Sorry for this rant but I had a recent experience with Courtlink that I
thought warranted a posting. The need was to be able to get a list of
active cases being heard by a certain federal judge. As PACER won't let
you do this, we went to Courtlink. I was walked through the process by
the rep over the phone who indicated that this was possible to do with
an option that let me choose Active/Closed cases (at least with federal
cases).
So we got our extremely long result list of supposed "active" cases from
Courtlink. As this list looked way too big to be accurate, we started
checking the cases one by one through PACER. Through the first 30 on the
list of supposed active cases, 28 were in fact closed. The method of how
Courtlink pulls dockets when you search like this is that you're only
seeing the status of the case the last time it was updated through
Courtlink (a snapshot at the time if you will). By Courtlink having this
option to search by active or closed, I think it's very misleading to
the user as they think they're getting updated information when it is
not and can't be by the way they collect it.
Bottom line, had I relied on the info and given it to the atty to take
to court I would (at very least ) have gotten an earful from the
partner. I've spoken with my Courtlink rep about as he's been helpful
and we'll see where we get but Courtlink shouldn't claim that their
database can perform this function (are there others?) when they know
that the results will obviously be way off given they way they collect
their data. They should take active/closed option off of their site.
Might seem kind of nitpicky but when we rely on these databases for
accuracy, you get a little miffed when a situation like this comes
along.
Greg Weyant
Library Director
Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP
One Penn Center
1617 JFK Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Ph (215) 665-3181
Fax (215) 665-3165
e-mail: gregory.weyant@obermayer.com
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