How Long a Time Gap Before Court Decisions Were Published/ Available

March 22, 2008 10:10 AM

Back before the internet, how long would it take for legal decisions to be published, and how quickly would a lawyer be able to find out about new decisions? I'm hoping for the recollections of some of you older lawyers, but primarily I would love to find a printed resource for this type of information. I've been looking and looking and can't seem to find the info anywhere. I am looking at the late 80s-early 90s. I've looked for law review articles, caselaw, and general internet info on this subject and can't find anything. If a lawyer relied on a case in 1989, how long after a case reversing it was decided would it be published?
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (9 answers total)

INAL, but IAALAFP (I am a librarian and former paralegal) and I remember using Shepard's citations back in the day. I think they were updated monthly. Now, I'm curious...
posted by pointystick at 10:22 AM on March 22, 2008

I think what you are interested in are "slip opinions."
posted by dcjd at 10:35 AM on March 22, 2008

When I went to law school (beginning 1988), they were experimenting with giving some students LEXIS/NEXIS in their homes. I had this weird PlaySkool looking terminal, and someone came and connected it to the phone line. I had a dot matrix printer and a box of spooled paper. I thought I'd won the lottery.

LEXIS used to be the only game in town, Westlaw was just starting to get digital, so LEXIS was expensive. So we used to be really limited in how much we could/should use LEXIS. I would use the digests or the annotated statutes, going first to the pocket parts. I knew how to use the books to Shepardize cases.

As I recall, the cases were published on paper pretty quickly -- they came first in an insert (Daily Opinion Service, or similar name) in the legal newspaper (Recorder in SF), which was published often (at least once a week). You'd have to remember to review it. You would cite to that opinion until the soft bound reporter came, which would give you the "official" cite. After several soft bounds came, you'd get a hard bound and toss the soft bounds.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:05 AM on March 22, 2008

Okay, so, here are the names of the paper inserts in California, which haven't changed since the time frame you mentioned -- The Recorder (Insert: California Daily Opinion Service); and San Francisco Daily Journal (Insert: Daily Appellate Report).

If you want the accurate names for the service where your scenario exists, you should google around for the materials that are distributed by the local law school for "how to find the law" in the first year legal research and writing class.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:11 AM on March 22, 2008

Erwin Surrency's "A History of American Law Publishing" will be helpful as a printed resource, although its publication date of 1990 may not provide adequate information relating to the timeframe you are interested in.
posted by hellopanda at 12:33 PM on March 22, 2008

In 1989 I was working as a lawyer in the UK. The Times published daily law reports (still does) and would report the previous day's big decisions from the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal and the High Court.

Otherwise it'd be the Weekly Law Reports, which provided full reports of most (not all) reported cases and the monthly Current Law Digest, which was more anecdotal (with citations where available).
posted by essexjan at 4:24 PM on March 22, 2008

Slip opinions, as mentioned above, is what you're looking for. These were early advance sheets that were rushed out before the opinions were collected into reporters by West.
posted by allen.spaulding at 4:32 PM on March 22, 2008

The slip opinions were issued as paperback temporary versions of the later hardbound case reporters. They would usually take about two months to be issued.
posted by megatherium at 7:09 PM on March 22, 2008

Supreme Courts for each state promulgate rules which state how many days after an opinion is issued it is final, and therefore acts as binding precedent. Most also have a rule which allows them to designate a particular opinion or ruling as "nonpublished" or "nonbinding" or simply not available as precedent. The clerk of the court could get you a copy the day the opinion was issued. So could an attorney of record in the case. It's absolutely not uncommon--even in the digital age--for attorneys of record to be faxing or .pdfing rulings the day their issued, before they are available on the court website or through any reporting service.

As noted above, slip opinions generally took about two months to be circulated, but in many jurisdictions, the ruling is final within 30 days, so you could cite to it as precedent in a trial court, if you had a copy and provided the court and opposing counsel with it.
posted by crush-onastick at 8:24 AM on March 23, 2008