Given the limited availability
of print reporter collections, I'm starting to think that we may need to cite one printed report only.
Using print volumes as a stand in for other forms of information organization is useful for the purposes of discussion as they are easy to visualize, but much information we access in law is not easy to organize in series, as it is either not in a physical format that lends itself to being ordered and viewed sequentially, like caselaw which is generally ordered by date
in print reporters, or it is not in physical form at all as most caselaw is published now.
Gary Rodrigues» recent column Reality Check: Fact, Fiction, and Case Citations, sparked an interesting discussion about the use of case citations: whether using the neutral citation in a secondary source is enough; which parallel citations should be included in case tables; whether we need to
cite print reporters at all; and so on.
Whether the local newspaper reporter is ready to admit it or not, bloggers have begun to supplant traditional
print reporters as leading journalists.
In any case, it's always ugly to see the old reliable standard cast aside in favor of someone new and young and vibrant, but you know in your heart that it's poetic justice as well — which may help explain your campaign's undercurrent of bitterness against TV and
print reporters last week.
To prioritize citations to commercial databases
over print reporters would be an unwarranted gift to the commercial publishers and would certainly be a hindrance to using CanLII as a citator as it continues to add historical sources and parallel citations.
Few law libraries in Canada now subscribe to
foreign print reporters — relying on a combination of free and pay online services.
I agree that the preservation of electronic materials is flawed, but that is not going to change the fact that when we
buy print reporters, they go on the shelf untouched for years, while our electronic resources are increasingly in demand.
Louis Mirando's excellent column about the future of
print reporters identified the future storage and delivery of primary law; in a nutshell, bound volumes of the law reports are soon to be just a memory.
I posted on SLAW over one year ago on the issue of Copies of cases for court —
official print reporters versus online versions.
The next time a TV, radio, or
print reporter interviews a real estate broker in your market about home sales trends or other industry matters, ask yourself why that broker got the call.
«She was
a print reporter on Wall Street.
And, plenty of journalists are going to have to learn a secondary trade — in an unchanneled world,
a print reporter who can ALSO do a good audio or video interview is likely to have a big advantage over one who only does a single thing well.
Cable television,
print reporters, talk radio and blogs will help to shape the official narrative (or more likely, one narrative for each side plus a hazy concept of [neutral?]
Television news crews and
print reporters are an almost daily presence on the town's main thoroughfare, Route 22, and men, women and children unaccustomed to the spotlight are growing tired of once again being asked to describe how they feel about the poison in their water supply.
«An unedited video and audio tape of the interview as recorded by both broadcast and
print reporters is easily within reach.
While other antiquity officials avoided the media, George welcomed television cameras and
print reporters to the museum grounds.
The seminar took place in April during the Education Writers Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. Participants in the seminar included parents, teachers, television and
print reporters, and state, local, and national educational officials.
I'd love to hear some feedback from lawyers and law librarians about the extent to which they refer to citations to
print reporters.
The California appeals court held that the state's shield laws applied to online reporters in the same way that it applied to
print reporters.
Rather than end a research session in Lexis and open one in West just to pull a single case that I only have a proprietary reference for, I would prefer a citation to
a print reporter that will work in both (as well as CanLII) even if I don't have any print reporters and subscribe to both West and Lexis.
Specifically it directs the reader to refer to the Neutral Citation, then to
print reporters that are increasingly available only in databases, and only last and seemingly least to the primary sources of case law — the online services of Lexis, Carswell, Azumet and Canlii.
Do we still need to cite all
the print reporters?
If the case is only available on one of the large commercial databases, we should probably include that citation as well as to
the print reporter.
As you can see, preference is given to the neutral citation (where available), but a parallel citation to
another print reporter is generally required.
Our tables of cases still include citations to as many as four
print reporters, and we tend not to include cites to electronic sources unless nothing else is available.
For cases to which we can not link, we include enough information for the case to be found using the search engine of one of the commercial databases or, if the case is not published online, to
a print reporter.
I was surprised to read in Eric Appleby's recent post that fully 70 % of judgments received from the courts are selected for reporting in Maritime Law Books»
print reporters; I would be interested to know what the proportion is for Ontario judgments and the Ontario Reports.
One reason some law firms continue to subscribe to
print reporters is for photocopying, out of fear that online formats will not be accepted by a court or especially because they need to document page - specific references.
It used to be that either a decision was «reported» (i.e. published in
a print reporter) or it wasn't (an unreported decision).
You turn to
the printed reporters, or QuickLaw and eCarswell, and similarly find every fourth case or so missing.
There is no way we can justify purchasing databases such as BestCase, CCH, Quicklaw, Westlaw Canada, MLB National Reporter System AND buying the same cases in
the print reporters.
Print reporters are dead; courts should stop trying to keep them in zombie - like undead enslavement.
When a judgment has been published in
a printed reporter and / or has a neutral citation, write the neutral citation of the printed reporter, then write in parentheses available on, followed by the name of the service.
I add to these concerns my pet peeve: there is absolutely no need to cite
a print reporter when the decision is available on CanLII, QL, or WL.
It is independent of
any printed reporter or online database.
If a judgment is published in a reporter, list the neutral citation first, followed by
the printed reporter.
The citation should contain the neutral citation and
a print reporter citation, in that order, followed by the abbreviated reference to the electronic source.
At the trial level Maritime Law Book publishes in
its print reporters (with a headnote) 60 % to 70 % of all trial decisions.
Divergent views are expressed regarding the need to include a full Quicklaw or Westlaw Canada citation in addition to citing to
a print reporter or neutral citation, and the need to refer at all to the electronic version if a print reporter is cited.
MLB was the first to include digital diskettes of its reported case law in the cover of
its print reporters.
I am doing an informal survey of law firms through the TALL listserv as to how many law firms still subscribe to
print reporters and how many rely on e-copies.
Spending on
print reporters by the libraries in the sample fell in 2006, with mean spending dropping from $ 34,815 to $ 32,819, or by 5.73 %.
Now that few writers rely on
print reporters, with many actually lacking reasonable access to them, the rule's explicit prohibition on using Westlaw or LEXIS (or presumably any other electronic source) «as a source for the official case name» is manifestly an anachronism.
In recent years, as
print reporters have evolved into multimedia journalists — producing videos, developing interactive features, and writing blogs — online ad revenues haven't kept pace with the cost of doing business.