Are lawyers idiots?

When an outsider considers the price lawyers pay WestLaw to access freely available public domain documents like appellate court opinions, statutes, rules of court and administrative regulations, one has to ask the question, "Are lawyers idiots for paying that price?". There is a certain convenience factor having all that stuff in one place, I guess. Hunting down statutes, rules of court and administrative regulations leads in 51 different directions and takes effort, but finding appellate court opinions is easy

An introduction to Google Scholar case law search

 

1. Google Scholar stores and indexes appellate court opinions.

2. Google Scholar offers advanced Google search options.

3. Google Scholar will send you email alerts when new opinions matching your search criteria are added.

 

4. Google Scholar  knows that I am located in Kentucky. You may not be so lucky.

5. You can select any state or federal court in any jurisdiction.

Google Scholar menus are flexible. The advanced search option can appear in at least two different places on the main page.

 

The Google Scholar advanced search option is the standard Google  advanced search option . . . very powerful.

As far as I can tell, all of Kentucky's appellate court opinions through the end of March, 2014 are indexed and available. The decisions rendered by the Court of Appeals on April 4, 2014 are not yet available.

References:

• Maryland State Law Library - Using Google Scholar for Maryland Case Law Research
• Library of Congress - How to Locate Free Case Law on the Internet
• Wisconsin State Law Library - Case Law Research with Google Scholar
• University of Texas School of Law -How to Use Google Scholar for Case Law 
  Includes the criticism of Google Scholar that it lack a feature allowing search within an opinion, once it is found. However, the basic "find" feature included every major web browser fills this need quite adequately.
• UCLA School of Law - Introduction /  Google Scholar
• Thomson Reuters - Googling the Law: Apprising Students of the Benefits and Flaws of Google as a Legal Research Tool - (PDF)
  
  This article shifts back and forth between discussing standard Google search as a legal research tool and using Google Scholar. The main complaints about Google Scholar is that the cases lack editorial annotations, there is a lack of trust regarding currency and completeness and that access to secondary materials, such as law reviews and scholarly works, is limited or nonexistent.
• Using Google Scholar to Conduct Free Legal Research
  This confirms what I had suspected. The high subscription costs of Westlaw or LexisNexis often makes these platforms unpalatable for solo practitioners and small firms.
• Google Makes Free Caselaw Search Available in Scholar

Local Rules of Court - Obey or Die

It's an unpublished opinion from the Kentucky Court of Appeals, but there is no other case quite like it that I have found, so maybe it qualifies as a hint or suggestion how a similar case might be decided down the road. Gaines v. Nichols, No. 2011-CA-000413-MR.(Ky. App. December 6, 2011) involved the granting of a motion to dismiss for failure to prosecute in disregard of the procedures contained in a local rule of court. Specifically, the local rules of court for the Jefferson County Circuit Court (30th Judicial Circuit), Rule 401,  gave the defendant 20 days to respond to a motion to dismiss and called for the submission of a form AOC-280, Notice of Submission of Case for Final Adjudication. The AOC-280 was not submitted and the court did not wait the 20 days before granting the dismissal.

The primary issues before us are whether JRP 401 may be enforced in the same manner as a Kentucky Rule of Civil Procedure and, if so, whether Gaines and Parker were availed of the rule's protection. First, our determination is that the Jefferson Rules of Practice are enforceable in the same manner as the Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure. The Jefferson Rules of Practice were approved by way of an order of the Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court on July 11, 2006. Once local rules are duly approved, they have binding effect. SCR 1.040(3)(a).

 The Circuit Court's dismissal was reversed.

Kentucky has fifty-seven circuit court judicial districts and sixty district court judicial districts. Each of these one hundred seventeen judicial districts adopt their own respective local rules of procedure on a wide variety of matters.You don't need each and every one of them. You need the ones governing your favorite judicial playgrounds.

Quirks of Researching Kentucky Appellate Decisions

Folks with access to Westlaw or Lexis don't have these problems, but those of us who insist upon free access to basic legal authorities have to be adaptable. All Kentucky Court of Appeals opinions since 1996 and all Kentucky Supreme Court opinions since 1999 are available online, and are searchable, through  the Kentucky Court of Justice web site. The web search function is very powerful and useful.

To search for a specific case, it is necessary to visit either the Clerk of the Supreme Court docket search page OR the Clerk of the Court of Appeals docket page online. There one can search by attorney name, appellate case number, Circuit Court case number or by any of the litigant's names. Supreme Court case numbers, such as 1996-SC-001085-MR, are identified by the 'SC' after the year designation, whereas Court of Appeals case numbers contain a 'CA' at that same location.

Obviously, one must search the Supreme Court's docket for Supreme Court case numbers and the Court of Appeals' docket for Court of Appeals case numbers. For such a docket search online, the only significant parts of the case number are the year and the number, without leading zeros. The trailing letters, 'MR', 'WC' etc. in the case number merely indicate the type of case it is and they are not used in the docket search.  

Whether one uses the opinion text search function or the docket search functions, one ends up with a PDF file of the court's slip opinion. The court's web site warns:

"This site will give you immediate access to opinions, in a PDF format, as they are rendered. When finality is entered in a case, the final opinion will replace the rendered copy on the site. Finality and publication status will be shown on the first page of the opinion."

Although it is true that court opinions are made public before those decisions are final, the finality of an opinion is not always marked on the first page of the online slip opinion. In order to verify the finality of any ambiguous online opinion, it is necessary to return to the relevant court clerk's docket search.

Generally, the finality of Kentucky appellate decisions is controlled by Civil Rule 76.30 Effective date of opinions, which reads in part:

(1) Scope of Rule.

This Rule 76.30 applies to any final decision of an appellate court styled an “Opinion.” A decision styled an “Opinion and Order” is an order, and is governed by Rule 76.38.

(2) Finality.

(a) An opinion of the Supreme Court becomes final on the 21st day after the date of its rendition unless a petition under Rule 76.32 has been timely filed or an extension of time has been granted for that purpose. An opinion of the Court of Appeals becomes final on the 31st day after the date of its rendition unless a petition under Rule 76.32 or a motion for review under Rule 76.20 has been timely filed or an extension of time has been granted for one of those purposes.

(b) In the event of a timely motion for review under Rule 76.20, the opinion becomes final immediately upon denial of the motion.

(c) In the event of a timely petition under Rule 76.32, (i) if it is in the Supreme Court and is denied, the opinion becomes final immediately upon such denial, but if the petition is granted and a new or revised opinion is rendered, the new or revised opinion becomes final on the 21st day after the date of its rendition unless otherwise ordered, or unless a further petition under Rule 76.32 has been timely filed or an extension of time has been granted for that purpose; (ii) if it is in the Court of Appeals and is denied, the opinion becomes final on the 31st day after the date the petition was denied unless a motion for review under Rule 76.20 has been timely filed; (iii) if it is in the Court of Appeals and is granted, and a new or revised opinion rendered, the new or revised opinion becomes final on the 31st day after the date of its rendition unless otherwise ordered, or unless a further petition under Rule 76.32 or a motion for review under Rule 76.20 has been timely filed or an extension of time has been granted for one of those purposes.

(d) Unless otherwise ordered, (i) in no event shall an opinion become final pending final disposition of a timely petition under Rule 76.32 or a timely motion for review under Rule 76.20; and (ii) in every case it shall become final when no such motion or petition has been filed within the time allowed for that purpose. * * * *

The lesson is that decisions of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and the Kentucky Supreme Court are never final at the time the opinions are first made public online, the finality of an opinion might not be apparent upon the face of the slip opinion itself and the finality of any given opinion may remain in limbo for many months after the opinion is made public. The way to know for sure is to check the relevant court clerk's docket details.

Legal research and writing for the non-lawyer: Rules of citation

The easiest way to win a legal argument and to convince a judge to do what you want is to find a respected authority who has already decided and discussed the same legal issue favorably to you, in writing. For this reason, legal briefs and arguments are peppered with quotes and references from statutes, court decisions, regulations and law review articles, to name a few of the more important types of authority commonly used.

To be effective and verifiable, each of these references must be accompanied by a clear indication of the original source material, that is to say, a citation.

For example: Pierson v. Coffey, 706 S.W.2d 409, 413 (Ky.App. 1985)

This is a standard citation to a specific opinion of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, in the format preferred in the Kentucky court system. By looking at this citation, any lawyer or judge would immediately know where to find this court opinion to read it for herself. State court systems and the federal courts each have their own way of citing statutes, court cases and every other thing imaginable, and they have rules for proper citations. That is a lot of different rules.

Every lawyer and law student is familiar with The Bluebook, A Uniform System of Citation®, which is a collection of all the rules of all the different jurisdictions. The Bluebook is comprehensive, it is updated frequently, it is expensive, and it is unnecessary for self-help legal purposes. The Bluebook is for professional use.

Do-it-yourself law for non-lawyers does not need such comprehensive detail. You can often Google a state name along with "rules of legal citation" to find the information you need for your state online, for free. For example, Delaware's rules for citation are available online - Guide To the Delaware Rules of Legal Citation.

If you cannot find the rules for your state, there is an excellent beginner's substitute for the Bluebook offered by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University. It is available online, Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, and it is also offered for download in three different e-book formats.