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Friday, February 11, 2011

Courts - Look forward to improved federal district court websites

Tony Mauro has the report at the Blog of Legal Times, headed "Makeover Urged for Federal Court Web Sites." A quote:

One of the biggest complaints, Hornby said, is difficulty in finding court opinions on district court sites. Some direct viewers to PACER, others send them to CourtWeb, others have a page on "opinions of interest," some are hopelessly out of date, while still others offer not a clue about how to access an opinion from that court. According to the memo, the E-Government Act requires giving access to "the substance of all written opinions issued by the court" in a searchable format.

"More and more people are learning about the courts remotely from their PCs or laptops," said Hornby, who has also lamented the decline in news coverage of courts as traditional media cut back. Making court web sites as user-friendly as possible helps the public and press interact with the courts. As his memo states, "Inaccurate, out-of-date, or inaccessible website content is a disservice to the judiciary and to site users."

Here is a link to the memo sent to the district courts.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 11, 2011 10:44 AM
Posted to Courts in general