The Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida Levin College of Law (“LTI”) received a grant from CourtLink to research and develop a White Paper describing the current state and current trends for Electronic Public Access to Court Records. The Legal Technology Institute is an independent technology consulting organization providing a variety of consulting and research services to the legal profession. 

All research-oriented White Papers developed by the Legal Technology Institute focus on two main issues: Technology Education and Technology Application.

As part of its mission, the Legal Technology Institute continuously seeks to provide education as to the importance of technology in the legal profession. For this research White Paper, LTI’s intent is to help educate legal professionals about Electronic Public Access to Court Records and its importance to the legal profession. Section 1 provides a detailed overview of Electronic Public Access, including the various methods of accessing court records and the major vendors who provide software and services to access those court records. 

Section 2 focuses on several case studies of courts providing public records electronically, the users, the costs, and the issues. These case studies include federal court systems, state court systems, and local court systems. It is not LTI’s intent to study every court system in the country, but instead, to concentrate on several “model” courts and how these individual courts provide information to the public through electronic public access.