But times are changing. For example, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into marketing campaigns by online giants like America Online and CompuServe, the majority of legal pros use small local access companies to get onto the Net. It also suggests that there is more interest in the free content on the Internet than the proprietary content offered by private services like America Online and Counsel Connect. Perhaps the most anticipated study results relate to how often the Internet is used for legal research purposes. Recent technologies, including CD-ROM and the Internet, however, have begun to erode the market penetration of these two large online services.
Federal information is the most commonly accessed Internet legal material.
Forty-eight percent of respondents are using the Net to retrieve federal court opinions, statutes and regulations. Many of the legal pros who use the Net for research are not looking for traditional legal materials like court opinions and state codes, but rather, are in search of other information. They use the Net to find missing people, to investigate trademark infringement or to conduct medical research. Forty-four percent of those using the Net for research are conducting company research. The survey was conducted during the Fall of 1996 by mailing some 21,000 questionnaires to randomly generated lists of legal professionals provided by the American Bar Association, the Association of Legal Administrators, the American Association of Law Libraries and the National Federation of Paralegal Associations.