News and Noteworthy

Social Law Library members can search state court dockets in Massachusetts and 44 other jurisdictions on Trellis.  You can search across states dockets without specifying the court, even if you don’t have a party’s full name; or search by any keywords of your choosing – statutory cites, attorney and firm names, pleadings, common actions, and more. Members can find real-world examples of motions and pleadings.

Read Social Law Executive Director Kyle K. Courtney's recent piece in The Library Journal - "Moving Beyond the Publisher Playbook: Why State-level Contract Law is Essential to the Future of Digital Library Rights."

The Massachusetts Superior Court seeks to fill four Research Attorney I positions. The Research Attorney position is a professional, permanent position within the Administrative Office of the Superior Court. Among other things, Research Attorneys help the Justices by conducting legal research and drafting memoranda, decisions, and orders.  We are looking for individuals to assist all the Justices of the Superior Court but primarily those justices sitting in Suffolk County (Boston), Bristol County (Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton), Western Massachusetts, and possibly another location.  

BOSTON, MA -- The Massachusetts Trial Court, in partnership with the Massachusetts Bar Association (MBA), today announced the launch of the MBA Volunteer Mediation Pilot Program, an initiative designed to expand access to mediation services in the Civil Session at the Suffolk County Superior Court. Beginning August 3, 2026, the pilot program will provide free mediation services in selected civil cases in which at least one party lacks the financial means to engage a private mediator.

The Library is pleased to announce the release of a brand new Administrative database containing the decisions of the Fire Prevention Regulatory Appeals Board (FPRAB).  The database is currently available to Library members onsite and to EZ-Plus database subscribers.  FBRAB can be purchased individually right now with two free months of access before the beginning of the Library’s new fiscal year.

The Social Law Library has added CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) validation tokens to our web hosting platform.  This upgrade requires an update to library and institutional proxy stanza formats.  The Library has worked with Harvard Law Library to author the following stanza for OCLC EZproxy:

Social Law Library Members save 15% off every book available on the American Bar Association Web Store.

Fastcase has recently merged with vLex and Clio, and is now being integrated into the vLex platform. Social Law Library members may have recently noticed that you can no longer opt out of the new interface by default when accessing it from our database page.

If you’d like to return the old Fastcase interface, you can do so with just a few clicks. In the top right corner of the vLex Fastcase website, click on the profile icon. A menu will drop down with your preferences. At the bottom, just above the Logout option, you can click on “Return to Fastcase 7”

The Justices and staff of the Supreme Judicial Court mourn the passing of Justice Barbara A. Lenk and they extend their condolences to Justice Lenk’s family. The Honorable Barbara A. Lenk devoted 27 years of her career to serving the people of Massachusetts as a judge, first on the Superior Court, then on the Appeals Court, and finally for nine years as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court.