Well worth a read on Richard Letter’s The Life of Books: The 21st Century Law Library Conundrum: Free Law and Paying to Understand It:
The digital revolution, that once upon a time promised free access to legal materials, will deliver on that promise; it’s just that the free materials it will deliver, even if it comprises the sum total of all primary law in the the country at every level and jurisdiction, will amount to only a minor portion of the materials that lawyers need in order to practice law, and the public needs in order to understand it.
As surely as eggs are eggs, if law needs a lot of understanding, and a fortiori if it needs expensive materiald, it is bad law. If citizens are required to abide by a law it must be accessible. The law presumes that the public cannot be ignorant of it – in fact many lawyers and others need to look it up. How can that be just?