Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

They are projecting to have Federal and CA, NY, MA, IL, TX done in 2016, and the rest of the states in 2017. I'm curious why those particular states are being done first.

In particular, I'd have expected Delaware to be in the first group, because so many public companies are incorporated there, and so the decisions of its courts on corporate and stockholder issues have major national importance.

Offhand, I can't think of why MA or TX would worked on ahead of DE. Of course it is possible that the volume of material from each state is a factor...it could be that DE is being done in the first group but has a lot of material so won't finish in 2016. I've never taken a look at the volume of each state's output and so have no idea which state courts handle the most cases.

View on HN

I'm surprised Delaware is even anywhere near the top. Notwithstanding corporate law, the number of cases handled annually by the listed states are at least one, perhaps two orders of magnitude higher than Delaware. New York and California, for example, have nearly 80 times as many lawyers as Delaware (https://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/original-resear...). Also consider the target audience. Corporate law litigants are more likely to have access to private databases. Criminal law precedent should be a focus here, and most every other state in the union is going to have more criminal law precedent than Delaware.

[edit: acknowledging DE is in the hopper.]

"Ravel intends to make case law available as it comes through from HLS, and the California law should be online by the end of 2015. New York cases are next; Delaware, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Texas are close behind." [0]

Sounds like DE is up there.

[0] http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/12/oa/harvard-launches-fre...

My guess: MA because that's where Harvard is located. Others because they have large populations.

Large populations of corporations: Delaware, NY, CA, Illinois

Large populations of lawsuits: Texas (IP), MA (civil rights)

People populations are less relevant.

There is quite a bit of IP law handled in Texas thanks to patent trolls in East Texas. So I can see there being some interest in getting it covered. MA? Maybe it is interesting from a historical perspective since it is one of the older areas of the US.

Maybe because Harvard is in Massachusetts? ;-)

Those patent cases are in federal court and so will be part of the Federal collection, not the Texas collection. The Texas collection is decisions of the Texas state courts, not Federal courts that are located in Texas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com