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Court Current Awareness Sites

United State Supreme Court

Free Sites

• ABA Supreme Court Previews

  Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases draws upon expert writers and the official briefs filed with the Court to provide an accurate, plain English explanation of the issues, facts, background and significance of every case before oral argument. This site is geared toward the education community. To get all of the cases you must subscribe to the service.

• Cornell's LII Supreme Court Collection This site provides access to the current:

  Court Calendar
  Schedule of Oral Arguments
  Summary of Questions Presented
  Gallery of the Current Judges
  Current Supreme Court Rules
  

• FindLaw Supreme Court Briefs

  This site provides access to U.S. Supreme Court Briefs starting with the 1999-2000 Term. The briefs are organized alphabetically by first-party case name.

• Findlaw's Supreme Court Center

  This site has the Supreme Court Docket as well as a case index, Supreme Court decisions from the previous term, Supreme Court Orders, pending cases, grants and denials of certiorari, attorney discipline orders and more. It also has court rules, court filing guides and Court Schedule.

• Official United States Supreme Court

  The court now provides docket sheets, order lists, a calendar and recent opinions directly on the Internet. Much of this information had previously been available for free through the court’s dial-up service, but users outside of metropolitan Washington D.C. still had to pay for the long-distance call. The official site of the Supreme Court also includes information on admission to the court, copies of current rules and a host of background documents describing the court.

• On the Docket Northwestern University
  

  This site provides previews of upcoming Supreme Court Cases and provides access to the Federal Court of Appeals Decision as well as to the Supreme Court briefs.

• OYEZ Project (U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia Database)
  

  This site provides access to the taped oral arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court. Simply download and install the Real Player for your operating system. Some audio resources will only play if you are using RealPlayer G2 (version 6.0 or higher.) The Project also contains dozens of panoramic images of the Supreme Court Building. To view these images in the Tour section, you will need to download and install QuickTime (for Windows or for MacOS). QuickTime is available from Apple Computer.

Fee-based sites

• BriefServe.com

  For immediate download or by special requests, a comprehensive collection of briefs and appendices for all United States Court of Appeals from 1981 to present, and the U.S. Supreme Court from 1984 to present, are available. (Coming soon are cases on appeal for the States of New York and Pennsylvania.)
  BriefServe.com gives you access to the factual and legal underpinnings of each case: portions of the printed record of trial testimony, legal briefs, pleadings, exhibits, affidavits, orders, verdicts or judgments. For the first time online, legal professionals will have at their disposal the history of how legal arguments were developed, modified or even dropped before a final decision was handed down.
  Previously only available in microfiche or hard copy, these documents are delivered electronically via a .PDF keyword searchable format. Now, anyone with access to the Internet can easily download and review documents as they were actually created and edited.
  BriefServe.com is available to you as a cost-effective, online tool for expediting your research. We hope you will come to value this service for its in-depth research and organization.

Multiple Jurisdictions

Fee-based sites

• CourtExpress.Com

  CourtEXPRESS.com is the first web site which offers current case information immediately from U.S. Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts. We use the courts' "PACER" systems to obtain information from courts. CourtEXPRESS.com is the only site that offers immediate search results, off-line searching, case or company tracking, stores search results and provides on-line ordering of documents and document retrieval from the same company. Search fees are $5 per result. If we are unable to connect to a court for any reason and you do not receive results you are not charged. Recurring users are billed $200 per account for a yearly administrative fee. You can have as many people as you want on one account. If you choose not to open an account, searches are $10 each.

• Courthouse News

  Courthouse News Service is a news wire for lawyers. It is comprised of a network of correspondents who provide daily comprehensive reports on new civil cases from the federal and state courts with the most prolific and weighty litigation. Subscribers thereby know if a client has been named in an action or if a new potential client has been similarly attacked. Subscribers are free to copy and distribute these publications within the office location that is subscribing.

• CourtLink

  CourtLink is a research tool for professionals. Primary uses for the service include litigation history, discovery, case management and background checks. CourtLink allows researchers access to the most current court records. You can obtain case summaries, names, dockets, judgments, claims, creditors and charges, stack multiple searches, and combine federal and state search results on one report. Many federal district, state and local court records are available online. However, each court system uses its own unique set of commands and protocols to search court records. To complete a search on one of these systems, you need to know the intricacies of the host system's commands. CourtLink allows you to search the court records of multiple host systems with one easy to use application. In many cases, CourtLink adds functionality to the search that would not be available from the host system.

• Pacer U.S. Federal Court Dockets online

  Beginning October 1, 1999, an access fee of $.07 per page, as approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States at its September 1998 session, will be assessed for access to this service. Traditional, dial-up PACER is still available.A login and password, issued by the PACER Service Center, is required for access to PACER either through the dial-up service or the Internet service. If you do not already have a PACER account, you may register on-line from the PACER Service Center web site at http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov.