Readers, check out the Search widget on the right side of the screen. Now you can do full text searches, as before, and you can search for cases decided by particular courts or cases involving particular statutes or rules.

There are still some kinks to iron out. For example, I have to rename the various courts (right now there are lots of courts called simply “Eastern District”, for example—I am going to change these to make it clear which is the Eastern District of New York, which is the Eastern District of California, etc.). I also would like to find a way to make the hierarchical nature of the search choices clear. I’ll also try to make the widget look nicer. But I wanted to get this out there to give you a sense of what’s coming.

Please note that not every case I’ve written about has been coded, but for the past few months and from now on, each and every case is being coded. As with everything at Letters Blogatory, I’m providing this search capability “as is,” i.e., don’t confuse it or anything else you read here for legal advice!

I want to give a special thanks to two Letters Blogatory readers who volunteered their time to help with the coding: Fanny Cornette, and Rebecca Phalen. Thanks to both for their efforts!

If you have ideas for further improvements to Letters Blogatory’s search functionality, please let me know. The goal is to make what is now a pretty good-sized database of cases more useful and accessible to lawyers.

Thanks as always for reading.