Computer-assisted legal research (CALR) or computer-based legal research is a mode of legal research

Legal research

Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and...

 that uses databases of court opinions, statutes, court documents, and secondary material. Electronic databases make large bodies of case law easily available. Databases also have additional benefits, such as Boolean searches, evaluating case authority, organizing cases by topic, and providing links to cited material. Databases are available through paid subscription or for free.

Subscription-based services include Westlaw

Westlaw

Westlaw is one of the primary online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals in the United States and is a part of West. In addition, it provides proprietary database services...

 and LexisNexis

LexisNexis

LexisNexis Group is a company providing computer-assisted legal research services. In 2006 it had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information...

. Free services include OpenJurist, the Legal Information Institute

Legal Information Institute

The Legal Information Institute is a non-profit, public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online at . The organization is a pioneer in the delivery of legal information online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and...

 at Cornell Law School

Cornell Law School

Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...

, CanLII

CanLII

The Canadian Legal Information Institute is a non-profit organization created and funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, on behalf of its 14 member law societies...

, Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest...

, AltLaw

AltLaw

AltLaw was an American academic project from 2007 to 2010 aimed at making federal appellate and Supreme Court case law publicly available, "to make the common law a bit more common." The project was a collaboration between Columbia Law School's Program on Law and Technology and University of...

, and Law Delta.