1. Introduction. The New York State Law Reporting Bureau (LRB), established under Article 14 of the Judiciary Law, edits and publishes all of the decisions of the Court of Appeals and the Appellate Division, as well as selected decisions of the lower courts. These decisions are published in the New York Official Reports, which include the New York Reports, the Appellate Division Reports and the Miscellaneous Reports. Motion decisions of the Appellate Division and Appellate Term and additional lower court opinions are published only on line. The LRB operates under the direction of a State Reporter appointed by the Court of Appeals, with a designated Judge of the Court-currently Judge Eugene F. Pigott, Jr.- serving as the Court's liaison to the LRB. This is a report of the LRB's activities in 2008.

2. Committee on Opinions. Appellate Division Justice David B. Saxe was named the First Department's representative on the Committee on Opinions in February, replacing Justice Joseph P. Sullivan, who retired. The committee is established pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431, as implemented by the Rules Concerning Publication of Opinions in the Miscellaneous Reports (22 NYCRR part 7300), to hear appeals from judges who disagree with the State Reporter's determination not to publish an opinion in the Miscellaneous Reports.

3. James M. Flavin Centenary. A program honoring James M. Flavin, former State Reporter ( 1953-1976) and Clerk of the Court (1972-1974) was presented in May at Court of Appeals Hall. Mr. Flavin, who would have been 100 years old in 2008, was a pioneer in computer-assisted legal research. Speakers were Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye; New York State Bar Association president Kathryn Grant Madigan; Miles Bottrill, director of development, Syracuse University College of Law (Flavin's alma mater); and State Reporter Gary Spivey, whose article, Remembering James M. Flavin: The Origins (and Unintended Consequences) of Online Legal Research, was the lead article in the February 2008 issue of the New York State Bar Association Journal (80 NY St BJ 11 [Feb. 2008]). Remarks of the speakers, as well as photographs of the event, can be found on the LRB Web site at http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/history/flavin/Flavin_Main.htm.

4. Print publications. During 2008, the LRB prepared for publication two volumes of the New York Reports, 3d Series; 11 volumes of the Appellate Division Reports, 3d Series; and four volumes of the Miscellaneous Reports, 3d Series, for a total of 17 bound volumes, as planned. Two soft-cover interim volumes of the New York Reports, 3d Series, also were published.

       In addition, 53 weekly advance sheets and six bi-monthly Cumulative Tables and Index pamphlets were issued. These advance sheets contained 14,058 full opinions, memorandum decisions (not counting tabulars), and abstracts of opinions not published in print; 20,454 pages of opinions, memoranda and abstracts; and 12,540 headnotes, allocated as follows:

Compared to the prior year, the number of opinions, memoranda and abstracts increased 3.5% (mostly attributable to an increase in the number of Court of Appeals and Appellate Division decisions); pages increased by 3.8%; and the number of headnotes was essentially unchanged (because of a lower percentage of Appellate Division memoranda warranting full headnoting.)

5. Electronic publications.All decisions published in print also are published electronically. In addition, the LRB publishes the following decisions only electronically:

• Appellate term and trial court opinions not published in the printed Miscellaneous Reports. A total of 7,422 Appellate Term and trial court opinions were published only in electronic format in 2008.
  
  
• Motion decisions of the Appellate Division and Appellate Term. A total of 33,719 motion decisions were published electronically in 2008.

6. Selection of lower court opinions. During 2008, a total of 9,153 Appellate Term and trial court opinions were submitted for publication consideration, an increase of 894 or 10.8% over 2007. This number includes 995 opinions published on Web sites, in legal newspapers or otherwise brought to our attention and solicited from the authoring judges, or solicited for on-line publication to provide "opinion below" information for published Appellate Division decisions.

Of the opinions submitted, the LRB accepted 549 for publication in the Miscellaneous Reports and 7,422 for on-line publication, for a total of 7,971 acceptances, an increase of 316 or 4% compared to 2007, and an overall acceptance rate of 87%, compared to 93% in 2007.

7. Web site usage. The number of information requests submitted to the LRB Web site remained essentially unchanged from the prior year, while the number of visitors and visits declined, reflecting a decrease in the number of one-time visitors and an increase in the number of requests per visit by repeat visitors. A total of 435,659 separate visitors accessed the site, making 2,057,259 visits and 51,122,783 requests for information.

8. Style Manual distribution. A total of 1,617 copies of the printed 2007 Official Reports Style Manual were distributed to judges, court staff and others in 2008. An additional 6,203 copies were downloaded from the LRB Web site.

9. Product development. The LRB continued to enhance its CD-ROM, on-line services and Web site in 2008:

• The First Series was added to the New York Official Reports on CD-ROM in the January 2008 update. The product was limited to the Second Series when introduced in 1992, and the Third Series was added when that series was launched in 2004.



• A new Scope Notes on-line database was released in January. Integrated with the Official Reports Digest on Westlaw, it enables users to click on a Digest topic and display an explanation of the coverage of the topic, as well as cross-references to related topics.



• Appellate court motion decisions on the LRB Web site became full-text searchable in February by use of the Advanced Search engine (http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/lawReporting/Search) developed jointly by the LRB and the OCA Division of Technology. As with opinions, which have been searchable since 2005, motion decisions can be searched by word or phrase, as well as by party name, court, decision date, docket number or Slip Opinion citation. Prior to this enhancement, motion decisions could be searched only through a separate search engine that did not permit full-text searching.



• The New York Official Reports Citator was added to the LRB Web site in August. Like the existing Case Name and Citation Locator, the Citator provides the approved "cite-as" case name, book citation and year of decision for First and Second Series decisions. For Third Series decisions, the Citator adds judge name, court name, full date of decision, docket number and slip opinion citation; citations to the decision below and decision above; and a list of citing decisions. The citation services are found at http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/Citator_Menu.htm.



• Coverage of the LRB's Official Reports Service was extended back to 1993 in November. The Official Reports Service now provides free public access through the LRB Web site to all decisions published in the Official Reports for the past 15 years. When introduced in 2005, coverage went back to January 1, 2000.

10. Personnel. The LRB staff size remained unchanged in 2008. All appointments and promotions resulted from vacancies. The following personnel actions occurred during the year:

Retirements

• Law Reporting Assistant Valerie K. Winfield, in May, after 25 years of service.
• Deputy State Reporter Charles A. Ashe, in August, after 36 years of service.
• Law Reporting Assistant Carol J. Olson, in August, after 29 years of service.
• Law Reporting Assistant Linda Paonessa, in December, after 31 years of service.

Appointments

• Wesley J. Chest, in January, as a Computer Systems Programmer.
• Frank Touart, in November, as a PC Analyst.
• Michelle Nottke, in December, as a Legal Typist.

Promotions

• Cynthia A. DeViddio, in June, to Law Reporting Assistant.
• Angie Alvarez-Smith, in June, to Law Reporting Aide.
• William J. Hooks, in October, to Deputy State Reporter.
• Michael S. Moran, in December, to Assistant State Reporter.
• John W. Lesniak, in December, to Chief Legal Editor.
• Katherine D. LaBoda, in December, to Principal Legal Editor.
• Kathleen B. Hughes, in December, to Senior Legal Editor.
• Milagros Figueroa, in December, to Law Reporting Assistant.
• Lori Drumm, in December, to Law Reporting Aide.

11. Facilities. In connection with planning for the future relocation of the LRB's offices to Centennial Hall, Gary Spivey, Bill Hooks, Mike Moran and Cindy McCormick inspected renovation work at Centennial Hall in April . In addition, Gary, Bill and sometimes Mike continued to attend regular (usually every two weeks) status meetings with the architect and Court staff.

12. Equipment. The LRB's computer equipment was upgraded in 2008:

• A new file server was provided by OCA in March to replace our current production file server in support of our migration from a Novell NetWare network operating system to a Microsoft Windows 2003 network operating system.
• New computers, monitors and network printers were provided in July and November shipments from Thomson/West under the Official Reports publishing contract.

13. Editorial and office technology. Elements of the LRB technological infrastructure were modified in 2008:

• The Microsoft SQL Server database management system was installed and the process of migrating our Microsoft Access and Lotus Approach record-keeping databases to the new platform began in April. The first database to be migrated was our accounting system, followed in September by our three primary internal record-keeping databases: the Court of Appeals, Appellate Division and Miscellaneous databases, which contain logs of all decisions received for publication from those courts.
• The LRB migrated in July from the Novell NetWare network operating system to the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network operating system. As part of this migration, all LRB users became part of a Court of Appeals group ("domain") through which our security and access are managed.

14. Professional activities. LRB staff members participated in various professional activities:

• Gary Spivey attended the New York State Bar Association annual meeting, including a meeting of the Board of Editors of the Bar Association Journal, in New York City in January.
• John Lesniak attended the LegalTech New York legal technology conference in New York City in February.
• Eric Harrell attended Technical Advisory Group (TAG) meetings for court system network administrators at the Judicial Institute in White Plains in February and June.
• Milagros Figueroa, who chaired the 2007 State Employees Federated Appeal campaign at the LRB, and Sharon Hanson, who assisted, attended an awards luncheon in Latham in March. Milagros also attended the 2008 campaign kickoff/training session at the same location in September.
• Andy Ashe and Bill Hooks attended the annual meeting of the Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions in Pittsburgh in August.
• Gary Spivey attended the annual luncheon meeting of the American Society of Legal Writers (SCRIBES) in New York City in August.

• The LRB conducted a series of continuing legal education programs on the 2007 Style Manual. The program was presented to the staffs of the LRB in May; the Court of Appeals at Court of Appeals Hall in June; the Appellate Division, Third Department, at the LRB, also in June; the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, in Rochester in August; and the Appellate Division, First Department, in Manhattan and Appellate Division, Second Department, in Brooklyn, both in September.
• A program on "Preparation of Opinions for Publication in the Official Reports" was presented to Judges' clerks and Central Staff members at Court of Appeals Hall in September.

In addition, Gary Spivey was a panelist at a meeting of the Law Library Association of Greater New York in Manhattan in November. The topic was "Authentic Legal Information in the Digital Age: Is Online Legal Information Trustworthy?"

16. Public access practices. The LRB continued to implement the court system policy of expanding public access to court records while protecting sensitive personal identifying information. Free public access to decisions was expanded to include improved citator information for Third series decisions, full-text searching of appellate court motion decisions, and deeper coverage of older decisions, as discussed in section 9 of this report.

17. Visits and visitors. Among visits to the LRB in 2008, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, Judge Eugene F. Pigott, Jr., and members of the Court staff visited the LRB in October. The program consisted of a preview of a "Student Guide" that is being designed for the LRB Web site and for distribution in printed form to student visitors to the Centennial Hall museum.

Among visits made by LRB staff members, Gary Spivey and Mike Moran met with Judge Eugene F. Pigott, Jr. in his chambers at Court of Appeals Hall in April and October to discuss various LRB issues, including an option for Court of Appeals Judges to review edited decisions ("formats") in electronic form. The LRB is continuing to enhance the electronic option based on feedback from the Court.