Good post this morning by Kristopher Nelson discussing competitive pressure in the legal research marketplace, with a nice tip of the hat to Fastcase:

I don’t think I could, in good con­science, charge a client for legal research done entirely in Lexis or Westlaw at this point, with­out first start­ing out with free (or lower cost, at least) options like Google Scholar or Fastcase. The cost dif­fer­ence is stag­ger­ing, and I would feel uneth­i­cal to charge a client for the cost of exploratory research using the big two (but not for using them to Shephardize, for exam­ple, for which a paid ser­vice is sim­ply required).

In Propria Persona 1/26/2010