J-Law 39 — "Attorney Records," Not "Public Records"

Nothing may be called a "public record" if it is not actually accessible to the public. Records that, in practice, only attorneys can reach are "attorney records" and shall not be used in any proceeding against a non-attorney who lacks that access.

Test the phrase "public record" against reality. Court files locked inside systems that require attorney registration, dockets reachable only through paid gateways, archived records demanding in-person visits to distant courthouses during working hours, out-of-state files that clerks will release only to licensed counsel — the public, in practice, cannot reach large portions of the record that bears its name. Attorneys can, through credentials, subscriptions, and professional channels built for them.

Language this dishonest does legal work. Litigants are charged with constructive notice of "public" filings they had no genuine means to see, then bound or defeated by them. Fair notice is a bedrock due-process requirement, and notice by fiction fails it completely. Naming these materials what they are — attorney records — and barring their use against anyone who lacked real access forces a simple choice on the system: open the records to the actual public, or stop pretending the public ever had them.

The expected counterargument: constructive notice is a necessary legal fiction, and litigants bear responsibility for investigating records relevant to their cases. Necessity is the claim to examine. Fictions earn their place in law when they approximate reality closely enough to be fair — notice by publication survives because publication genuinely reaches people. A fiction charging a person with knowledge of a record she was structurally barred from obtaining approximates nothing; it simply assigns her the consequences of the system's own gatekeeping. Diligence arguments presume an open door, and the entire premise of this law is the documented, locked one: the litigant who traveled the channels available to her and was refused because she lacked a bar card did investigate, and the investigation failed by design. Responsibility follows capacity. A system that withholds the capacity has forfeited the right to assign the responsibility.