Who Are We?
The people at EasyLawLookup.com are a group of dedicated talented individuals with advanced skills in the field of legal publishing. We specialize in providing searchable volumes of law that can be used to drive targeted traffic to attorneys as potential clients.
History
Our company was founded in the mid-1990s by an independent software developer working for legal publishers creating programs to manage complex corporate policy and procedure manuals. We developed a process called computer assisted typesetting service (or CATS for short) that was used to help legal publishers prepare reference material for printed publication. Our specialty was rapidly developing sophisticated and comprehensive printed indexes that included thousands of words and topics without going through the normal time intensive and costly processes used at the time. We were able to turnaround very large publications that featured extensive indexes in 1/10 the time for less money.
In the 1990's, with the dawning of the Internet, we found ourselves wondering if we could apply the principles we had learned in the development of CATS to online content.
At the time we were working with a large Texas state association developing materials for judicial education, including both online and print versions of county judges handbooks and procedural guides. This decade long relationship spawned the development of a technology called Hypertext Index Tracking Systems (HITS), which enables us to quickly collect large amounts of reference material from multiple varying sources and compile it into cohesive volumes suitable for professional publication both in print and online, with some of the most comprehensive indexes ever created.
While working on these publications we decided to apply the same techniques to the laws and codes referenced in the handbooks. And so in the late-1990s the first incarnation of HITS for the Texas laws and codes became reality. Even the earliest versions contained the most exhaustive internal hyperlink system ever attempted, publishing literally hundreds of thousands of webpages, and millions and millions of internal hyperlinks.
From the beginning, this information was intended solely for the association's members, which numbered at most a few thousand. In the interests of "public service", access to the general public was never restricted. Likewise, because the service was intended solely for members, there was never any promotion.
Today, even with a total lack of promotion our version of the Texas laws and codes sees as many as 85,000 page views in a day, and has amassed more than 24 million hits.
Philosophy
Before the Internet, if a private citizen wanted to know what the law was, he or she had to either hire an attorney or find a public law library (not available in many areas) and then wade through hundreds of printed volumes with little or no indexing to try and find what they were looking for. Much of the available information may well have been outdated as well.
In the 1990's, even with the dawning of the Internet, the taxpayer still had little or no practical access to the laws and codes or opinions of the court at all either in print or online. We found ourselves wondering if we could apply the principles we had learned in the development of computer assisted typesetting services to online content.
While working in this capacity, we noticed that the government was spending many millions of tax-dollars a year accessing what was essentially their own information. Exhaustive research uncovered a surplus of clear precedent, even as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that government clearly had a duty to the taxpayer to make this information freely available to everyone and that all laws and opinions of the court are, in fact, public property which must be readily accessible by anyone without restriction.
But before the widespread dissemination of personal computers and the advent of the Internet, compiling and publishing the laws of the government and the opinions of the courts was a monumental task that required a massive workforce, spread throughout the country, collecting documents and notes, and then using typewriters to record and document the actions of the Congress and the courts. As such, the government itself came to rely on outside sources to provide these services. Over time, the result was the creation of a handful of very large business interests heavily entrenched, busy selling this information to attorneys, and the government, for literally billions of dollars a year.
But the advent of personal computers and the Internet age has changed this equation .
Because of the original developers interest in the public's right to know the law, we never sold or licensed this technology to any subscription or pay services. Instead, our company offers a different approach which preserves the public's right to free access while remaining economically viable. | 