As noted in Carole Levitt's new ABA book, Internet Legal Research on a Budget (co-authored with Judy K. Davis), forty-eight state bar associations subscribe to legal research databases on behalf of their members as a member benefit. Forty-seven of these forty-eight states subscribe either to Casemaker or Fastcase. Currently, the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA) subscribes to InCite. A LexisNexis product, InCite provides access to all Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases back to 1791, Pennsylvania Superior Court cases back to 1895, and Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court cases back to October 1970. It only offers the five most current years of decisions for other state’s cases, except New Jersey for which it goes back to the beginning years.

But, beginning August 1, 2014, PBA will shift its alliances to Casemaker, which provides increased content, such as federal cases and codes, as well as cases and codes for all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Casemaker also includes access to other legal research materials, increased dates of coverage, and other services such as the ability to to save your searches in folders not available via InCite.

And as a huge bonus, PBA is providing ALL of Casemaker’s premium services to its members for free, such as:

• CaseCheck+ – A negative citator system that informs you if the case you're reading is still good law.
• CasemakerDigest – daily e-mail summaries of state and federal appellate decisions (within 12-24 hours of publication), listed by practice area.
• CiteCheck – Upload a brief and in minutes Casemaker will automatically check your citations to be sure they are still good law.

Internet Legal Research on a Budget’s Chapter 8 provides detailed instructions on how to use Casemaker and also explains some of the features and limitations of CaseCheck+ and CiteCheck…and provides you with a work-around.

To purchase Internet Legal Research on a Budget, see http://www.netforlawyers.com/page/internet-legal-research-budget-free-low-cost-resources.