As you may know, Google Scholar allows you to search for US legal opinions (as well as patents and international journal articles).

Recently, the presentation of search results has been changed to show the extent of discussion of cited cases.

Whilst translators can use this to collect relevant reference documents, lawyers may use it to evaluate the weight of the adverse party’s arguments.

Here is how to do a search. You can click on the screenshots to enlarge them.

1) Search in the main Google Scholar window for your term.

2) When you have searched for a term or a case (I searched for “feeder funds”), you will get a list like this:

3) When you click on a case you will see this window:

4) There are two tabs at the top left – “Read this case” and “How cited”. By clicking on the “How cited” tab, you will get the screen below. The extent of discussion of a case is now indicated visually by one, two or three bars to the left of the case name – I have circled them below. If there are no bars, then the case has just been cited but not discussed.

The Google Scholar blog describes the change here.

Google Scholar has the advantage of being free, because whilst law firms have subscriptions to databases like Westlaw and Lexis, translators are unlikely to have access to them.

Thanks to the blog LawyerTechReview for bringing this to my attention.