Scholar Search to narrow your jurisdictions if you are only interested in a particular state.

Inline star pagination for Google Scholar legal content

According to Chrome, “This extension makes Lexis and Westlaw users feel more at-home while using Google Scholar’s legal content. It places page numbers inline with the text, rather than in the margin. You can choose between Westlaw or LexisNexis style stars in the extension’s options.”

Usability

The “Legal Opinions and Journals” database in Google Scholar beta is “remarkably usable in terms of its simplicity and visibility of design and search. Users will easily find the search box without any distractions underneath the Google scholar logo. The simplicity comes from the fact that users do not need to worry about the type of sources and jurisdictions.

First time users, or any users who have not used this website for a long time, will not experience any difficulty on the first homepage of this website. The search box appears on the top of any web page in this website.

After putting search terms and clicking the search button, users will see the easily-scannable display of search results, which is similar to the design of the familiar Google search results. Although the case names are not bulleted, case names are bigger than other texts and are colored and underlined in blue to increase the scannability. Under the case name, case citations are provided in a green color with a smaller font size than the case name and without the underline.

Three lines of black color text containing the search terms follow the citation, and “Cited by,” “Related articles,” and “All … versions” in a grey color follows the text. Users can easily refine their search results by simply choosing a date and the type of sources such as articles, federal cases, and state cases from the drop down menus provided on the top of search results page. Users can also simply click the “How cited” link next to the name of the cases to get updated information about a case from the same search results page.

Furthermore, the search results page makes it easier for users to scan the cases by providing them in a 50 em wide white color container, which helps users fix their eyes to the left side and keep scanning downward.

When users select one of the cases, they will find easily scannable text of a case contained in a 530 pixel wide white color table. Here, users’ searching speed will be accelerated because the search terms are bold and highlighted with yellow and light blue colors, and the authorities cited inside the case are underlined and colored in blue. Furthermore, the page numbers are noticeably located next to the text of the case. The footnotes are hyperlinked and provided at the end of the text.” (1)

In fact, the high usability of this Google Scholar website “is also satisfied by its consistency in color scheme, size of fonts, and location of navigation bars and search box. Users will always find the blue-color underlined hyperlink for each webpage, the black font color, and font size for the text are consistent throughout the website. The navigation bar for other Google searches, images, videos, maps, news, e-mail, etc., a search box, and hyperlinks to “Advanced Scholar Search” and “Scholar Preferences” are located on the top of each web page at all times.” (2)

Resources

Notes

Jootaek Lee (2012) “Gatekeepers of Legal Information: Evaluating and Integrating Free Internet Legal Resources into the Classroom,” Barry Law Review: Vol. 17: Iss. 2, Article 3
Id.

Google Scholar Legal Content

Google Scholar Legal Content