Court officials announced this week a new plan for putting some court records online. That day, Judge Larry Smukler, who's leading the effort, got an email giving him the website for the Associated Press story.

But Smukler couldn't read it, and neither could most anyone else in the state's courts. The problem: They don't have reliable internet access - not even for legal research.

"I have to go home and use my own broadband access," said Smukler, a Belknap County Superior Court judge who lives in Concord. "It's very frustrating." His court and a couple of others has a dial-up connection, but it's such a low speed that Smukler doesn't bother.

It will remain that way for a while, but the World Wide Web is in sight.

The state's district, superior and probate courts are in the process of getting a new in-house computer system for managing case files. The new system will finally allow a court clerk in Concord to check the status of a case in Laconia online from her desk. (Now, such a search requires a phone call and manual research at the other end.) But there's another perk: The heavy duty telephone lines needed for the new case management system will also support superfast internet access.

That means court clerks will no longer have to drive to state Supreme Court in Concord to do their legal research. And judges will be able to more quickly decide legal questions mid-trial.

"Electronic legal research has been around since I was in law school in the early 1980s," said Judge Edward Fitzgerald of the Merrimack County Superior Court. "We do not have it."

Here's the bad news: It will take two to three years to get all 64 courts connected to the web, because it's a huge job and the state is using its own staff to do the installation to save money.

The Concord District Court was the first to get the new system in January; the other district courts are next. The family courts will follow, and then the superior and probate courts.

At each court, staff must not only set up the new system, but transfer old case information.

Smukler doesn't know where he's at on the list, but he knows this: "Not as far as I'd like to be."

Court staff have e-mail, but they say even that is inadequate because the lines carrying mail are so slow and are routed through a single server in Concord. Around the holidays, someone from the Rockingham County Superior Court clogged the entire court's email system for two hours by sending an electronic Christmas card, Smukler said. It would have zipped over most e-mail setups, but it crawled over the court's.

The state bought Smukler dial-up internet access - with an AOL account -- a few years ago when he was overseeing a big tobacco case and wanted to experiment with electronic filing. When attorneys in the case filed a motion, he received an email alerting him so he could log on and read the filing. He no longer relies on it for any substantial work.

"You'd twiddle your thumbs while the screens" loaded, Smukler said.

When he or his court clerks need to research cases, they usually don't bother with the AOL account. They drive to Concord to use the law libraries at the Supreme Court or Franklin Pierce Law Center. Or they do it at home before or after work.

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