Appellate briefs online

Michael Whiteman, associate dean of Law Library Services & Information Technology at Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, has taken the time and energy to put together a list of free & fee-based online resources for appellate court briefs, posted on Sabrina Pacifici’s LLRX.com last week.

The material is an appendix to an article by Whiteman entitled, “Appellate Court Briefs on the Web: Electronic Dynamos or Legal Quagmire?” [ 97 Law Libr. J. 467 (Summer 2005)], in which he says, “ As courts continue to adopt electronic filing systems (like the federal CM/ECF system), the search for appellate court briefs will become as seamless as the search for trial court documents is becoming… With the leap to the Internet, electronic access has shined a bright light on these unique resources. Nonetheless, although this bodes well for cheap, efficient access to briefs, some issues must be kept in mind. Preservation, equal access, and potential copyright pitfalls line the road to free and effective use of these legal dynamos.”