Wikipedia is easier to use than Lexis and Westlaw

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Maynooth University, Ireland came up with a friendly stress test: creating new legal Wikipedia articles to examine how they affect the legal decisions of judges…

It turned out the influx of articles tipped the scales: getting a Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20%. The increase was statistically significant and the effect was particularly strong for cases that supported the argument the citing judge was making in their decision (but not the converse). Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts - the High Court - and mostly absent for citations by appellate courts - the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. The researchers suspect that this is showing that Wikipedia is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction.

Full story here. The researchers suggest taking steps to improve the reliability of information posted to wikipedia, which makes sense. How about improving the accessibility of the law as well? LexisNexis and Westlaw are expensive and, even if you have access to it, just not as easy to use as google, wikipedia etc.