Mead Data Central recognized Case Western Reserve University Law School as the first law school to use the LEXIS system on a regular basis. See Spencer Neth, Computerized Legal Research in the Law Schools: the Case Western Reserve Experience, 28 Journal of Legal Education 553 (1977) -- "In November of 1971, Case Western Reserve Law School moved into a handsome new building complex. Awaiting our arrival and located in a room set aside for that purpose was a computer terminal connected to the OBAR computerized legal research system. CWRU thus became the first law school in the United States to have a computerized legal research system permanently installed." In a footnote Spencer adds that "Professor Arthur R. Miller at the University of Michigan and later at Harvard University and a few other law school professors previously had OBAR terminals on a temporary, experimental basis."
The library has a collection of various internal and external records (minutes, correspondence, customer files, financial and technical reports, etc.) documenting the history of the Ohio State Bar Association's non-profit subsidiary, the Ohio Bar Automated Research (OBAR) Corporation, its collaboration with Data Corporation and later Mead Data Central for an automated legal research system that subsequently evolved into Lexis-Nexis.
Librarian Deborah Dennison performed extensive research on this collection, and she created a detailed finding aid. It is available at the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository. She also wrote this brief history of the law library's relationship with the company that later became LexisNexis.
