On WEXIS Making Corrections to Court Opinions Every Year

In a comment to It May Be Just One Letter But … When West Refuses to Correct Scopes v. Tennessee Because of “Cost,” I Think We Have a Problem, KC wrote:

Joe...do you have any idea how many errors West and Lexis editors correct every year? They work with the courts to actually correct the official versions (judges actually make mistakes!).

Well, yes I do. Didn't TR VP for Legal Editorial Operations, David Spencer, say that in the quote published in the post: "every year our editors work with the courts to make more than 100,000 corrections to cases"? I don't doubt the claim but what does that stat mean?

By asking the question, I am not implying that some corrections are more important than others. Typos are just as important as bad cites and textual errors. All corrections are important in producing an accurate text of a court opinion. We certainly know one opinion can contain many errors but that too isn't the point of my question.

Does this stat just refer to editorial production of new opinions prior to upload? Do it also include uploaded opinions that WEXIS editors found errors? That users have submitted corrections for? Does the stat cover opinions where TR Legal is the official publisher and, in that case, isn't that part of the responsibility of being the court's official publisher? Ah, well, yes it is. Meaning the TR Legal stat is a wee bit self-serving. While no doubt it is accurate, it is neither very specific nor addresses the issue of user-submitted corrections. The point of prior LLB posts had to do with user submissions to TR Legal not being routed directly to editorial staff for editor-user communication -- MacLachlan's attempt to get Scopes corrected in 1997 and Volokh's attempt to get Thorn corrected in 2010.

User-Submitted Corrections. Ignoring user submitted corrections to primary source material by any of our very expensive legal search vendors because of "cost" or because that isn't a mechanism in place to submit such alerts to the editorial staff with a reply-back feature that informs the user that the correction has been made or cannot be made because the heads-up cannot be verified is in my opinion irresponsible on the part of the vendor. Do note the problem extends beyond just court opinions to include federal regulatory content in Westlaw based on law librarian emails I have received

While we can say that this is a matter of principle, I am speaking from first-hand publishing experience, too. While working for CCH's Standard Federal Tax department, submitted corrections for source material and submitted solicitations for clarification of substantive editorial analysis went directly to the head of the product's editorial staff. (This was before the days of emails so they usually came in by way of snail mail or telephone calls.) They were taken seriously. By that I mean they were routed to the legal editor responsible for that section of Standard Fed if it questioned the editorial analysis published or to a production editor for checking the primary source republished in Standard Fed. The matter(s) was addressed, resolved and generated an updated page for filing promptly. In other words, CCH was responsive to its user inquires with respect to corrections and clarifications. Cost was not a factor. The quality of the product was. I know this was also the case in the department that produced estate and gift tax products and assume it was corporate policy for all services CCH published at the time (e.g., early 1990s.)

Again speaking from first-hand experience, this time while working at the Chicago Tribune. The editorial board wanted to get the stories the paper published right. If a reader or a reporter spotted something that needed correction or clarification in the print version of the daily, a later edition of the Chicago Tribune would include a list of corrections and clarifications that referred to the original stories. At the Trib, I was working on the electronic redistribution of stories to DIALOG and NEXIS and we would add the relevant information to the previously uploaded version of the original story at the end of the original text and then upload the file to the DIALOG and NEXIS servers so that  the electronic version of the story was accurate. The original text was preserved but the correction or clarification would appear at the end of the text. Once again, cost did not trump the value of accuracy and reader submissions were not ignored. They were investigated and produced amended, accurate content.

Sure TR Legal works with judges to get opinions right before upload, but there appears to be a serious problem when users call attention to potential inaccuracies to the Company compared to my CCH and Tribune Company experience. And based on my experience, a direct line of communication with TR Legal's editorial staff needs to be established (with a feedback loop to the user who submitted the potential correction). It really isn't that hard to do if a legal publisher is dedicated to ensuring the quality of what it publishes. We have no evidence of this because we have no audit trail that documents changes are made to the eText in the file display -- original update date plus what corrections were made and when in a note filed at the end of a file.

If TR Legal is thinking ahead to Congressional review of LAW.GOV, the Company might want to demonstrate the editorial work it does in the above manner, particularly in those instances when it was the official publisher of court opinions. Just tossing out correction stats without specificity probably won't cut it. Hell, it might even lead to TR Legal (and/or Lexis) becoming the contractor for electronic editorial production of authenticated court opinions under LAW.GOV in such instances! Tech specs for LAW.GOV may have to require a production processing audit trail at least at the metadata level in file header information.

Scopes Corrected in Westlaw?  In another comment to LLB's Scopes post, JohnM reports that the text has been corrected on Westlaw: "I guess all you have to do to get a correction is post a blog entry about it. The error has now been fixed on Westlaw." Maybe LLB should start publishing a regular Fix This Now feature. Instead I suggest law librarians email corrections to AALL's entire executive board. Perhaps our association's leaders will allow CRIV-lite to communicate directly with the vendor about them. [JH]