Listed below are the databases included in Legalbitstream, including the years covered and our updating policy for each database. As of the July 2007, our databases consisted of over 150,000 documents. 

Unlike some other legal research databases, documents in the Legalbitstream database include tables, images, exhibits and appendices in order to present complete documents, fashioned as closely as practicable to the original format. As a result, the user is provided with better information, however some files may take a long time to download.  

The case law databases include our own selection of U.S. federal court opinions that discuss issues involving federal income and estate taxes. More recently issued opinions will be in “slip opinion” format (slip opinions are opinions in the original format initially issued by the court, which is subject to revision). If an opinion is a “reported opinion” and the opinion is included in our database in its reported format, there will be a citation (located in the header information at the top of the opinion) to the source where the opinion is published. (Reported opinions are opinions which are intended for publication and may be relied upon for legal precedence, in accordance with the rules of the court.) Opinions that are not reported opinions will have a notation at the beginning of the opinion that the opinion is “unpublished,” “not reported” or some words to that effect, provided that we have some notice from the courts or otherwise that such opinions are not intended for publication. Our goal is to retrieve and include in our database all published opinions issued by the courts and as many unpublished opinions as we can find. However, given our current collection procedures, our databases will not contain a substantial number of unpublished opinions. It is also possible that we may miss some published opinions (despite our efforts to retrieve all published opinions).  

A substantial amount of Case law will generally be added to our database within one or two weeks after becoming available to the public from the courts, especially if the case law is issued from the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Circuit Courts, the U.S. Tax Court or the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. A few opinions from federal circuit courts and a substantial number of opinions from federal district courts may not be added to the database until a few months after being issued by the courts.

 

“IRS Materials” consist of documents published in the Internal Revenue Bulletin (“IRB”), and non-published documents which can be retrieved directly from the IRS. Documents published in the IRB which are included in our database consist of Revenue Rulings, Revenue Procedures, Announcements, Notices, Treasury Decisions (temporary and final regulations), Proposed Regulations, Delegation Orders and Executive Orders

IRS Materials also consist of IRS documents which are not published in the IRB, which consist of Private Letter Rulings, Actions on Decisions, General Counsel Memoranda, Technical Memoranda and News Releases.

IRS Materials will generally be added to our database within one or two weeks after becoming available to the public.