Daily Archives: October 30, 2009

Free resources: will they ever measure up?

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Using the terminology of “hooks” instead of Tinkerbells, Bob Berring offers his opinion on commercial legal products, government web endeavors and free legal resources in a video posted here to a Thomson Reuters blog Legal Current: http://legalcurrent.com/2009/10/29/berring-on-free-legal-information/

I agree that the market for editorialized legal resources is something that will propel West and Lexis (and new-kid-on-the-block Bloomberg) into the future.  I also hope that pioneers like LII, Tim Stanley at Justia.com and Carl Malamud at PublicResource.org, and those who follow suit, will continue to take free resources to places and in directions we might not even be able to think of right now…straight on till morning.

A brief comment on the video from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, a group who has been providing free access to legal resources for almost two decades can be found here.

“Unauthorized Copying and Sale by Westlaw and LexisNexis of Appellate Briefs…”

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Earlier today, we blogged about two recent legal news items (here and here) on the copyright concerns regarding California Supreme Court appellate briefs appearing on Westlaw and LexisNexis.

As a follow-up, we have posted (with permission) the full text of the letter from attorney Edmond Connor, asking the court to amend Rule of Court 8.212.

The subject line for the letter reads: “Unauthorized Copying and Sale by Westlaw and LexisNexis of Appellate Briefs Served on Supreme Court Pursuant to Rule of Court 8.212.”

Court Struggles to Balance Public Access With For-Profit Interests

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Court Struggles to Balance Public Access With For-Profit Interests

By Laura Ernde
Daily Journal
10/30/2009

“Three months after an attorney complained that the California Supreme Court was giving away valuable appellate briefs to for-profit firms, the court is still trying to figureout how to get itself out of the sticky copyright dilemma without reducing public access.”

This all began when attorney Edmond Connor contacted the court in July after finding his brief on Lexis (and not for free).  More on this here. Read the letter that he sent to Justice Ronald M. George and Mr. William C. Vickrey this summer.

Brief Fight Likely to End in Compromise

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From tomorrow’s (Friday’s) San Francisco Recorder:

Brief Fight Likely to End in Compromise
The Recorder

By Mike McKee

October 30, 2009

The [California] Supreme Court sounds willing to end its practice of shipping briefs from all the state’s appellate cases to Westlaw and LexisNexis, which charge for them. An Irvine lawyer [Edmond Connor] saw a copyright problem…

Some more from the article:

…

‘Connor, who claims court briefs are lawyers’ copyrighted property, wrote again last Friday, urging the court to at least amend Rule of Court 8.212 — which requires lawyers to file either one electronic copy or four hard copies of their briefs with the high court — to instead require only one paper copy.

“Litigants will not have to incur the needless time and expense,” he wrote, “of providing the court with extra copies of briefs that the court simply discards — or gives away to vendors.”

…