Reposted with permission from AALL Spectrum, Volume 27, Number 6 (July/August 2023), pgs 48-50. By Rachel Green, Faculty Services Librarian; Caitlin Hunter, Reference Librarian; Sherry Leysen, Reference Librarian and Lynn McClelland, Reference Librarian, UCLA, Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library

Tips for locating court records in non-U.S. jurisdictions (and why we should appreciate PACER more). Legal researchers in the U.S. often request access to information about cases in which they are not directly involved as part of their research process. The motivation can range from theoretical, such as a professor writing an article about a legal issue of interest, to strategic, such as a litigator attempting to see which arguments succeeded or failed in similar matters. Whatever the reason, for researchers accustomed to easy access to dockets and documents from other cases, it can be disappointing to realize that non-U.S. jurisdictions typically do not have an equivalent to PACER, the U.S. federal courts’ electronic records system. Even when international case access is possible, there are often limitations. In the course of helping our own patrons seeking to access foreign case documents, we decided to build a LibGuide that could be used by our colleagues around the world. The LibGuide is a work in progress; following are some takeaways we have outlined thus far.”