Public Records

Public Records For any edition of The Appellant, past, present and future. This part is of the utmost important. Though non-fiction turned fiction (fic·ti·tious) in most cases, public records and research is vital to the success of any good writer and story.

Regardless of the truth needed and not found in the interactions with other parties, records and research do have a funny way of existing and disappearing or becoming impossible to request and retrieve regardless of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). The record retention periods are ironically coincidental to records being needed and then not being available as well from lawyers, legal professionals, etc. The State Bar associations have their own kwerks and keep public information requests sometimes stonewalled. They do protect their own regardless of what the law might tell them otherwise to do; ethics might not be a strong suit, let alone annual pro-bono requirements and reporting of said statistics and compliance to the law. If you need access to public records regarding your case as an appellant, the PACE system is interesting and not very user friendly to the untrained public on how to efficiently search and use the system without incurring substantial undue costs. The research in PACE regarding The Appellant for Mila was exhaustive and ironically easy at best given the aptitude of our researchers who had decades of advanced information research skills in other systems. Be sure to get some advice and guidance prior to using PACE and other legal research systems regarding civil and criminal records. The publisher of Mila's Story spent a solid 45 days on and off again optimizing search results and records, keywords and downloads without incurring substantial cost, but there was a hefty learning curve.