[EL] Help annotate Shelby County

[Jacob Heller]

Hi all,

I am a long-time reader of the mailing list, although this is my first time
posting.

I'm reaching out to ask for some help on a website I'm working on,
Casetext.com. The idea of the site is to be a free and open resource for
legal texts that is annotated by the community. Our belief is that
people shouldn't
need to pay for Westlaw to get a great understanding of the law. We also
think this will have a lot of pedagogical utility -- students will be able
to read cases annotated by interesting people, possibly even their
professors.

I'm contacting this mailing list because we're trying to put together one
example of the potential of the website, and we chose Shelby County. During
the years I've been on this mailing list, I've always been impressed by the
thoughtfulness of the discussion (sometimes contentious, but always
respectful), and that's exactly what I'd like to capture in the annotations
on Casetext.

I would really appreciate it if people from the mailing list stopped by and
left an annotation. Really anything would help -- a link to an article
you've written or someone else's article that you think is insightful,
short commentary on a paragraph that you think is important or interesting,
or even just a tag on a paragraph to help others quickly scan the case for
subject matter. Rick has generously already added a few annotations which
are great examples of the content we're looking for on the site.

If you're interested, you can sign up at
http://www.casetext.com/accounts/login. The site is still in "private beta"
because we're still working on some features, but you can use the code
"electionlaw" to get in. A link to the Shelby
County<http://www.casetext.com/case/shelby-county-v-holder/>case is on
the homepage (as is Citizens
United<http://www.casetext.com/case/citizens-united-v-fed-election-commn-3/>).
Feel free to contribute to any other case though!

Please also feel free to log in and check it out even if you don't feel
like contributing. I'd love to hear your thoughts -- e-mail me any time at
jake at casetext.com, or call me any time (seriously) at 408-505-1614.

To answer a few questions I get a lot:
- Everyone's annotations will always be free and open to the public (for
the curious, they are licensed under CC
BY-SA<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/>
).
- All legal texts (cases, statutes, regulations, etc.) will always be free
and open to the public.
- We're developing a "premium" version of Casetext aimed at big law firms
that will add extra functionality to the basic tool -- this is how we
intend to fund the product and keep it free. But we'll never put
information behind a pay wall.
- A lot of people ask us who's running the site. Right now, site is run
entirely by my co-founder and friend, Joanna Huey, and I. We met when I was
the President of the Stanford Law Review and she was the President of the
Harvard Law Review. We both ended up clerking for Judge Michael Boudin on
the First Circuit where we became close friends, and we both left our jobs
at law firms to work on this website.

Best regards,
Jake
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