Not to seem to fall on the side of the publishers in this, but they are no
longer the only resource for case law. Thanks to the efforts of the staffs of
our state and federal courts, more and more decisions are becoming available
from the source in electronic formats without needing a publisher as
intermediary. No one thinks that the Internet is going to solve all our access
problems, but let's keep in mind that there are some counter balancing forces
at work here - or was all that talk about nuetral case citation just so much
hot air? Other areas of legal publishing are definitely going to be bigger
problems than case law.
Cindy Curling
Reference Librarian
Wiley, Rein & Fielding
Washington, DC
(My opinions are my own, etc.)
Steven Anderson sanderso @ mail.bcpl.lib.md.us
> Judges will be affected by this, since they'll have to subscribe to Lexis or
>(surprise!) Westlaw to get current information, which they will certainly
>be hesitant to do since the average age of judges is probably greater
>than the age of the original UNIVAC. Small firm attorneys and solo
>practitioners will begin refusing cases because: a) they will not feel
>comfortable branching out in to fringe areas because the information will
>not be available, and b) if they charge the average client for the
>research, the average client will become a pro se litigant. The general
>public will be most affected. The courthouse library doors will
>effectively be shut to them. Some might say that public law school
>libraries should therefore pick up the slack. How fair is this when law
>students are already in default of their loans and new students can
>ill-afford to pay tuition hikes (remember all of the hullabaloo about
>shrinking law school application??) Of course this is a worst case
>scenario, but it would have been nice to have been consulted by AALL first.
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