Week Four.  A month.  A month!  How have I been here a month already????

This week I have hit the state case law survey hard.  And it hit me back.  The situation is pretty grim there. It was pointed out to me this week that I seem to take this research personally, and I do, perhaps to a fault.  I’m only to the O’s on the case law survey and I can tell now that any hopes I had for it to be possible to even do a modicum of free research on government websites are gone. Long long gone.  It’s depressing.

I realized that any publication of case law done on state websites has to be for press inquiries and other related reasons.  Legal research and self help is just not on the radar of reporters of decisions.  It can’t be.   But as long as I remember that the publication isn’t done for legal research purposes, I feel better?

Some other issues I’ve seen/thoughts I’ve had:

– The few states that are making their online publication the “official” and authentic version….well, they aren’t putting the rest up.  So a person is gong to have to go to several spots to get the “real deal” law.  As I said on twitter, we won the authentication debate at the price of a useable legal information ecosystem.

– I wonder if a state would ever retroactively go back and adopt an online ecosystem, assuming that you could prove provenance of the data.

– Lots of usability issues.  PDFs galore, no or limited searching (NO SEARCHING!), limited scope, unofficial copies (although I swear I could care less about “official” or “authentic” status right now.  Does that make me a bad librarian?)   Mainly courts are putting up slip opinions, which may or may not be correct.  I’d like the correct law over the official version.   It could be argued that how do you know it’s correct without it being official?  I dunno.  How do I know the sun is going to come up tomorrow?

Sorry, I’m being snarky.

Here’s the nice thing about digital information – traditionally, there’s been the official copy of the law.  Usually print.  And if there’s a discrepancy, the “official” version wins.  BUT.  With digital information it is possible to have LOTS OF COPIES that can be certified as being the same and they can be more easily (and cheaply) distributed and they are more usable.

In other news, I got my office computer set up and signed up for the big three legal research databases.    This has been excellent for two reasons.  (1) I can leave my laptop at my apartment, which means I can work from home more easily. (As I am now.  In my jammies.  FTW.)  (2) I started doing the preemption checking on the paper(s) that I see coming out of this research that I am doing.   So far, no one seems to have written the article(s) that I see writing.  So that’s good.

I know some people scoff at academic writing and the value of it vs. just blogging and/or “making something”, but I think in order to convince some of the people that I’ll need to convince to make the legal information ecosystem better, I’ll need to have an article or two as “proof.”

See, I’m not just a crazy woman ranting on the Internet.  I’m a crazy woman ranting in print with the blessing of half a dozen law students that selected my article for publication!

It’s a weird game, I know.

I do plan, as the year progresses, to design out a publication system for maybe libraries or other interested parties to use to start publishing law.   I think that’s where I’m heading.   I want to make solutions, not just point out the problems.   Speaking of which, I really need to get back on the stick of codeacademy.

I’m feeling a little burnout, so I think the plan for today is to read law journal articles, wander over to the Berkman Center and maybe stay away from spreadsheets until Monday.   This year is a marathon, not a sprint!