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NEW
SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT REPORTER OF DECISIONS
WEBSITE RELEASES APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS;
Many Other No-Cost Features
Available to Attorneys and Public
Boston—In
a continuing effort to better serve the bar, the media, and
the general public who have an interest in receiving Massachusetts
appellate court decisions and information in a timely manner,
the Supreme Judicial Court’s Office of the Reporter of Decisions
today announced that a new website at www.massreports.com
offers many useful features at no cost to the user. Public
access to the website is effective immediately.
For the first time, the Supreme Judicial
Court’s Reporter of Decisions Office will now announce
at 8:00 a.m., via the website, the list of Supreme Judicial
Court decisions, called “slip opinions,” to be released that
day. At 10:00 a.m., or within moments after, the text of both
SJC and Appeals Court slip opinions will be available on the
website. The user has the option of reading or downloading
the slip opinions at 10:00 a.m., or registering for an e-mail
service that automatically delivers the slip opinions to the
user’s e-mail address shortly after 10:30 a.m.
This latter service
allows the user to choose in advance the type of appellate
court opinions to be e-mailed. For example, a menu allows
registration for all cases, civil or criminal cases only,
or cases from ten selected practice areas.
The new website will
offer by this summer an electronic advance sheets service
as an option to the traditional printed advance sheets used
by many lawyers. This service will allow a user to register
and receive the weekly official advance sheets of the two
Massachusetts appellate courts. Advance sheets, which are
similar to the slip opinions, have the official pagination,
and the headnotes written by the Reporter of Decisions. This
electronic version will be cumulative and fully searchable
by date, party, docket number, or selected search term. The
cost of this service will be the same as the printed service
offered through West Group, the publisher of the official
advance sheets and bound volumes of reports of the SJC and
Appeals Court.
All other features of
the SJC Reporter of Decisions website are provided at no cost
to the user. Individuals will have immediate access to certain
legal historical information, useful directories of various
appellate court offices, links to other related websites,
and information about the SJC Reporter of Decisions Office,
which dates back to 1804.
The creation of
the website was a joint effort between the Office of the Reporter
of Decisions, which provided the material and concept for
the site, and West Group, which provided the technology and
guidance to construct the site as part of its contractual
services.
Since 1804,
the Reporter’s Office has prepared the opinions of the Supreme
Judicial Court for release to the public and the bar. These
opinions, which are the common law of Massachusetts, have
been published in 435 volumes of the Massachusetts Reports
to date. Fifty-three volumes of the Massachusetts Appeals
Court Reports have been published since 1972, the year the
Appeals Court was established.
The slip opinions of
the Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court will continue
to be released in printed and electronic bulletin board formats
available through the Reporter’s Office and the SJC Public
Information Office.
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