New Jersey’s View on “Public” Records (part 2)
(To illustrate the difficulties consumers face in accessing public records on attorney licensing, we are providing an ongoing account of Avvo’s attempt to obtain attorney licensing information from the state of New Jersey. See part 1 for the beginning of the saga.)
I sent my first letter to the New Jersey Supreme Court clerk on December 4, 2007, asking for basic information on attorneys licensed in NJ: Name, year of admission, business contact information and current bar status. I heard back promptly in a letter dated December 7, I was informed rather obliquely that:
“The project involving the collation of electronic data in respect to members of the bar . . . has not yet been completed. Certain aspects of the project have taken substantially more time than anticipated. These areas include but are not limited to business contact information and current bar status. Until these areas are addressed, we are not making the information available to outside vendors.”
This response puzzled me, as presumably the Court at least knows who its members are, where to send their annual dues invoices, and whether they are in good standing to practice law in New Jersey. So I tried calling the clerk’s staff to get more clarity. I learned from a staffer in the Clerk’s office that the Court is building a database application to process its attorney licensing information, and that the project is delayed, with no end in sight.
No problem we don’t want their database application; we just want the underlying data. And we can take it in almost any form, even paper if need be. So off went my next letter , on December 19, noting that we only wanted the underlying data, offering to pay for the costs of production, and suggesting that a call between our technical experts to surface any issues would be helpful.
I also noted that I wasn’t making a vendor request, but rather a request for information under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA; NJ Statute 47:1A et seq).
Blazingly fast, I had my response: In a fax the very next day, the Clerk’s office informed me that OPRA doesn’t apply to the NJ judiciary (look for a separate post on this issue), and that bar admission records are confidential (!!). I was also informed that the problem with the database was that there was no system in place to collect and maintain admissions data accurately. In closing, I was told:
“Unfortunately, ongoing issues make it impossible for me to give you a date by which an answer to your inquiry will be available.”
Flummoxed, I wrote right back the afternoon of December 20, taking issue with the Court’s position on records confidentiality and trying to get to the bottom of the systems limitations on accessing the data.
As the new year dawned, I had received no response.
Next: What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate . . .
