Following Carmen Brigandi's 6/11 posted caution about
unclear billing periods for West's FEDERAL LOCAL COURT
RULES, I was inspired to examine our latest two supplements
for this set, dated 4/98 and 6/98. I revisited my prior
review of this set's updating habits posted 4/6/98, which
quantified among several measured tactics a rhythm of
replacing latest/immediately preceding bimonthly supplements
with new supplements at a rate of 16% over the past 12
months. Inspecting these two newest supplements relicenses
the adage about the difficulty of teaching old dogs new
tricks. These latest two supplements combined brought us
some 37 revised rules pamphlets: 9 of these 37 new rules
pamphlets (24+%) had just been replaced by their most
preceding supplements. In my book 24% is a significant and
bothersome increase over the prior 12 months' 16%
replication rate. Further, an incredible 33 of these 37
newest rules pamphlets (89+%) replaced pamphlets that were
no more than 10 months old -- implying that nearly 90% of
our federal courts are revising their rules within 10 months
of their prior editions -- a preposterous revision rate that
no one experienced with court rules is gullible enough to
swallow. Additionally, per telephone confirmations with the
clerks' offices of each of the 13 Circuit Courts, only 3
Circuits have changed their rules since January 1, 1998,
they being the 1st, 4th and 7th Circuits. Yet West's
subscription pamphlet proliferations have delivered our
FEDERAL LOCAL COURT RULES sets some 14 Circuit rules
pamphlet rewrites during this same time period -- more than
4 times the needed revision activity to adequately report
these Circuits' rule changes.
As our need for responsible federal court rules reporting
continues, our attentions might be drawn to the two USCS
Appeals Court Rules pamphlets that accompany USCS'
annual/spring pocket parts. Formerly part of the same
editorial virus as the FEDERAL LOCAL COURT RULES, through
divestiture to LEXIS Law Publishing these pamphlets have
acquired one real "added value" the likes of which today's
mergers all continually promise us, whereby the title pages
of each of the USCS' Circuit rules editions are dated to
match the dating methods of each Circuit Court -- a dating
practice whose fundamental importance continues to elude West
Group's editors. Unfortunately these USCS pamphlets
otherwise fastly devalue by (1) being revised only annually,
and more troublously (2) at the time of their 3/98 editorial
cutoff only 8 of the 13 Circuits' rules properly matched
their Circuits latest rules editions and the remaining 5
(38%) are not current rules versions. Comparing this LEXIS
Publishing's Circuit rules source to MOORES, the 6/98 update
brought MOORES/v.21 all of these '98 Circuit rule changes;
however, MOORES' quarterly updating imposed a 3-month delay
to reflect these changes -- and the edition date mysteries of
MOORES Circuit rules, just like WEST's, remain impossible to
correlate with the rules edition dates of each Circuit court.
The burden regrettably continues that when we refer to any of
these print sources for federal court rules, the job remains
ours to verify their currencies with the courts involved. But
my gosh -- what an opportunity to reallocate our subscription
dollars away from publishers whose editors so poorly fulfill
their reliable content and currency responsibilities and who
stuff our looseleaf binders with nonessential update pages!
best all / Allen Story
(Opinions are my own and not those of my federal government
employer or of US Court libraries.)
Allen C. Story, Librarian
U. S. Courts Library
401 Courthouse Square
Alexandria, VA 22314-5718
703-299-3300 / fax 703-299-3302
allen_story@vaed.uscourts.gov
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