Subject: Comment on ABA proposal
Date: 11 Mar 97 11:27:05 EST
From: Ed Still <72477.260@CompuServe.COM>
To: <citation@teo.uscourts.gov>, Cleveland Thornton 
<thornton@legalbits.com>

     This responds to the request for comments on the ABA uniform 
citation proposal published by the Judicial Conference of the United 
States in 62 Fed. Reg. 8037 (Feb. 21, 1997).

     I am an attorney practicing in Birmingham, Alabama. I have been 
practicing in state and federal courts for twenty-five years. I have 
extensive experience with writing briefs and memorandums to federal 
and state judges.

     One of the great innovations in law practice during the last 
quarter century has been the ability to obtain basic legal research 
either on-line or on a CD-ROM. CD-ROMs particularly have been useful 
and have resulted in lowering of prices for access to federal and 
state court opinions. I have been using CD-ROMs for the past 4 or 5 
years and have been using on-line services for nearly 10. I routinely 
review (on-line) the decisions of the Alabama appellate courts and 
the Eleventh Circuit shortly after they are released. I download the 
decisions that are in my particular practice fields so that I may add 
them to my own "library."

     In trying to use these materials in briefs, I have two 
difficulties. First, the decision as released has a case number and 
date, but no citation that is particularly useful to anyone else in 
finding the case. Second, common practice, courtesy, and sometimes 
the rules of the Court require that I use "jump cites" -- that is, 
the specific page on which the quotation or general point is found.  
Thus, I must either go to a library where the old paper versions of 
the West reporters are available to obtain the specific site or I 
must spend large sums of money on the only to [sic] on-line services 
that provide this resource, West law and Lexis-Nexis. I could also 
purchase the reporters, which costs thousands of dollars and take up 
huge amounts of costly rental space. (I formerly subscribed to a 
number of reporters, but I stopped them because of the cost and the 
lack of space.)

     The result to the clients and to the bar is that significant 
time and expense must be made to provide reference to these page 
numbers. Although I have seen a dramatic reduction in the costs of 
accessing the legal material because of CD-ROMs and have recognized 
that electronic search is far superior to the old method I learned in 
law school, this benefit is greatly offset by the requirement to have 
access to West publications. If the reference to the West page 
numbers were not required and some alternative system found, I 
strongly believe that prices for the produces [sic] would be even 
lower and their use greatly increased.

     I believe the proposal by the ABA will solve these problems, 
will reduce the cost and time to obtain basic legal material created 
at taxpayer expense, and will greatly benefit the public and the bar. 
I know in my practice that all pleadings must have their paragraphs 
numbered. This is a trivial requirement given the new word processors 
that automatically number the paragraphs and it should be no problem 
for courts or court employees to number paragraphs of opinions or to 
number the opinions sequentially.

     Therefore, I urge the Judicial Conference of the United States 
to adopt and implement the ABA proposal for a uniform citation for 
all federal courts.

     Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

                                   Edward Still
                                   Attorney
                                   714 South 29th St.
                                   Birmingham AL 35233-2810
                                   phone 205-324-9966
                                   fax 205-322-1510
                                   email: votelaw@compuserve.com