For
those who have grown dependent on electronic case searching (and really, who
hasn’t?), there is some good news for your post-subscription access days.  The state of California has partnered with
LexisNexis to provide FREE access to California official case law.  See http://www.lexisnexis.com/clients/CACourts/
(please note that this site is intended for personal, rather than commercial,
use).

Expectedly,
the available search fields are much more limited than in Lexis’
subscription-based service.  Here, there
are three main search options: by court (CA Courts of Appeal and/or CA Supreme
Court); by keyword using natural language; and by date.  Choosing narrow search criteria is recommended,
because this free service will only display up to 25 relevant cases for each
search.  On the positive side, this limit
should help you in crafting and refining your search terms, as you will want a
concise list of relevant cases, and a set of 25 cases is relatively manageable.  Additionally, there is no limit to the number
of searches allowed, so feel free to be creative and try different search
strategies.

As a free-of-charge search system,
it certainly lacks the bells and whistles to which we became accustomed in law
school – for example, Shepardizing is not available through this service – but it
is still an excellent tool to have at your disposal, so check it out sometime!
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