OK, I’m going to ease back into posting here with some easy ones.
The California Courts website now has up-to-date versions (i.e., the versions effective as of January 1, 2008) of the following posted:
Judicial Council Forms. This is a nice list, as it is only of the forms that have changes or been added, and the page includes a link to download all of the changed and new forms in a single zip file with one click. This list includes two forms for appeals, APP-003 — Appellant’s Notice Designating Record on Appeal (Unlimited Civil Case) and APP-008 — Certificate of Interested Entities or Persons. The latter is a brand new form valid statewide, a nice change from the district-specific forms in use up to this time. There are LOTS of changes to probate, family, and juvenile law forms. If you want forms already formatted to allow you to fill in the blanks, however, you’ll have to navigate to the form you want through the home page for forms.
California Rules of Court. This link is to the updated rules in toto, not just a list of changes.
Superior Court Local Rules. You’ll want to bookmark this page, which provides links to the local rules of every superior court with local rules available on-line (which, even in 2008, still does not include every county!), listed alphabetically by county.
The Judicial Council is also seeking comment, due by January 25, 2008, on a wide variety of topics, including proposed rules and legislation regarding discovery of electronic information (PDF download).
UPDATE (1/4/08): The Appellate Practitioner notes one of the rules changes is that the Supreme Court copies of briefs filed in the Court of Appeal may now be served by e-mail. That’ll save a little postage!