Reference Tidbit, Briefs Available Online 14th Court of Appeals

By Jessica R. Alexander, J.D., M.L.S., Reference Librarian

The 14th Court of Appeals, Houston, has just implemented online access to briefs. Dates of inclusion are not apparent from the website. In the meantime, this is an important addition to their existing search utilities.

I have published a piece before on simultaneously searching Texas courts using Google scholar since the court system itself has never instituted cross-court searching. This new access by the 14th Court probably grows out of the fact that attorneys have been filing petitions and briefs online. Beginning January 1, 2012, attorneys in civil cases will be required to file all petitions and briefs through Texas.gov e-Filing for Courts. This requirement does not extend uniformly to the trial courts, so be sure refer to the official page of each trial court to find out if it participates in the Texas.gov efiling program.

There will be more information to come on these developments. One question to be answered is whether the ProDoc eFiling service will continue to be an option for filing in Texas Courts.

Legal Education at a Crossroads

Jessica R. Alexander, J.D., M.L.S., Reference Librarian

New York Times, "What They Don't Teach Law Students: Lawyering, is informative when the reader studies the whole content. However, its main thesis, that somehow law students are ill-served by the case (Socratic) method of legal study, is a subject for debate. It seems to assume that the only purpose for a legal education is a lucrative career. But a legal education has more riches to offer than monetary gain. A law degree is a platform for an extremely informed way of looking at current and historical events. All relationships, whether between persons, a person and the environment, a person and their government, business entities, or animals, to name a few, have a legal component. A legal education provides the ability to sense more than one level of these relationships just as musical talent or education provides the ability to hear more than one harmonic voice in a chorus.

There is a degree of panic relative to legal education because the economy has made it much harder to find a lucrative job after law school. High tuition costs have heightened the difficulty law graduates face after completing a degree. All criticism of legal education should trend towards balancing the need for practical training and the love of the law that a Juris Doctor provides.