Alaska Employment Law

In a recent post, I outlined some problems with Casemaker, the new legal research program provided by the Bar Association. 

The founder of Casemaker, Ohio attorney Joseph Shea, has responded to that poist, and to another user’s criticisms, in a detailed letter to Bar Association Ex. Dir. Deborah O’Regan.  Shea has authorized me to publish his letter. 

He advises that a new version of Casemaker (2.0) will appear in several weeks, and will make changes including the following:

1)  The new database will include federal Court of Appeals opinions from at least 1950, rather than the current start date of 1993.  (District Court opinions will continue to start with only 2005, reflecting Casemaker’s poll of user preferences.)

2)  In Casemaker 2.0, users will be able to search all Circuit court opinions at one time, as well as all 50 states or any combination at one time. 

As to other criticisms, Shea states that Casemaker does weekly updates of Alaska statutes during the legislative session, and that Casemaker will display the currency of statutes if the user clicks on the “Currency” button. 

Shea’s complete response to the post and his description of the improvements may be found here.