title: LawArXiv type: project tags: goals, requirements, deadlines alias: ideation, planned, in-process, completed, reviewed

LawArXiv Official Announcement

LawArXiv, an open-access preprint repository for legal scholarship launched in 2017, ceased accepting new submissions in early 2021. The official statement on its hosting platform (the Open Science Framework, or OSF) simply notes: "LawArXiv is no longer able to accept new submissions. Thank you to everyone who contributed their work to this repository." Existing content—over 1,300 papers—remains publicly accessible there indefinitely, but no new uploads are possible. The public-facing explanation from the LawArXiv Steering Committee (a group of academic institutions and scholars) was that they had "decided to end the partnership with [the Center for Open Science, or] COS," the nonprofit that hosted the platform.

The Deeper, Behind-the-Scenes Reasons

The closure wasn't due to a sudden crisis like funding collapse or low usage—LawArXiv had grown steadily to 700+ submissions in its first year and continued building momentum. Instead, it stemmed from a slow-burning breakdown in the operational and financial relationship with COS, which hosts multiple discipline-specific preprint servers (e.g., PsyArXiv for psychology, SocArXiv for social sciences). COS's business model relies on shared infrastructure across partners, but this created friction when LawArXiv's needs diverged.

Key issues, as detailed in internal committee discussions shared at the 2021 Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) meeting:

• Stalled Platform Customization: The Steering Committee repeatedly requested essential features to make LawArXiv more appealing to legal scholars and institutions, such as "school-level branding" (allowing law schools to customize the interface with their logos and branding for easier adoption) and "batch uploading" (enabling bulk submissions, crucial for archiving conference proceedings or institutional collections). COS declined to develop these because other partner repositories didn't demand them, making the work unprioritized in COS's shared development queue. Without these, LawArXiv couldn't scale effectively or compete with more flexible alternatives like SSRN (Social Science Research Network), which dominates legal preprints.

• Cost-Shifting to LawArXiv: COS offered a workaround—LawArXiv could fund the custom development itself. But this was deemed "cost-prohibitive" by the committee, as it would saddle a small, volunteer-driven project with five- or six-figure expenses (exact quotes weren't public, but comparable OSF customizations run $50,000+). This felt like an unfair burden, especially since COS markets itself as a low-cost, collaborative host for open science.

• Sudden New Fees: In January 2021, COS introduced an "annual hosting fee" for all partners, adding an unexpected recurring cost (again, not publicly quantified but described as a "strain"). This came amid the customization standoff, prompting the committee to reassess the partnership's value. Why pay more for a platform that couldn't evolve to meet legal scholarship's unique needs (e.g., handling case citations, jurisdiction-specific metadata)?

These weren't isolated gripes; they were "deal breakers" in the committee's view after months of "extensive research and discussion of various options" (e.g., migrating to another host like Zenodo or building in-house, which proved unfeasible due to expertise and costs). The member institutions (including libraries from Cornell, Harvard, and others) formally dissolved the agreement on June 30, 2021. No single "smoking gun" like a lawsuit or scandal emerged— it was death by a thousand cuts of mismatched priorities and economics in the open-access ecosystem.

Broader Context and Implications

This highlights a common vulnerability in nonprofit open-access infrastructure: reliance on centralized hosts like COS, which prioritize volume over niche customization. LawArXiv's closure didn't kill legal preprints—scholars pivoted to SSRN or institutional repos—but it underscored how open science can falter when small communities get squeezed by bigger players' roadmaps. No major updates have surfaced since 2021; the site's notice persists as a quiet tombstone, with papers frozen in time. If you're a legal researcher affected, alternatives like Bepress Legal Repository or even general platforms like Zenodo fill the gap, though none match LawArXiv's original vision.

So WHY Did LawArXiv Die? Was It Strangled in the Crib by the Legal Profession?

No, LawArXiv wasn't "strangled in its crib" by the legal profession or any shadowy gatekeeping cabal ...

The closure of the LawArXiv project in 2021 boiled down to pragmatic, behind-the-scenes mismatches in a nonprofit open-access ecosystem: stalled customizations, unexpected hosting fees from the Center for Open Science (COS), and the high costs of alternatives that made migration unviable for a volunteer-led steering committee of academic libraries. It wasn't like some sort of hostile takeover by Big Law or publishers like Thomson Reuters—those players were busy dominating paid databases like Westlaw anyway.

LawArXiv grew to over 1,300 preprints before fizzling ... which is kind of teensy if one considers the DAILY amount of papers published on arXiv ... basically *** proving demand*** but also highlighting how niche open initiatives tend to wither without aligned infrastructure.

Fast-forward to 2025, almost 2026: STILL no resurrection at this point.

The OSF page still reads like a digital epitaph—"no longer able to accept new submissions"—with existing papers archived but inert. A silver lining? Yale Law School launched the Law Archive in 2024 as a spiritual successor, hosted on an enhanced OSF platform with better tools for legal scholars. It's open for submissions and focuses on preserving open legal scholarship, but it hasn't yet matched LawArXiv's momentum. The legal research pre-print archive "baby" didn't die from malice; it outgrew its bassinet in a world where open access is more slogan than scalable reality.

Should Access to Legal Information Be a Basic Human Right?

Absolutely, yes—it should evolve into one, and in many ways, it already teeters on that edge as a cornerstone of democratic justice. The rule of law demands transparency: If laws govern us, we can't be subjects to them without knowing their substance, precedents, philosophies, or critiques. Denying access isn't just inefficient; it's inequitable, entrenching power imbalances where corporations and elite lawyers hoard insights via paywalls (e.g., $500/hour Westlaw queries), while everyday people, activists, or under-resourced advocates scrape by on fragments.

Philosophically, this aligns with thinkers like John Locke (knowledge as a natural right) or modern human rights frameworks—the UN's Universal Declaration nods to "effective remedy" via accessible justice (Article 8), and the EU's Digital Services Act pushes for open legal data. In the U.S., the First Amendment implies a right to petition informed by public records. But we're not there yet: Proprietary databases monopolize case law, and AI tools (while democratizing) often gatekeep via subscriptions. Making it a "basic human right" could mean mandating free, universal access to core legal corpora (statutes, opinions, theories) via public APIs or repositories—think a "Legal Commons" funded like public libraries. Until then, tools like those below bridge the gap, but true equity requires policy muscle, not just tech Band-Aids.

100 Alternatives and Approaches to Gathering Legal Research

Here's a curated list of 100 practical alternatives and approaches, drawn from free/open tools, paid platforms, AI innovations, repositories, and broader strategies. I've grouped them into categories for clarity (with subcounts to hit exactly 100), prioritizing accessibility for "the masses" over elite corporate suites. Many are free or low-cost; I've noted key features like AI integration or open access where standout. This isn't exhaustive—legal research evolves fast—but it's a robust starting point. For AI platforms, yes, they're exploding for non-elites: Tools like Harvey AI or Paxton now offer tiered plans under $100/month, democratizing what was once lawyer-only turf.

These span from quick AI queries (e.g., SuperGrok for philosophical dives) to deep dives in repos like Bepress. Start with free tiers to build skills—many AI tools now offer "lite" modes for individuals.

We will need build deep dives on these items and others ... it starts with just asking an AI and then iteratively refining the queries and building something that is better at harvest data and de-obfusicating the terminol

ToDo List

• Legal Latin De-Obfuscator: Legal terminology remains a fortress of obfuscation, often relying on Latin maxims that carry specific Common Law weight. This project involves creating a local browser extension or reader that parses terms like stare decisis or mens rea. It utilizes a local Large Language Model (LLM) such as Llama-3 (via Ollama) with a system prompt designed to act as a legal historian, explaining the term's evolution from Roman Civil Law to modern application rather than providing a simple translation.