legal research

I learned of a new search engine to get at information from the federal government. It is in beta but may be some use and interest to you. Here is how the site describes itself:

I posted briefly on the Seventh Circuit's wiki and here is another. At first, I thought The Personality Rights Database would only provide some mildly interesting intellectual stimulation. I think it might also have some practical value, for the wiki includes privacy rights within its definition of personality rights. More importantly, the wiki includes United States law.

Not that the wiki has copious amounts of information at this point in time. It does get me thinking of applications closer to home. One thing crossed my mind was how much of a future West's Indiana Digest (and all those other digests) will have when enough enterprising attorneys join together to create wikis on an area of law. For example, what would happen if the Family Law Section of the Indiana State Bar created a wiki exploring the fullness of Indiana's family law? I do not recall writers like Dennis Kennedy using the analogy to the West Digests but I think it is one that other attorneys will understand immediately.

A caution: these blogs interest me because they the qualities of good information being well-written and not because they have anything directly to say about Indiana law. I make this caution for the non-lawyers reading this blog who might not understand why a blog written by an attorney practicing in the State of Washington (such as Jill Pugh who runs two of the blogs below) does not mean much in Indiana. State law still controls a large swath of employment law and each state has its own local variations. Even with federal law, differences exist between the different federal circuit courts of appeal.

For example, Ms. Pugh's Employee Handbooks Blog does have several posts that are useful outside of Washington. The post FLSA Online Overtime Calculator has utility because the federal regulations apply nationally and the overtime calculator does not necessarily require a judge's interpretation. While the post When You Have to Fire An Employee - 10 Things to Keep In Mind has really good ideas, I must point out that Indiana law also says what cannot be withheld from an employee's paycheck. It is a lawyer thing, see? The point made by in the post still applies. Then there is,Handling Employee Personal Data, which deals with applying a specific Washington statute. However, this does give me an idea for a post of my own.

As I read her Employment Law Blog, I see as providing more general information for both employers and employees. I must admit to some muddling of the employment law part of my practice since leaving my in-house counsel job. Employment law for me has been employer oriented and that has had to change a bit. I think small businesses need access to counsel for employment issues but I am finding few in the area interested in my overtures to provide these services. If I do not scale down employment law as part of my practice, I find Ms. Pugh's blog has some inspirational ideas for this blog.

Taking a far broader scope than this blog is West Virginia Business Litigation. My aim here was to stay closer to home with more specifically Indiana focus. I am finding myself with plenty to write about, so much that posts planned have been postponed, and I find myself envious of this blog.

No, I have not time to really check out The Public Library of Law but I want to note it for the lawyers reading me and for the general public.

"Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web."

For the lawyers, we need to recognize this as a trend that has been around for a while on the Internet and may finally be taking a solid shape. The Bluebook has a citation form for online materials. Whether or not this affects West or not is a good question. It may make its headnotes even more valuable. It also raises questions for me about Shepardizing.

For the non-lawyers, finding the law is only half the trick and maybe even only a quarter. The remainder consists of verifying a case as good law and then using it in a Brief or an argument.

For both: I suggest (and I am far from being original here) using online resources like this for raw research and then using West or Lexis for further research. That is find the possible cases for free and then go to West to make sure that the case is good law.

I do not know how long I have been aware that Indiana's appellate courts have been posting their opinions online. I seem to recall some Res Gestae article on the subject at the end of the 1990's but I am also sure that DeBruler was still on the Indiana Supreme Court. Let us just say it has been a long time. During that time there have been some changes.

The Indiana appellate courts have their own section on the Indiana government website and the Indiana Appellate Opinions page exists within those court pages. The page contains links to Current Opinions (with links to the Indiana Supreme Court, to the Indiana Court of Appeals, and to the Indiana Tax Court) and to Archived Opinions (again, from all three appellate courts).

How to use this page?

Well, you can use the link to current pages to check cases on a daily basis. (Or just check out The Indiana Law Blog daily for its listing of cases. Which is what I have been doing for the past few years.). This page offers the opportunity get cases faster than through West or Lexis.

Using the archive pages generally requires patience. I wrote generally because of how I search them: 1) I have a name of a case; 2) I go to the page; and 3) I type the name of the case into my Firefox browser and it finds all uses of the word I typed. That will not work well for Smith v. Smith.

So sounds like the page only works well for getting current opinions on the day of being issued, right? Not so fast. At the top of the page are two boxes which are preceded by the word "search" in small type. Click on the first box and there is a drop down menu. On the menu is Appellate Opinions. Click on this choice and put your search terms into the second box and then click the "Go" button. A much quicker way to find cases. You may also be able to use this search function to do an ersatz Shepardizing of cases. I have no idea why this search function remains so unobvious (there is not even any mention of this function on the main page).

In my posts, I have taken to linking to the cases on the judiciary site. Why? Because they are free unlike Westlaw and Lexis, and this makes the whole opinion available for reading.

Drawbacks and Dealing With Them

Which brings me to the drawbacks to using these opinions. They lack the headnotes of Westlaw or Lexis. They lack the official reporter pagination provided by West. The archives do not contain older cases. These opinions do not differ from the opinions we would receive if we were the attorneys on the case. So why use them besides their lack of cost?

First, I do not use the archived opinions alone. If I have the name for a case I want to read, I can use this site to read the case without paying the big research companies their fees. If I want to use the case, I can then go to law library and get the official cite and the page numbers for what I want to use of a particular case. I can do all this without leaving the office or work late night at home. Then, too, I can use cut and paste to extract text from the opinion to my brief or memo.

Secondly, recognize the site has limitations and work with them.

The current case archive has some potent uses regardless of the general drawbacks. A war story about the current case archive may illustrate its use. A friend of mine told me about a difficult case she was involved in, a few days later I am reviewing cases just handed down by the Court of Appeals, and there was a very, very good case for my friend. I e-mailed her the link to the case. She printed the case and got in front of the judge before the judge was even aware of the case. She won that case. I think that clearly suggests the use for the current case archive. Just think of using them as one would use any slip opinion.