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Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

judyrecords.com

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Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#51

Post by SkittyDog »

lazide wrote: post #15
mmastrac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't lawyers already have access to case law like this? I feel like this is not a new thing, but giving access to everyone is novel. I could be wrong on my facts.

Generally you’ve had to pay for an expensive service (Lexus nexus), or go to the courthouse yourself to pull the records. Search was also a bit of a black art. So generally easy to hide in the noise. Here you can just put in a name, and off you go.

Lexis has the best search capabilities, but there are dozens of cheap clones now that start at $10/month to search these same records.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#52

Post by citizenkeen »

retrac wrote: post #42
vasco wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These records have always been available to people with money to spend on a lawyer with a subscription. So what you're complaining about is that normal people can also access the information now.

Quantity has a quality of its own. To use a similar example, arrest and imprisonment records are public data in my country. But you have to actually go to the courthouse and fill out some paperwork and/or hire a lawyer to do it for you. This has consequences. For example, in some US states it takes a few seconds for an employer to find out a candidate was once arrested while drunk, or has a conviction for a minor off…

> Only a real weirdo would do that here, in part because it involves time and money.

I think your parent's point is that money isn't an issue for the rich. A billionaire doesn't care that it costs $150 to find out, they don't care that it costs a $1,000 to find out. So suddenly information becomes a class issue. Either it should be available to nobody or everybody, money shouldn't factor into it.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#53

Post by trhway »

That is great. Regular people access to the information is great power equalizer. I had lost a small case - fine print and a lot of undelivered promises - after 3 lawyers said I'd lose and won it on appeal after finding in an online database (not available anymore sadly) a similar precedent referring the law exactly for my situation. According to yelp and case search the company I had this case with was regularly taking people for a ride, and the people very grudgingly paid hundreds to several thousands of dollars a pop mostly because of the fine print, and I became the first with winning case in that list.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#56

Post by btdmaster »

nabla9 wrote: post #47

603 total cases for: emacs 260 total cases for: "mind control" 768 total cases for: "donald j. trump" State of Minnesota vs Steven Captain America Rogers https://www.judyrecords.com/record/vfvd30smme78f

> mind control

I love it! (Is witchcraft constitutionally protected?!)

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#57

Post by richardbarosky »

hbcondo714 wrote: post #54

OP submitted this site in November 2020 with 400M cases[1]. Other than the increase in cases, what else has changed? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25150702

Right, more cases primarily. The performance has been optimized so the searches, search result pages, and individual pages load significantly faster. Most searches load in under 200ms and most pages including SRPs load in less than 20 ms. Search syntax improvements (see info page for details). The search is still not very granular and field-specific, but definitely an area of improvement.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#59

Post by dang »

hbcondo714 wrote: post #54

OP submitted this site in November 2020 with 400M cases[1]. Other than the increase in cases, what else has changed? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25150702

Not as a criticism but just FEI (For Everyone's Information), reposts are ok on HN after a year or so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#60

Post by richardbarosky »

trhway wrote: post #53

That is great. Regular people access to the information is great power equalizer. I had lost a small case - fine print and a lot of undelivered promises - after 3 lawyers said I'd lose and won it on appeal after finding in an online database (not available anymore sadly) a similar precedent referring the law exactly for my situation. According to yelp and case search the company I had this case with was regularly tak…

That's a great use case. Thank you for sharing!
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