HOW AND WHERE TO FIND COURT INFORMATION

2003 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference
News Division Session: Public Records from Commercial Sources.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Generally, when we're asked to "check courts" on someone, we're looking for:

Cases filed in county courts in Florida are:

Cases filed in circuit courts in Florida are:

Each county in Florida has a clerk of courts that oversees both the county and circuit courts, so county and circuit court case information are usually in the same database.

Cases filed in federal trial courts (district courts) include:

BACKGROUND ON THE COURT SYSTEM

A couple of documents that are useful:

WHERE TO FIND COURT INFORMATION

See RefWeb Law & Crime page for more links.

The Federal Judiciary
http://www.uscourts.gov/index.html
Description of and links to federal courts, including PACER courts.

PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records)
http://pacer.psc.uscourt s.gov/cgi-bin/links.p
Direct access to federal district and bankruptcy courts, less expensive than CourtLink and as up-to-date and comprehensive as you can get.

Individual local court clerk web sites
Check The Sourcebook To Public Record Information (ready reference shelf) for availability of court information and web addresses, or http://www.searchsystems.net), or search Google for court name.

Don't forget that not all courts are online! We can request manual searches through The Official Provider's Source (TOPS) at http://www.crimesearch.com or, in some cases, call the court directly (check The Sourcebook to Public Record Information for phone numbers and availability of information.

Lexis
Includes selected local civil courts in a few states (including Florida and New York) in the DOCKET library.

LexisNexis CourtLink
http://www.courtlink.com/courts/index.html
State (local) and federal courts on LexisNexis CourtLink. Use as a last resort for local courts that don't have their own web sites and aren't available on Lexis (some local civil courts are available on Lexis). Don't use for federal courts, which are available on PACER, which is less expensive and as up-to-date and comprehensive as you can get.

Compiled by Michelle Quigley
7 January 2003
EDITORIAL LIBRARY
THE PALM BEACH POST