You'll have to visit each site to find out what's there, which can be time-consuming if you're looking for information from some or all states. If you followed the link to Delaware, for example, you'd find that no court decisions are available, and at West Virginia's site, you'd find no legal information at all. Not so, says Nina Platt, the author of the State Court Directory found at Piper's site. Platt, a librarian at the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General who helped construct Minnesota's archive of state laws, sees a number of obstacles to using online legal resources exclusively. A major one is the lack of backdated information online, which is crucial to legal research.
Few states are willing to input cases dating back that far, or even just as far back as a few years.
In addition, case opinions published online will need to use a standard system of citation in order to be useful to litigants. The currently accepted citation system, called star pagination, is now claimed to be copyrighted by West Publishing, a claim which other online publishers dispute. The dispute will likely last for years, stalling the question of a standard system for online case opinions. But for now, it is rapidly becoming a much more useful resource at the state and local level, where people need it most. Copyright 1999 by Peri H. Pakroo.