Courts are another iteration of knowledge-based enterprises, with lots of overlapping procedural and consitutional guidelines. One of the first questions appellate courts in particular confront is: what have we done before? With the development of online research tools, that question has become easier to resolve in recent years by doing a search of court opinions or legislative material. But that only tells you the final outcome in decided cases. What if you want to search administrative orders, or memos to circuit clerks, or calendar and docket entries, or minutes of public meetings, or phone logs of answers given to pro se callers, etc? To function smoothly, courts must consult these materials constantly, a process that can become increasingly dependent on institutional memory as systems become more and more complex.

Building a taxonomy would certainly be beneficial, but I question the need for the effort in light of recent technology developments that enable brute-force ability to search text and return relevant results. Enter the Google search appliance, used by entities like Stanford University and the The City of San Diego. The Google approach appears to be a good fit for our needs, but I'd like more information.

I therefore submit the following REQUEST FOR INFORMATION from other users (or potential users) of this appliance (or its competitors) regarding: effectiveness, especially with sets of previously unconverted and unhyperlinked text documents; implementation considerations; ease of use and access to support; and whether you would buy it again if you had the chance. Leave comments on this post or e-mail me by clicking the spam-free mail link on the right-hand sidebar.