Free! Legal Words Clouds, Limericks-- and Access to 6.4 Million Court Cases

Harvard Law School has done something amazing and democratizing: They have created a free way for anyone to access 360 years of United States court cases dating from 1658 to 2018. Whether you are a student, voter, HR professional, lawyer, or none-of-the-above, you can actually have fun with it right now! (Directions in a minute.)

With 40 million pages scanned into a database, the folks at Harvard have had some fun: They’ve created work clouds for many years (I’m not sure it’s 360 years). These clouds give us a picture about American life—particularly, our disputes from year to year.

For example, in 2012 (above), arbitration was a very common word—and much smaller but appearing in that part of the 2012 cloud, we see “wages” and further down, “employees.”

In 1934, we see a very different picture—“truck,” and “collision” and so on.

In 1888, “marriage,” "patent," and “homestead” were common.

Oh, they have limericks, too, in the “Gallery” section (where word clouds also appear).

These are mostly lame or legalistic (and I don’t get it, often), but anyway:

He never had in the past.
discussion above.
the value thereof.
His knee was then in a cast.

(Huh?)

You can sign up at https://case.law/about/. It’s easy and takes a minute (again, free—you just need an email account).

In sum: I’ll figure this out and pass along tips. You can cursor to a state, pick a year, type in a word search, and …. Well, as I said, I need to figure it out and I’ll get back to you. I’ll leave you my own limerick:

Legal info online.

Is perfectly free and sublime.

Harvard Law isn’t snooty,

They’re sharing the booty.

Without charging us even a dime!