Official Illinois Reports Published by West Not Yet West-Mart's "Deal of the Day"

But, hey, Illinois Office Supreme Court Reports, 2d and Illinois Official Appellate Reports, 3d are both on sale today at West-Mart (both pages last visited on June 3, 2011) and you can buy them with an "assured pricing plan."

Due not that "Semimonthly Advance Sheets keep you updated with latest official text of [Illinois] state supreme and appellate courts." Quoting from West-Mart's Illinois Official Supreme Reports blurb. Well, not after July 31, 2011 and not needed after opinions filed after July 1, 2011 because Illinois has changed its citation rules to a public-domain case designator number with internal paragraph numbers pinpoint cites for all opinions filed after July 1, 2011.

Official opinions will be accessible at Illlinois Supreme Court’s website. Quoting from the Illinois Supreme Court's press release:

In another bow to the digital age, those bulky law books containing officially reported Illinois court opinions soon will be going the way of 8-track tapes and boom boxes.

See Mark Giangrande's LLP post Illinois Reports 1831 - 2011 RIP. See also Greg Lambert's very interesting critique of the new citation format (and PDF format for e-delivery) at Illinois Supreme Court Adopts New Official Citation System - “Oh, So Close!!" and note the context (read first-hand experience) he is coming from.

I'm more concerned that the format for Illinois official opinions is PDF/A so they will to accessible to all. The PDFs can be made searchable because they are text-based PDF versions (at least the couple of opinions I checked) and the text can be scrapped from them for quotation purposes (ditto, at least the couple I checked). Don't know, as in didn't see in my quickie sample, that they were digitally authenticated but that too could be executed easily (and better be). Did not, however, see that bulk distribution is an available option (could have missed that). If not, making bulk distribution an option is the most important issue at hand. But I digress... .

West-Mart Advertising. Well, it has only been a couple of days since the Illinois Supreme Court's May 31, 2011 press release -- I'm thinking West was informed a wee bit earlier, you? -- so West can still try to sell advance sheets until the current contract expires on July 31, 2011. We wouldn't or shouldn't expect the folks who sell "trusted legal resources from Thomson Reuters" to give potential buyers a heads-up about there not being official Illinois advance sheets soon, right?

Assuming, rightly so I think, West can continue to try the sell its soon to be dead series of hardbound copies of Illinois Official Supreme Court, 2d and Illinois Official Appellate Reports, 3d until hell freezes over, one has wonder when the advance sheet language will be deleted from this blurb.

Case in Point. Sometime after LLB's April 18, 2011 post, the ad copy gurus got around to changing the blurb for Smolla's Federal Civil Rights Acts 3d to reflect its March 16, 2011 print format switcheroo. Alas that blurb is still displaying the now defunct loose-leaf format image in the West-Mart's ad. Compare April 17, 2011 screen capture here with the June 3, 2011 screen capture below.

Deceptively simple to remove that image with either an image-not-available image (see right) or an image of the publication in it's current pamphlet format. [JH]