Beginning today, July 1, 2009, Wisconsin attorneys must electronically file a copy of all appellate briefs, no-merit reports, petitions for review, and responses. For more on these requirements, see Mandatory appellate e-filing begins July 1, 2009 in InsideTrack from the State Bar of Wisconsin.

One thing that the article doesn't mention is that attorneys may include links to cases or statutes cited in their briefs, as long as the source is free. For the full rule, see page five of the Supreme Court Rules regarding electronic filing of documents per the Wisconsin's Court Systems eFiling page. It reads:

Electronic briefs may be enhanced with internal links (such as a table of contents with links to locations in the brief) or external links (links to websites containing the text of cases or statutes cited in the brief). External links in an electronic brief shall not require a password for access to the case or statute. No enhancement to an electronic brief shall alter the text of the brief.

A few months ago I blogged about Jureeka!, noting that it is a Firefox add-on that looks for legal citations in ordinary web pages and turns them into hyperlinks that lead to a free version of the cited source. Pretty handy for web-based research.

But Jureeka! also installs a toolbar in Firefox which allows you to search for source material by legal citation. See the screen shot below.

After you enter in your citation and click "Find by citation" you'll be directed to a page that offers you a link to your desired document, if it is available.

Once you reach the desired website with your source, simply copy the URL at the top and paste into your brief.

Jureeka! is great for quickly locating links to statutes, case law, regulations, federal court rules, international law sources, and more. It has a success rate of around 92%.

For more about this neat tool, including a list of citation types included, see the Jureeka! blog.

Thanks to my colleague, Lynne Gehrke, for helping me recognize this new use for Jureeka!

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:22 PM to Courts | Permalink | Comments(0)

The Wisconsin State Law Library has created a tutorial on foreclosure.

From WSLL @ Your Service:

With the current economic situation, many people have been forced to deal with the issue of home foreclosure and are looking for information. In response, the State Law Library has created an online tutorial, Help! I'm Facing Foreclosure. The page includes a brief (under 3 minutes) video directing people to sources of information and assistance, and links to the websites of relevant agencies and organizations. Attorneys and librarians alike may find this to be a useful resource for their clients and library patrons.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:49 PM to Tutorials | Permalink | Comments(0)

A few weeks ago, I shared the news that ProQuest content would no longer be accessible via Badgerlink. But there is also some good news...beginning today, July 1st, EBSCO content is being expanded to nearly double what was previously available. [What is Badgerlink?]

The expanded EBSCO package includes:

• an upgrade to the Premier versions of Academic Search and Business Source;
  
• a major newspaper collection (Newspaper Source Plus);
  
• the leading reader's advisory service (NoveList and NoveList K-8);
  
• all three versions of Book Collection: Nonfiction;
  
• two new health databases (Consumer Health Complete and Alt Health Watch);
  
• two new education products (Education Research Complete and Educational Administration Abstracts);
  
• high school level science and history resources (Science Reference Center and History Reference Center);
  
• an auto repair database (Auto Repair Reference Center).
  
• a pair of literary/humanities collections (Literary Reference Center and Humanities International Complete)

Source: TechBits and Channel Weekly

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:43 AM to Data & Databases | Permalink | Comments(0)

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has set up a RSS feed.

From the Press Release: You can currently subscribe and receive all press releases and media alerts. Other information, such as Attorney General Guest Columns, featured topics of interest, and missing children alerts will be added in the near future.

Source: The Wheeler Report

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 4:18 PM to Blogs & RSS | Permalink | Comments(0)

A group of University of Wisconsin-Whitewater library science professors has been awarded a federal grant totaling almost $1 million to help school librarians become licensed and conversant with changing technology. Read more in the press release.

Source: The Wheeler Report

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:40 PM to Libraries & Librarians | Permalink | Comments(0)

The Wisconsin Law Journal reports that furloughs for more than 570 non-judicial staff of the Wisconsin court system are on the horizon, but how they will be implemented is yet to be determined.

From the article:

On June 23, Gov. Jim Doyle signed an executive order which calls for employees of state agencies and the University of Wisconsin system to take eight days (64 hours) of unpaid leave during each fiscal year of the next biennium...

State court employees are not subject to Doyle's order, noted Radloff, but the budget does cut approximately $1.9 million annually in salaries for non-judicial court staff.

"Basically, the money taken from the budget is the equivalent of the eight days per year," said Radloff, who still expected additional furloughs to be discussed.

Keith Sellen, who oversees the 29 state employees at the Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR), said it is hard to estimate to what extent closing the office for the equivalent of almost two weeks throughout the next biennium would have on efficiency.

"Assuming it's eight [days] for the next two years, it will have some impact," Sellen said.

"It may result in some minor delays, but I'm not sure what percentage of time will be lost."

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:04 PM to Courts | Permalink | Comments(0)

FreeCourtDockets is a new, free service which allows anyone to retrieve federal civil, criminal, and bankruptcy court dockets, as well as dockets from the US Supreme Court, Court of Claims, and Court of International Trade. The site is the product of Courtport LLC.

No PACER account is required to view the dockets, but if you wish to view the filings for a case, a PACER account is needed. FreeCourtDockets provides direct links to the filings in PACER.

To retrieve all court dockets except U.S. Supreme cases, you must first obtain an invitation code. To request a free code, you'll need to complete a form on the FreeCourtDockets website. Requests are usually answered within twenty four hours.

I received my invitation code this morning and decided to take the service for a spin. The process was cumbersome, but the results were as advertised.

When you first go to http://www.freecourtdockets.com/, you're led through two introduction screens before you even start searching. While this is fine for the first time, I'd rather not have to do this every time. Therefore, in the future, I think I'll probably create my bookmark a few pages in.

The first search page asks you to select a court type: U.S. District Civil or Criminal, U.S. Bankruptcy, U.S. Courts of Appeals, U.S. Appellate (Supreme and Courts of Appeals), U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and U.S. Court of International Trade. You're then prompted to complete a captcha to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.

I chose U.S. District Civil or Criminal and was taken to a new page in which I was asked to specify a specific jurisdiction. My choice there was the Wisconsin Eastern District Court which took me to another page asking for the docket number and my invitation code. Click count so far: 4.

Note that FreeCourtDockets does not offer name searching capabilities. You can only retrieve dockets when you already know the court and case/docket number. Now, this might be a pretty big stumbling block were it not for Justia's Federal District Court Filings and Dockets search. Justia allows you to search by a combination of case name, jurisdiction, law suit type and date. Its search results offer information about cases filed, including the docket number, but does not offer the full docket itself (very similar to Wisconsin's CCAP).

So, I sauntered over to Justia, did a search for civil rights cases in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and pulled up a docket number. Then I went back to FreeCourtDockets and entered in that docket number, albeit with a bit of format massaging. Then I also entered my invitation code.

Next, I'm directed to a page which asks me to verify the case I want. After doing so, I finally arrive at a case with the case information. Click count at this point: 7. But, still no docket - that requires yet another click.

And I've not yet mentioned that a huge amount of ads appear along with way. Could this be the reason for the cumbersome amount of clicks - so that I'm forced to view as many ads as possible? Perhaps. But, hey, it's free. I'm not complaining too loudly.

But after all those ads and clicks (8 page clicks in all), my patience is finally rewarded with the full docket, much as it looks in PACER. And the links to obtain the filings in PACER are there also.

Where FreeCourtDockets is getting the docket content is unclear. I couldn't find anything on the site that answers that question. But, judging from the obvious visual similarities to PACER, one might suspect that it's coming directly from PACER itself.

How they are able to offer this content for free is also uncertain, but I wonder if that is what all those ads are for. Note that the Help page states that "We will continue to expand our site to include U.S. courts of appeals, docket browsing, and free pdf access when adequate funding is received from sponsors, advertisers, and from your donations."

So is FreeCourtDockets the best thing since sliced bread? No - Justia's search capabilities and ease of use kicks it butt across the playground. But, is it still very useful? Yes - it's the only source I know of for free federal court dockets.

Now if PACER would just pony up and offer its content for free, that would really be something. And could you imagine if there were a product that combined Justia's search capabilities and PACER's content? Ooh, just the thought makes me giddy!

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:33 AM to Courts | Permalink | Comments(3)