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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Law - More on "Finding Accurate Law Text Online Nearly Impossible" [Updated]

Updating this ILB entry from July 31, 2009, Eugene Volokh in his blog yesterday (7/20/2010) wrote in part, after finding an online error (presumably in an online doc):

I therefore e-mailed Westlaw, so that others wouldn’t be tripped up by the same problem. But much to my surprise and disappointment, the Westlaw reference attorney informed me that Westlaw will not correct the error. In the original e-mail, I was told that “this case is too old for us to investigate further,” so I responded with a PDF with the front page of the case copied from the reporter, just to save Westlaw the work of investigating. But the reference attorney still refused, writing that “our Cases department will not change a case that old.”
This was a follow-up to this brief entry (and comments) from June 9th, 2010, where Volokh had urged other lawyers:
If you run across an error in a Westlaw or Lexis version of a document, help your fellow users by e-mailing the correction to west.referenceattorneys@thomson.com or source.acquisition@lexisnexis.com. This is especially so if it’s an error that confused you or risked leading you into an error of your own — once you’ve figured out the problem, take a minute to help keep others from being tripped up by it.
Also on June 9th, 2010, I sent a link to the Volokh entry to one of the great law librarians here in Indy, and received this response:
Interesting blog topic. I always report errors and case omissions to LX and WL whenever I find one. In my experience, the vendors do follow up and make the correction. There can be a selfish reason to report which is to prevent oneself from having to personally deal with the error again years in the future. It is also helpful to the profession as a whole to exert the small effort it takes to prevent another researcher from wasting hours on the same error. Thank you for sharing.
But apparently, some errors are "too old" to correct.

[Updated 7/23/2010] Be sure to read this update from the Law Librarian Blog.

[Updated 7/27/10] "Westlaw Makes Clear That Its Policy Is to Correct Transcription Errors, Even for Old Cases" reads the heading to this Eugene Volokh entry dated 7/23/10.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 21, 2010 08:41 AM
Posted to General Law Related