I received an advertisement from Westlaw today stating that they have briefs on line, "[i]ncluding Texas Supreme court and Appellate Court Briefs and Petitions." I went and checked out one of my cases and found my brief posted, and available for a fee.

Any one else think Westlaw shouldn't be making money off our briefs?

Having had some of my other documents posted on the web, I agree it is annoying. However, court filings are public documents, and anyone is entitled to go to the court, pay the fee, and obtain a copy. That's how West got it. As to them making money, it is the same thing they do with court opinions and the like. Still, as a general matter, I decline requests to provide my documents in electronic form in order to make it more difficult to post them (and more difficult to alter them prior to posting).

Is copyrighting a brief (or collective briefs from an office) a viable method of limiting access?

That was a thought I had.

Anyone have any ideas on this subject?

Look at this web page for information from the United States Copyright office. It appears to me that you have an automatic copyright on the legal analysis contained in the brief.

I do not think the fact that you file these as public court pleadings and the fact that the general public has a right to a copy of them gives up the copyright as far as use of your legal analysis for profit by a third party.

I think that a class action lawsuit by all lawyers whose briefs are being sold by West with me as lead counsel would be nice. I could take home several million in attorney fees and everyone else could get a coupon for a month's worth of Westlaw free.

Aren't the copyrights the property of our public office? And, if so, aren't they, in some sense, public property? The only thing I see happening is some sort of fee payable to the county (State?). Of course, this might be enough to curtail the practice if enough of us insist . . .

Heck, I've never thought that a brief or an appellate opinion was much more than legal plagiarism. Very few lawyers and judges have anything new to say. Judge Cochran of the CCP might be one of the few with a new way of saying something legal. So, if we demand payment, we very well might end up paying someone else. And, then, how could I put the quotes of others hear without paying a nickel or dime?

John Bradley
District Attorney
Williamson County, Texas

I guess my big hang up on all this is the fact that Westlaw can make money off of our briefs. The TDCAA has briefs, papers, etc. available online, but doesn't charge for access. I know that Westlaw would not have these briefs available unless they can make money off of them. I would rather they be free for all to have.

Some courts post briefs in their cases on the court's website. One example is the U.S. Supreme Court. They generally have the briefs available for case on the current docket available for free. Also FindLaw has some links to briefs in federal and state courts.

Janette Ansolabehere

So does the Texas Supreme Court. They ask for a copy of your brief in pdf or word and they post them.

The Tenth Court of Appeals also now requests an electronic version of briefs.

You should provide them in PDR, rather than Word, so they can't be altered.

John Bradley
District Attorney
Williamson County, Texas

John,
That is a disturbing statement. While I recognize the additional security provided by pdf, where would a Word brief be vulnerable to modification?

scanning it will make it a pdf file, correct? to be quite frank, all i have is acrobat reader, so i've never really tried to convert something to a pdf file. how do you do it?

Adobe's website, Adobe Acrobat (not the free Reader), and apps such as ScanSoft PDF Create allow you to convert Word documents to PDF's without scanning. Mac's running OS X have pdf conversion capability built in. The next version of MS Office should have pdf capability built in.

In a pinch, Adobe's website gives you a trial run of 5 document conversions for free. I used that to turn over some documents in capital writ case.

The sooner we can move from paper to pdf the better for me--cataloging, storing, and maintaining something like 3600 boxes of direct appeals without any meaningful budget for it is making me old.

If the document was created in MS Word, all you have to do is click on Print and go to the button at the bottom and save the file as a PDF. Don't know if that works in PC version, but is sure does in Mac. Very easy.

John Bradley
District Attorney
Williamson County, Texas

Here's some free software that will let you create a PDF. http://www.software995.com/

Wish I'd known about that before plunking down the dough for PDFCreate.

Here's another free PDF creator

http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator