What is the situation regarding LLM access to the major repositories of case law and legislation at places like Westlaw/LexisNexis? Those are really basic information sources for lawyers around the world and access is tightly controlled (and expsensive!), but its enormously common for lawyers and law students to need subscriptions to those services.
I'm just curious because I can't imagine either Westlaw or LexisNexis giving being controller of access to this information up without a fight, and a legal LLM that isn't trained on these sources would be... questionable - they are key sources.
The legislation text can probably be obtained through other channels for free, but the case law records those companies have are just as critical especially in Common Law legal systems - just having the text of the legislation isn't enough for most Common Law systems to gain an understanding of the law.
I'm just curious because I can't imagine either Westlaw or LexisNexis giving being controller of access to this information up without a fight, and a legal LLM that isn't trained on these sources would be... questionable - they are key sources.
The legislation text can probably be obtained through other channels for free, but the case law records those companies have are just as critical especially in Common Law legal systems - just having the text of the legislation isn't enough for most Common Law systems to gain an understanding of the law.
EDIT: Looks like westlaw are trying their own solution, which is what I would have guessed: https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/westlaw-edge