By Dylan Drummond
For the past several decades, the Texas Supreme Court’s longtime public information staff attorney—Osler McCarthy—lovingly, laboriously, and manually emailed the court’s Friday orders to anyone who had asked to be added to an email distribution list he maintained.
With Osler’s retirement last month, the court has now semi-automated this email notification system, beginning with this past Friday’s order list delivered on October 1. Anyone who had previously signed up on Osler’s email list has been migrated over to the new system. In addition, anyone not included on the prior distribution list may sign up for the new subscription service via this link on the court’s website. The new service will disseminate the court’s weekly orders to those subscribed each Friday.
The weekly orders email includes links not only to that week’s order list but also to summaries of any opinions included in the orders as well. The court’s Twitter account also posts links to the weekly orders list and any case-specific special orders that may be rendered. The court’s weekly orders email will come from the court’s clerk, Blake Hawthorne, and will appear in substantially similar form to this:
Rolling Substantive Caselaw Update
Beginning this month, the court has also graciously posted a substantive caselaw update going back over the past year, accessible on the Practice Before the Court page (preview shown below). When you arrive at the webpage, navigate to the “Supreme Court Home” box on the left side of the screen, and click on “Supreme Court of Texas Update Paper.”
The current iteration summarizes opinions released from August 2020 through September 2021, but the court will post updated versions of the paper periodically going forward at the same link.
Dylan Drummond is the 2021-2022 chair of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section.