Tips Tuesday: Use Newspaper Archives to Find Cases
Not all mystery cases are caused by a mistyped citation or AI hallucination. Sometimes people remember only the vague details of a case (“it was an employment case involving someone who insisted on dressing up as a clown at work”) but not the names of the parties. While they may have a vague idea of when it happened, people tend to remember events as being more recent than they actually were.
If you’re missing crucial information about a case and can’t seem to track it down with the information that you have been given, it can be helpful to check news archives. Assuming the case was interesting enough to be reported in the news, finding a news article will allow you to establish the date of the case and the names of the parties for a more targeted search in the case law. Furthermore, given that older cases are more likely to be unreported, this may end up being the only information available on the case.
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