By Jason Wilson
<rant>
When was the last time you pulled a bound volume off the shelf so you could make sure a legal proposition was cited on the proper page?
If your answer is “I don’t remember,” then congratulations, you’re right.
And yet, here we are, in 2012, still citing to page numbers. I write for a living, and I still have to cite to page numbers in cases because my customers expect it. Can anyone tell me why we are doing this?
If your answer is “State bar associations, lawyers, and judges are lazy and have become Wexis zombies,” then congratulations, you’re right.
For as long as I can remember (say 18 years), we’ve had the ability to actually cite at the paragraph level (for you slow learners out there, that means every paragraph in an opinion is numbered seriatim). Consider Oklahoma and Washington, for example, who require their published opinions to carry paragraph numbers and provide citation guidelines for citing to those opinions. Dollar to donuts, I bet the quality of briefs in those states are much better than any state that doesn’t do the same. And if you’ve ever been on law review, you know how much time paragraph numbering would have saved you in cite checking many of the inane articles the editors left at your carrel.
But again, lawyers and judges (except those in [see Update, below]) are lazy and like to obfuscate their legal reasoning. What better way to do it than to cite AN ENTIRE PAGE OR PAGES of an opinion to support a position. Jesus, what a ridiculous practice. And particularly in this state—Texas—where you can cite to unpublished memo opinions. Don’t even get me started on that.
Then there’s the cost to the industry of having to provide these digital page numbers. Not for Thomson Reuters mind you, but everyone else. Have you ever noticed that Google Scholar, Casemaker, Fastcast, Versuslaw, JuriSearch, and the like include page numbers? Do you think that happened by magic? Hell no. Some Indian or Chinese company ripped West CDs, OCR’d West’s bound volumes, or both to get those page numbers. Maybe they even pulled the cases off of some poor law student’s Westlaw account. Who knows for sure unless you’ve been over there.
The point is, they’re all doing it because of our insistence on citing WEST PUBLISHING page numbers. That’s it. And that insistence increases the cost of providing those very basic services (except maybe Google, but I’m not sure what their deal is, and the cases don’t seem that up to date like the other services, and besides, they’re probably spying on you or whatever).
Now, what happens when Thomson Reuters finally says, “Yeah, screw it, let’s stop printing case reporters, advance sheets, and stamping CDs”? Well, I guess you’ll have to subscribe to WestlawNext or Lexis or Bloomberg, assuming either of them have a deal with Thomson Reuters to get the page numbers (well, Lexis does), because the Indian and Chinese companies (and by extension, the second-tier services) won’t have access to them, unless they get a Westlaw account and download the cases from there. But that would be in violation of the EULA, unless Thomson Reuters looks the other way as a matter of self-interest (read: antitrust), but that’s not guaranteed.
But wait, you could actually be a change leader. You could get your bar association on board with idea of citing to paragraph numbers. Liberate cases from past practices, join the modern age. You could actually acknowledge that no one reads cases out of books any longer and pagination is simply a relic. You could do those things, you know, for the betterment of the practice.
Or not.
</rant>
UPDATE: I should Google before I rant (but I stick by it anyway). Turns out there are 16 states that have adopted paragraph-level citation rules. Here’s the list of the enlightened: Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Suck it California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas.
[Badass image (CC) by mamasuco]
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hear, hear!
Colorado moved to public citation and paragraph numbers on January 1 of this year.
Thanks Ricardo. You made me look, so I've updated the post to include the full list of 16. Now to get the others to switch!
Page numbers are a side effect. Every decision should have a DOI that is common to all services.
DOIs are expensive though. This is going to be the long term problem if we move to state-supplied, paragraph-numbered opinions. Take Texas as an example. The 5th Circuit in Dallas still thinks it's hot shit and should have it's own website. How do you ensure a uniform system when you let rogues like that hijack it?
Amen!! Preach it Brother Jason, preach it!!
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