You hear that?

That’s the sound of thousands of attorneys salivating over potentially free access to case law that heretofore was most often only available via Lexis Nexis or Westlaw (in exchange for your first born, several pints of your blood, and your wife’s sister, of course).

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, it seems Google is poised to jump feet first into the case law business with it’s “Scholar” service, which now indexes state and federal court opinions as well as patents.

Read the Law Blog’s full report here, and check out the Google Scholar beta here.