THE OHIO STATE Bar Association, it seems, has done it again.

It was the leaders of the Ohio Bar that launched the revolution in computerized legal research in the 1960s. Forty years later, it appears they have done it again.

In 1965, James F. Preston, Jr., president of the OSBA, and research counsel William G. Harrington initiated a search for a legal research system for Ohio lawyers. Doing so, they defined for the first time electronic legal research as a non-indexed, full-text, online, interactive, computer-assisted service. And they found a tiny, entrepreneurial company that shared their vision and had the chutzpah to believe they could turn the vision into reality. Data Corporation of Dayton, Ohio, using its proprietary Central! software, went to work.

In 1968, the Mead Corp. acquired Data Corp. Less than a year later, Mead Data Central, Inc., a subsidiary of the Mead Corp., was created, and funding for the unnamed computer-assisted legal research project was assured. On April 2, 1973, Lexis was introduced and the revolution in legal research began.

Today, of course, LexisNexis is a behemoth in the legal research business, owned by one of the world's largest information industry conglomerates, the Dutch-English Reed Elsevier, p1c.

From time to time during its dramatic growth, LexisNexis has been confronted by resistance from information owners in some quarters to the addition of their materials to the LexisNexis database, and by smaller potential competitors attempting to introduce less costly alternatives. LexisNexis responded by offering special pricing on portions of its database intended to make basic online legal research services affordable to even the smallest law offices.

Yet, unhappiness remained in the marketplace. Lawyers remained willing to listen to and to try alternatives to LexisNexis. It is ironic that the potentially most successful alternative to LexisNexis should arise from the Ohio State Bar Association, the same organization that spawned what has become the LexisNexis of today.

The Ohio State Bar Association and Lawriter Corp. have co-ventured to produce the latest - and hottest - alternative for computer-assisted online legal research. The Lawriter name was trademarked in 1983 and today the company stands as the oldest American-owned company name in electronic legal publishing. Of course, both the West Group and Lexis are older, but neither are presently American-owned.

In 1994, Lawriter and the OSBA joined forces to create a CD-ROM-formatted legal research resource for the members of the Ohio State Bar Association. Five years later, they embraced online technologies and offered to Ohio lawyers the Casemaker Web library. That first Ohio library can be characterized only as revolutionary - it was the first historic-to-current federal and state case law and statutory law library available to members of a bar association for free!

Ohio lawyers, by virtue of their bar association membership, enjoyed online research capability in all of the basic law sources in Ohio, including: Ohio Supreme Court decisions, appellate decisions, unreported appellate decisions, official Rules of Evidence, Rules of Civil Procedure, Rules of Criminal Procedure, Ohio traffic rules, the Judicial Code of Conduct, verdict reporter, Attorney General opinions, Ohio Revised Codes, Session Laws, Ohio Forms of Practice, and the University of Cincinnati Law Review - all for free; all in an easy-to-use online research format.

Perhaps it was serendipity. Perhaps it was a grand design. Whatever its origin, the business model of Lawriter, working in concert with bar associations, has been the key to its expansion. Bar associations, whether mandatory or voluntary, are in the business of delivering professional development services to their members. Casemaker, as a great enhancement to an association's member services package, was a no-brainer. Word began to spread.

The 2000-2001 president of the Nebraska State Bar Association, Robert Mullin, learned about Casemaker when he attended a Midwest Region Bar Conference. After seeing a demonstration of the Ohio Casemaker product at the meeting, he invited the Lawriter group to make a presentation to the NSBA's governing board. Impressed, the board authorized Mullin to poll the membership.

In a bar-wide survey, Nebraska lawyers were asked, "Would you be in favor of the NSBA providing the Nebraska Casemaker library online to every active member if it were funded by a $20 annual charge to each active member?" Eighty-five percent of those responding to the survey replied in the affirmative. In February of 2001, Nebraska became the second state to embrace the Casemaker service, and its library of 27 primary and secondary legal research publications went online for Nebraska lawyers.

In August of 2000, the then president of the North Carolina Bar Association also learned about Casemaker, at a presentation co-sponsored by the National Association of Bar Executives and the National Conference of Bar Presidents. Not long thereafter, in June of 2001, North Carolina began offering its primary legal resources database via Casemaker to its members and became the third Casemaker jurisdiction.

The first New England region bar association to embrace Casemaker was the voluntary Connecticut Bar Association. Before leaping, however, Association leaders surveyed members asking if they would be willing to increase dues to add the Casemaker library as a member benefit. The bar member response was astonishing. Ninety-five percent voted to raise dues and join the Casemaker consortium.

Since Connecticut's decision, other New England bar associations have followed its lead. The Massachusetts Bar Association embraced Casemaker on Jan. 25, 2002. And, now, we are pleased to note that as of Feb. 7, 2002, the New Hampshire Bar Association, too, has joined the Casemaker Consortium.

Perhaps responding to the desire for marketing alliteration, Lawriter coined the term "Casemaker Consortium" to describe the group of state bar associations that contracted for Casemaker services. But, in New England at least, the term "consortium" is taking on real, substantive meaning.

As a new jurisdiction contracts with Lawriter, that jurisdiction's database of primary legal reference materials becomes available to all other members of the consortium. A New Hampshire lawyer researching a point of NH law will now have full and unfettered access to the comprehensive case law, statutory and administrative law libraries of Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is conceivable that Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont might also become Casemaker Consortium members, thereby rounding out an all-New England law library - all available to New Hampshire Bar Association members.

Will the Casemaker phenomenon continue to roll across the legal landscape? Odds are good that it will.

Bar associations are driven to find ways to fulfill their missions of service to the members and to the legal profession. Casemaker is affording them a means to facilitate their work. In Ohio, the OSBA reports that one out of every three non-members has become an OSBA member since the introduction of the Casemaker service. A survey of OSBA members further revealed that the Casemaker libraries are used more than twice as often as any of the other online legal research products. Connecticut Bar President Barbara Collins summed up the impact Casemaker is having when she concluded, " We've found a way to build a better mousetrap when it comes to providing online legal research tools to our members."

In addition to Ohio, Nebraska, North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the Casemaker Consortium libraries include Michigan case law and a comprehensive federal library. Ohio Bar spokesman Ken Brown reports that, at present, an additional six state bar associations have the Casemaker service under active consideration.

Does the Casemaker product cut the foundation out from under the LexisNexis and Westlaw online legal research databases? Are LexisNexis and Westlaw threatened by these developments?

The answers depend, in part, on whom one asks. Westlaw representatives have been quiet. But LexisNexis advertising and marketing personnel have, in some jurisdictions, cut their financial support of bar activities and cut back on advertising contracts in bar periodicals. In jurisdictions contemplating taking the Casemaker plunge, LexisNexis has threatened similar consequences. These actions would cause one to conclude that LexisNexis is worried about the commoditization of the law that Casemaker represents.

On the other hand, there are no public reports of LexisNexis or Westlaw law firm and corporate law department customers terminating their contracts with the large national online service providers. It is likely, at least in larger law firms, that LexisNexis and Westlaw are secure. Their research databases extend well beyond the basic materials typically found in a state's Casemaker database. Perhaps law firm managers will urge associates to begin their research with Casemaker before resorting to a commercial online service.

In any event, a gauntlet has been thrown down. We shall see how LexisNexis and Westlaw respond.

It doesn't have to be either or. Jeannine McCoy, executive director of the New Hampshire Bar Association, has been a leader among those bar executives who have urged a spirit of compromise and cooperation among the principals. She has suggested that LexisNexis and Westlaw might, rather than fight the Casemaker phenomenon, acknowledge that Casemaker will become the point of entry for many lawyers conducting online research and then seize the opportunity that follows.

McCoy wants LexisNexis and Westlaw to be ready to pick up the ball for online researchers when they need to move on to more advanced research resources beyond the basic Casemaker database. She has suggested that the national services work with Casemaker to provide a "hot link" from the Casemaker portal directly to their proprietary services. When the attorney/researcher needs more than Casemaker offers, a click of an on-screen button could take the researcher into LexisNexis' or Westlaw's waiting arms.

How LexisNexis and Westlaw respond to the new reality of commoditized basic law and legal research information will either further isolate them from the market they have not heretofore successfully reached or will allow them new access to still more lawyers and law firms. The choice is theirs. But however they ultimately decide, with Casemaker, the future belongs to the bar associations and their newly empowered members.

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