OVERVIEW OF THE FREE-ACCESS WEBSITE FOR
WASHINGTON STATE APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

Background. A website has been created to provide free access to the full historical set of published opinions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, dating back through territorial days.  The website is called the Washington State Judicial Opinions Website and is accessible at www.lexisnexis.com/clients/wareports/.

The website provides "no cost, no frills" access to the text of published appellate opinions.  The opinions on the free-access website are intended to mirror the text of the official opinions that are found in the Washington Reports and Washington Appellate Reports series of books, as discussed in more detail below.

The intent for this project is two-fold: to enhance access to justice by providing the public with free access to an accurate online version of the state’s precedential case law and to bring us closer to the point of having fully official opinions available online.

The opinions are provided free of charge but may not be used for commercial purposes.

Benefits of the free-access website for the public. The website is a major improvement over the current alternatives for accessing electronic versions of our published opinions. Currently, the vast majority of users access our published opinions online, and they do so most frequently at the following sites, which have the following limitations:

(1) Courts.wa.gov website: This website has only slip opinions since February 2013.

(2) MRSC website: The website for the Municipal Research and Services Center has for many years provided free access to our published opinions, but these opinions vary significantly from the official published opinions, because (1) they have not been fully updated, (2) they have errors that have not been corrected, and (3) they vary over the years as to the quality of the source of the information from which they were taken. These opinions were never intended to be the official court opinions; they were merely being kept on the website as a public service by MRSC, with express caveats that these opinions were not the final, official opinions.

(3) Westlaw website: This website has our published opinions but (1) access to Westlaw requires a paid subscription and (2) the Westlaw opinions differ from the official versions in the Washington Reports. Because West is not the courts’ official publisher, they do not receive most of the nonsubstantive edits that the courts make after original slip opinions are filed. (Sometimes even court orders that make substantive changes to opinions can get missed and errors can be made as they incorporate our opinions into their database.) Accordingly, when people quote language from a Westlaw opinion, the quoted language can be slightly different than the official. (Substantive differences are rarer but still do occur.)

By comparison, the published opinions on the free-access website are available free of charge (unlike Westlaw), they are fully edited and updated versions of the opinions (unlike the electronic opinions on any of the websites discussed above), and the text of those opinions is intended to mirror word-for-word the opinions that are printed in the Washington Reporter volumes (unlike any of the websites discussed above). The opinions on the free-access website are not designated as fully official—the official version is still the printed reporters—but there should be almost no variation between the two. People will be able to quote opinion language from the website with confidence in its accuracy, which is not true for opinions that are on Westlaw or other online sources.

Additionally, the free-access website represents further progress toward making publicly available the official text of our historical set of opinions in an electronic format. Having official electronic opinions appears to be the way of the future—the website moves us in that direction.

How the free-access website will work. LexisNexis has created the website and will maintain it for the courts as part of the publisher’s contractual duties. The website is modeled closely after websites that LexisNexis already operates for California and Massachusetts. California’s free-access website has been in place for several years. California’s website has been successful in providing the public with free (no-frills) access to the text of California’s published opinions, without significantly undercutting the sales of their books that have the official text.

Source of free-access website’s opinions. Opinions are added to the website at approximately the same time as when the advance sheet for those opinions is published. (Opinions appear in the advance sheets 60 to 90 days after the slip opinions are filed.) From this point forward, the text of the opinions on the website should be identical to what is in the advance sheet. Then, once the opinions in those advance sheets are republished in the bound volumes, the website is updated to incorporate the bound volume language.

The website includes only the state’s published appellate opinions; unpublished opinions are not available there. The website parallels what is contained in our official reporters. (For more information about published and unpublished opinions, see https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/index.cfm?fa=opinions.page&pgname=opinionBackground.)

No-frills approach—Information included with the opinion text. The free-access website has the full text of each of our published opinions, along with introductory background statements about the case and the official paragraph numbers. Due to the no-frills approach, though, the website does not include some features that are in the official reports in our books: primarily, there are not any headnotes or page numbers. Further, unlike the paid electronic websites (e.g., Westlaw and Lexis.com), the opinions do not include any links to cases, statutes, or other cited authorities. This no-frills approach is designed to provide free public access to the online text of the opinions, while still retaining a sufficient market for the sale of our official reporter volumes; these sales support the ongoing editing and publication of our opinions.

Search engine. The free-access website has a fully functional search engine that is based on the search engine that LexisNexis uses for its commercial website (lexisnexis.com). It allows for both natural language searches and Boolean searches. Users are able to search all the published opinions of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals and able to search either court’s opinions independently. Users are able to easily print and download full opinions or excerpts.

How things will change for opinions on courts.wa.gov and MRSC’s website. We will continue to post the slip opinions on courts.wa.gov, just as we have previously done. The only change is that once a slip opinion has been updated with an edited version on the free-access website (and in the books), the slip opinion on courts.wa.gov will be prominently marked to indicate as much and to direct users to the free-access website to get the current text of the opinion.

With the emergence of the LexisNexis free-access website, MRSC will no longer be posting unofficial opinions on its website. MRSC maintained this part of its website as a public service for many years, stepping forward at a time when the courts were unable to undertake this. We thank MRSC for their many years of service providing public access to judicial opinions. We are grateful.