Is there any translator that can read court cases?

wonblee

It looks like the legal community is getting the short end of the stick as far as Zotero-compatible translation is concerned.

According to the following thread, neither Westlaw nor Lexis appears to provide meta data that Zotero can grab.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18291/westlaw-support-thread-on-zotero-at-legal-history-blog/#Item_9

So, I'm basically following the only possible route as suggested by the following guide from Boston University.
http://lawlibraryguides.bu.edu/content.php?pid=210292&sid=1751090

But, is there really no translator that can grab the necessary fields for court cases that can readily be used in Zotero?

Just like Zotero can identify and populate fields with an ISBN, DOI or PMID, can't it populate fields based on the reporter info? If that's not possible, a fire-fox add-on that will decipher, grab the relevant information from a Westlaw/Lexis page, and populate the fields (basically an automated process of what the BU Law Library webpage teaches you to do) would do the job.

Anything?

adamsmith

there is currently no working legal translator. I saw that Lexis Academic has recently added RIS export data, at least for Newspaper articles. I'm not sure about court cases?
We might be able to work with that - but because of their odd site and link structure, a Lexis translator is still a lot of work (who still uses frames for !@#*(!@&sake).

The procedure outlined by BU Law works only with articles, not with cases. (You can save the pdf of the cases, but Zotero won't be able to retrieve the metadata). Everything Zotero finds that way you can also get through google scholar (where Zotero looks for metadata). In many cases law review articles are also on Hein Online and JSTOR - I think Zotero reports the former, it definitely supports the latter.

wonblee

BU Law outlines three different procedures, and #3 on the right, lower corner of the screen does outline a procedure for working out of a Westlaw page. Not much there. It's just a graphic illustration of how to populate fields manually while looking at a Westlaw page.

adamsmith

right - but these fields aren't presented in any structured form on the Westlaw webpage so that can't be automated.
Frank Bennet, one of Zotero's most able community developers who is also a law professor has been lamenting this of years. Trust me, if a Westlaw translator could be written, he would have done that a long time ago.

fbennett

I just checked the Lexis TLR (Total Legal Research [sic]) service out of curiosity, and there's no change there. The best you can get for metadata is the "Copy w/Cite" link, about which the maintainers have this to say:

To copy the text below, select the text, right-click and select "Copy" or press CTRL+C on your keyboard. Then paste your selection into your word processor. Click the checkbox below to specify whether or not the reference should be copied as a hyperlink.

... which seems very convenient, if your last exposure to information technology was in 1985. There are roughly a dozen similar links in a Lexis case view page, offering various channels for speeding your work along by cutting and pasting text of one sort or another into a (flat) word processor document. Again and again and again.

Westlaw is much the same story.

This is not an accident, unfortunately. Primary legal text is a lucrative business based on text that is in the public domain, and these data silos are designed with an eye on potential competition; that is probably the main reason why they don't expose metadata.

It's also a safe bet that these firms would remove anyone who dares to build and distribute a robust Lexis or Westlaw site translator from circulation, by suing them to ruination. Lexis, for example, states the following in their Terms of Use:

For the avoidance of doubt, downloading and storing Materials in an archival database is prohibited.

.
So you're left with a few grizzly options. At escalating levels of frustrated sarcasm, you can:

1. Keep an eye out for alternative providers with a genuine service culture; and
2. Meanwhile, choose among:
   1. Following the path of least resistance and doing your legal citations longhand as the providers want you to do; and
   2. Putting up with the inconvenience of typing things into Zotero by hand (once); and
   3. Writing a Zotero site translator yourself for your own exclusive, non-commercial, personal use, without sharing the code with anyone else, without publicizing the fact that you have done so, and without exposing any text thereby acquired to a Zotero group library or other means of communication or data transmission.
3. Try to think of some way (any way) in which the privatization of public metadata and primary legal text might contribute to the efficient operation and development of the US legal system; and
1. If you succeed, write an extensive law review article on the subject;
2. If you fail, write to your Congressman or Congresswoman about the possibility of nationalizing the nation's core legal text and metadata; and then
4. Return to 1.

wonblee

Thanks for the thorough and kind explanation, Prof. Bennett.

I'm no copyright law expert, but I think you can make a good case that a paying customer has the right to glean citation information from a Westlaw/Lexis webpage using his or her paid subscription, whether manually or automatically. It is not like delving into the metadata silo of Westlaw/Lexis that they don't share with their customers anyway.

If a brave soul could just write a fire-fox add-on doing just that and distribute it for free, get sued by Westlaw/Lexis, have a day in court and prevail… Ideally, the court should not only find no infringement on the service providers' proprietary right in such case, but it should forbid these providers to change their webpage format regularly for the sole purpose of defeating automated data-gleaning efforts from their paying customers.

You were right. This topic is law review article material.