Page 36 - Pierce County Lawyer - May June 2024

LAW LIBRARY NEWS
BY STEPHEN SEELY
A Big Step Forward for Free Access to Case Law
For those who are interested in this new method of freely accessing the law, the Court Listener website offers an advanced search function to look for specific cases or to browse the collection by jurisdiction, court, date, and other criteria. The CAP data is also available for download in bulk. Researchers can use the CAP data to study legal trends, analyze judicial opinions,
or track the development of the law on a particular issue.
As always, you won’t need to travel all the way to the Law Library to access free and reliable legal information. If you have the Internet, the Law Library’s informational resources and research tools will be
there with you hen you visit us at www. piercecountylawlibrary.org and use our digital library!
We are also available by email to help answer your reference questions. We can’t do the research for you, but we can help get you on the right path! The Law Library can be reached at pclawlibrary@ piercecountywa.gov
Stephen is the Pierce County Law Librarian.
Tracking down a particular court opinion for free can sometimes be tricky. Trying to track down
an opinion from a court in another state can be even more of a challenge. But there’s good news for people who might not be able to afford the cost of an online legal research database or spare the time to learn each state’s quirky system of publishing or posting its court opinions: nearly 7 million court decisions from all 50 states, D.C., and U.S. territories have been added to the free-to-use Court Listener website, www.courtlistener.com!
Court Listener has long been popular with people who don’t want to pay for access
to PACER to read federal court opinions. This new update to Court Listener is composed of precedential cases published in each state’s official case reports. The Washington materials are current up to 2017. (That’s all the reporter volumes
up to 187 Wn.2d and 199 Wn. App., for anyone who’s tracking down a citation.)
The credit for this significant update
goes to the Caselaw Access Project (CAP), a joint effort between an online legal research startup named Ravel Law (recently acquired by Lexis Nexis) and the Harvard Law School Library.
Right now, the way court decisions are published limits how people can access and use the law. Generally speaking official court decisions have been put
in books and in corporate-owned legal research databases that few people can afford. Having difficulty accessing cases that define our current legal landscape and have shaped our path to this point, creates a significant obstacle for most people who are trying to learn about the law. The work done by the CAP is valuable to the public because it allows them to research legal issues online without paying for access to legal research databases. Small legal offices can also benefit from this free access to case law.
Join Me in Leaving a Legacy of Justice
As a fifty plus year
member of WSBA, there
was no question in my mind
about joining the Justice Society
and naming the Endowment for
Equal Justice in my will. I want
to make sure that people who
need legal representation at critical times in their lives can access it, no matter how meager their resources. The Endowment is working to take some of the stress out of their lives with civil legal aid. The Endowment provides support in perpetuity for the Legal Foundation of Washington in making
our communities more equitable places to
live, work and raise a family. Please join me.
— DICK MANNING, EEJ Justice Society Member since 2003
The only sustainable fund for civil legal aid in Washington.
legalfoundation.org/endowment annie@legalfoundation.org
Plaintiffs’ Only
APPELLATE PRACTICE
Experienced post-trial and appellate attorneys
For more information, visit pcva.law. Seattle: 206.451.8260 | Tacoma: 253.289.1412
36 PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER | May/June 2024