I’ve been asked why we don’t collect cases and other legal documents. The reason is that we have a different project, namely, to organize the law.  Of course, our researchers need to see the underlying legal documents they find reference to on Spindle Law, so wherever we can we link to other sites that have cases and statutes and so on.  At some point it may make sense for us to gather or store some of them ourselves, particularly any that aren’t easily accessible elsewhere. We doubt it will become a focus, though.

In an interview that appeared yesterday on Huffington Post, David Curle, a leading analyst of the legal, tax, & regulatory information industry (for Outsell, Inc.), is asked about “some of the recent major innovations in this market.” Spindle Law is one of two companies he mentions other than Lexis and Westlaw. Here’s what he has to say about us:

A tiny little startup named Spindle Law has an interesting idea.  They are building, in a kind of collaborative, Wiki-like way, a database of the legal rules that lawyers find in court decisions and in legislation. Their idea is that it’s pretty inefficient to get to those rules by searching and reading long court opinions. They are extracting and organizing the rules with links to the legal sources. They have a long way to go to prove that the concept works, but I like the way they are trying to turn the research process on its head.

If you’re at all interested in developments in the professional information industries, the whole piece is worth a read.  Paul Lippe, of Legal OnRamp, asks the questions.

Spindle Law now supports authorities from pending and unreported cases. With these changes, contributors can cite authorities to slip opinions and electronic databases. If the case is subsequently published, the reporter citation can be added and Spindle Law will handle the proper BlueBook formatting.  At a minimum, the case title, court, and full date of the opinion are required when entering a pending or unreported case. If the case is pending, the reporter and volume can be entered if known. Although optional, it is encouraged to include a citation to the slip opinion or an electronic database, or even better, both. To do so, just click on the “more…” button and then click on the appropriate button.

This has been a major step in increasing the scope of authorities that Spindle Law supports. As always, we welcome your feedback on this or any other feature.