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Oregon Law and Laws Online: Ha Ha Ha

Ha ha ha. I spent time this morning doing the following (fellow public and private law librarians around the state do the same, just about every day):

1) Showing a lawyer and others how to compile a legislative history ? this can take an hour or more, depending on how far back and how complex the question is. Ask your Legislator to show you how to do this. Ha ha ha. (They are probably glad we don?t send all our patrons and their questions to their offices!) You cannot do this online for any legislative history before 1995 or if you want any of the Exhibits from 1995 forward. Ha ha ha.

2) Explaining to lawyers that the ORS is not online, EXCEPT for the current year. Superseded ORSs DO exist digitally back to (maybe?) 1997 or thereabouts. But the Oregon Legislature DOES NOT keep previous ORS editions online, even though they could - easily. Ha ha ha. Maybe they don?t know that lawyers and pro se litigants really need to see those old ORSs! Ha ha ha. (You can find some of them here, thanks to our favorite law student, Robb Shecter, and his Oregonlaws dot org website.)

So, the next time someone says, ?It?s all online,? do this: ha ha ha (or type the word laughing into Google Images and have a giggle :-).

Here?s my latest list of what legal information is NOT online and/or NOT FREE online (from this Legal Information website).

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on January 28, 2011 (boomark / email).