From Law Technology News
By Robert Ambrogi
The major commercial legal research services offer e-mail alerts that signal you when a new case matches your search — for a fee. A new website offers the same type of service — but entirely for free. It is one of several recently launched websites.
Court monitoring is useful for any number of reasons, from keeping on top of a field of law, to tracking the latest developments in specific litigation. CourtListener (courtlistener.com) offers an alternative to commercial services with its free alert tool covering the federal circuit courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. To create an alert, simply enter a search query. The results page lists the matching cases and includes the option, "Save this as an alert." Assign a name and specify how often you want deliveries (daily, weekly, or monthly) and you are done. Once you set up an alert, you can also receive it as an RSS feed....
The site is the creation of Michael Lissner as part of a master's thesis at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information. His goal was to create a free and competitive real-time alert tool for the U.S. judicial system....