mumbai generations of lawyers have posed for portraits in front of bookshelves lined with leatherbound legal tomes the books being testimony to the fact that the greying counsel had put in decades of legal research to turn into someone his clients could trust this picture though does not hold true anymorethanks to the advent of online legal databases the legal brains in the country are not only getting younger but they have rarely felt the need to open a book as a junior lawyer i had to sift through hundreds of volumes of reported cases to find orders that supported my case it was a long and tedious process that took months but now a youngster gets it all on his computer within seconds says nilima chandiramani principal of k c law collegethe indian legal system is based on the common law principle which is notable for its inclusion of extensive nonstatutory law in form of precedents set by court orders it reflects a consensus of centuries of judgments by working jurists a lawyer while arguing his side in court is expected to quote extensively from past judgments which support his own case chandiramani says it is this knowledge of case laws that juniors had to gain through years of research work under the watchful gaze of senior counsels something that they now get by simply subscribing to an online case finderyou just have to enter the right search term to get the all the relevant case laws immediately explains sanyogita saini a customer care manager with manupatracom an online legal database locating the right cases is infinitely simpler now says raghunandan malik director of supreme court cases online another popular search engine thus a lawyer seeking bail for a murder accused can get access to all the cases decided on the issue by the apex court and various high courts since 1950 at the click of a mouse he no longer needs to spend months in a library since internet penetration is low in our country we give all the cases on a cdrom says malikand its not just texts of court orders that the lawyers can get refined search options can be used to find judgments according to catch words high court orders which were later reversed by the supreme court find related orders given by government tribunals and commissions and even circulars issued by various government departments upon an issuethe change is acknowledged not just by practising advocates but by professors of law as well as well i have seen a clearly perceptible improvement in academic papers and thesis material submitted by students in the last few years they cite latest case laws with a lot more ease now because everything is so uptodate online said s s singh the director of the national law institute university nliu at bhopalthe real benefits of technology are being reaped none more than by young advocates like satyan israni who at 31 years of age runs his own law firm