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printing poorly formatted legal statutes

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You can also build a house with nothing more than a hammer, chisel, and chainsaw. That doesn't mean it's wise to do so. Tools automate. Proper tools automate the job at hand. Tell me if I'm wrong but AFAIK MS Word cannot automatically detect paragraph numbers and apply a style.
If you use a chainsaw to build a house, then maybe you have no idea what tools are best for a particular project.
I'm going to agree with Zigner. What you seem to want, is to do nothing yourself, but have a machine or someone else to do all the work for you. If that be the case any local attorney will be able to help you out with your legal document formatting. It's what they are trained and licensed to do:cool:
 


quincy

Senior Member
If you want to spend money, look into web capture software. But if you want your documents to look a certain way, you will have to put in time and effort to do this.
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
That is, the Ohio Revised Code website I found (http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/) is not necessarily the sole publication of legal code. It may be, but I would hope that lawyers have a better resource than that -- something that at least indents the nested levels.
We do. We use lawyer oriented services like Westlaw and Lexis. But these services are not cheap. However, they offer services far beyond what you get on the internet for free. They ensure the primary law they have (statutes, regulations, case law, etc) are very current, they do the cite checking, and they provide access to many secondary sources, treatises, etc. For many pro se litigants doing just one case and only occasionally needing research and printing of statutes, regulations, and case law the cost of these services proves to be just too much as they don't need everything these services offer. I also maintain a library of actual books for the law I use the most, and I simply photocopy the law from those should I have a need to provide it to the court as the layout of the printed books is superior to pretty much anything else. If you are near a law library you may be able to access a service like Westlaw at a cheaper cost or at least copy the law you need from the hardbound books to get the better layout you need. But because we use these dedicated online legal services and printed books we do not need some kind of specialized tool to convert the layout of free online resources like the state codes that states make available online for free.
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
Law firms also often have paralegals to work on document preparation.
That too, but since the tools I mentioned do a pretty good job of formatting the law should I need to print it out I haven't had a need to have my paralegal spend time on that task.
 

pickaname

Active Member
My university had Lexis/Nexis access which was given to students and the general public. That was decades ago and I've wondered if that's a thing of the past, as Lexis probably doesn't want just anyone to get gratis access from the subscription of another.

Anyway, an appeals court ruled that "access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party." (ref) So this raises questions about Lexis controlling access to law. It seems as if Ohioans benefit incidentally by getting access to law from Lawriter, LLC. What if Lawriter, LLC didn't offer online law access? Would the general public be limited to potentially outdated laws printed in books at the library? I might say fair enough if Lexis sells the extra features, but it seems a bit off that the law itself is also in a walled-garden.
 

Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
My university had Lexis/Nexis access which was given to students and the general public. That was decades ago and I've wondered if that's a thing of the past, as Lexis probably doesn't want just anyone to get gratis access from the subscription of another.

Anyway, an appeals court ruled that "access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party." (ref) So this raises questions about Lexis controlling access to law. It seems as if Ohioans benefit incidentally by getting access to law from Lawriter, LLC. What if Lawriter, LLC didn't offer online law access? Would the general public be limited to potentially outdated laws printed in books at the library? I might say fair enough if Lexis sells the extra features, but it seems a bit off that the law itself is also in a walled-garden.
Your basic premise is flawed.
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
My university had Lexis/Nexis access which was given to students and the general public. That was decades ago and I've wondered if that's a thing of the past, as Lexis probably doesn't want just anyone to get gratis access from the subscription of another.

Anyway, an appeals court ruled that "access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party." (ref) So this raises questions about Lexis controlling access to law. It seems as if Ohioans benefit incidentally by getting access to law from Lawriter, LLC. What if Lawriter, LLC didn't offer online law access? Would the general public be limited to potentially outdated laws printed in books at the library? I might say fair enough if Lexis sells the extra features, but it seems a bit off that the law itself is also in a walled-garden.
The law is not inaccessible to the public. For starters, there are public law libraries in each state and have been for decades. Yes, it may take more time and effort to go there than having it readily accessible by computer and the format may be books rather than electronic, but it is there. Any good law library will have subscription services that keep their books pretty current. Remember, just 30 years ago the books were the primary way to get most law even for many lawyers, and unless a law firm had its own well developed library for the lawyers to use they too had to resort to heading down to the law library.

Today the public has easier access to the law than ever. Each state legislature and Congress has committed to making their statutes available online for example. Some do it directly themselves, others hire a private service to do it for them. In Ohio, that's Lawriter. You may not have noticed, but Lawriter is hosted on Ohio's own Ohio.gov domain. So it is the state that is providing you that service. Lawriter is not simply providing that free out of the goodness of its heart. My state provides free access to its statutes through Lexis in a reciprocal arrangement in which Lexis gets to be the official publisher of the state statutes. Congress and most states also have their regulations free online, too, making them much more accessible than they were decades ago. Many appellate courts provide free online access to their decisions as well. The primary sources of law — statutes, regulations, and case law, are not walled off behind private companies. The government provides access to them. And, in addition, you can often find the federal and state statutes on other free sites, too, like Cornell University's Legal Information Institute (LII) and the ad supported Justia service (to name just two that come readily to mind). So for a lot of law you actually have choices of service for free legal access, and can choose which best suits you. You did not have those options 30 years ago.

What the government does not do is provide all the advanced tools for organizing, summarizing, searching, cite checking, and formatting the law that private services provide. Also the private services may be updated faster than what the government provides online for free. (Though the federal government provides extremely fast updates to its law.) Those services are not cheap to provide and are very valuable to lawyers, so lawyers are very willing to pay the fees the companies charge (which the general public would still find quite high but are cheaper than they used to be and much better now than ever too). Because lawyers do a ton of research and we can build those charges into our fees its worthwhile for us. Your underlying complaint here seems to be not that the law is not readily accessible to the public — as I noted above, the government itself (to its credit) has done a pretty admirable job of making primary law more readily available to the general public than ever before. Rather, it seems you lament that what is available for free is not as good as what you can get if you are willing pay the fees a company like Westlaw or Lexis charges. But if they didn't charge for those advanced tools they wouldn't be provided at all. Obviously, I'd love to get what they provide for free, but it's just not realistic to expect that. They need to make money too.
 
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Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
It seems to me to be a good reason to have an attorney assist with any complicated or complex legal action.
Right. While much of the primary law is available to the public for free, many in the public are not skilled legal researchers. It takes training and extensive experience to do it well. Lawyers do it for a living and have the time and incentive to learn to do it well. Moreover, lawyers are trained and experienced in other skills that are important to advising and representing clients. While I see some members of the public thinking that what lawyers do is something anyone can do if they just have access to the law and spend some time, that comes from a superficial view of what lawyers provide.
 

Ohiogal

Queen Bee
My university had Lexis/Nexis access which was given to students and the general public. That was decades ago and I've wondered if that's a thing of the past, as Lexis probably doesn't want just anyone to get gratis access from the subscription of another.

Anyway, an appeals court ruled that "access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party." (ref) So this raises questions about Lexis controlling access to law. It seems as if Ohioans benefit incidentally by getting access to law from Lawriter, LLC. What if Lawriter, LLC didn't offer online law access? Would the general public be limited to potentially outdated laws printed in books at the library? I might say fair enough if Lexis sells the extra features, but it seems a bit off that the law itself is also in a walled-garden.
The legislature has all the statutes on line. You are thick and in over your head. The access to the law is NOT conditioned on the consent of a private party. It is in the public to be accessed.
 

quincy

Senior Member
I believe pickaname said his/her case is a small claims action. Small claims cases are generally ones that can be handled without too much difficulty. Many (most?) small claims courts do not even allow for attorney representation.

If pickaname is having trouble with case presentation, however, an attorney can help with preparation and advice before the hearing(s).
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
I believe pickaname said his/her case is a small claims action. Small claims cases are generally ones that can be handled without too much difficulty. Many (most?) small claims courts do not even allow for attorney representation.
Quite true. My comments were more of a general sort and not about litigating in small claims court specifically. The relaxed rules in many small claims courts and the more simple nature of most cases in small claims courts makes them easier for people to litigate these cases themselves. I don't know how many states actually bar attorney representation in small claims court but would not be surprised if it was indeed the majority of them. My state uses a rule that the plaintiff cannot have an attorney in small claims court unless the defendant decides to have one. Also, when an attorney represents himself in small claims in my state he must state that he is a lawyer in the pleadings and inform the court at the trial of that too so the court is aware of the potentially uneven playing field faced by the other party.
 

Ohiogal

Queen Bee
Actually in Ohio attorneys can appear in small claims cases. I have done it. Pickaname is totally in over his head.
 

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