Carl, I think you are misapprehending the value-add of services like Lexis and Westlaw. Many of the "tools" (which you deem "primitive") offered by the commercial services simply cannot be replicated through computing (barring the invention of artificial intelligence).

I'm speaking of the headnotes, case summaries, procedural postures, and probably a lot of the shepardizing as well - for instance, how could a computer know whether a case has been "question" or "criticized" by another?

These have all taken millions of man-hours to compile and may well be the most valuable features Lexis has to offer. Most searches yield a lot of chaff; without the case summaries, for instance, you'd have to read a hell of a lot more text to separate out that chaff.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see what clever entrepreneurs could do with raw access to US caselaw. But without all the human-produced value-add, I think any such project would necessarily lag Lexis & WestLaw in almost insurmountable ways.

(I also think that many of the commenters here were reacting to Cory's headline, which I don't think makes a supportable claim.)