CHAPTER 14 USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE PREPARATION OF AN OPINION, AND CALCULATIONS WORKSHOP
| Jurisdiction | United States |
(Jan 2014)
USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE PREPARATION OF AN OPINION, AND CALCULATIONS WORKSHOP
Jonathan D. Lear
Attorneys Lear & Lear L.L.P. 1
Salt Lake City, Utah
[Page 14-i]
PHILLIP WM. LEAR is a partner in the Salt Lake City firm of Lear & Lear L.L.P. He practices in the areas of natural resources and public lands law, with emphasis on acquisition, exploration, permitting, and production of oil, gas, and mining properties; oil and gas conservation matters; complex title examinations; administrative hearings and appeals; natural resources litigation and appeals; mergers and acquisitions; mineral financing; water rights; and natural resources law on Indian reservations, and has served as expert witness for natural resources matters. Mr. Lear is a past-President of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America, and is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award and the Lawyer of the Year Award from the Utah State Bar, Energy and Natural Resources Section.
JONATHAN LEAR is a partner in the Salt Lake City office of Lear & Lear L.L.P. His practice covers a broad range of areas related to natural resources and public lands law, and he has extensive experience in title matters in North Dakota, Montana, Utah, and California. The primary focus of his practice is the preparation of drilling, drilling and division order, acquisition, financing, perfection, and supplemental title opinions covering private, state, federal, and tribal lands, for both oil and gas and hard minerals. In addition, Jonathan represents clients on lease acquisition, transactional, and financing title matters, and has extensive experience preparing title-curative documents, negotiating leases, and handling administrative matters before the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining. He earned his B.S. from the University of Utah in 2000 (go Utes!) and his J.D. from the Howard University School of Law (2004).
SYNOPSIS
§ 14.01 Introduction 1
§ 14.02 Technology Title Searches 2
[1] The Twentieth Century Examiner 2
[a] Client Contact 2
[b] Title Repositories and Technology 2
[2] Examinations in the Twenty-First Century 3
[a] Client Contact 3
[b] BLM Records 3
[c] State Land 4
[d] Indian Lands 4
§ 14.03 Examinations From Abstracts 5
[1] Examining from Abstracts 5
§ 14.04 Analysis and Chaining 5
[1] Twentieth Century Chaining 5
[2] Twenty-First Century Chaining 8
[3] Chaining 9
[a] Chain Template 9
[b] Run Sheet Template 10
[c] Building the Chain 10
[d] Conventions 10
[e] Run Sheet Template 10
[f] Second Link 11
[g] Multiple Owner Template 11
[h] Next Link 12
§ 14.05 Calculations Spreadsheet 13
[1] Tract and Unit Calculations: Template 13
[2] Tract and Unit Calculations: Tracts 1 Through 4 14
§ 14.06 The Title Opinion: Tabulation Of Ownership 18
[1] Creating the Title Opinion 18
§ 14.07 Selected Title Issues and Technology 21
[Page 14-ii]
[1] Case #1: Title Gap--Corporate Merger (Google Search) 21
[2] Case #2: Death of Joint Tenant (Social Security Death Index) 22
[3] Case #3: Corporate Name Change & Mergers (BLM Mergers Index) 23
[4] Case #4: Title Gap - Online Recorder's Records [NDRIN] 24
[5] Case #5: Land Usage: Use for Church Purposes [Google Earth] 25
[6] Case #6: Boundaries and Acreage (Google Earth & BLM LR2000) 30
[7] Case #7: Other programs [Paint and Paint Shop Pro] 34
[8] Case#8:-Oil and Gas Commission Records and Websites 35
§ 14.08 The Propriety of Extra-Record Sources 37
[1] The Role of Record Title 37
[2] Extra-Record Searches 37
§ 14.09 The Propriety of Extra-Record Sources 38
[Page 14-1]
.§ 14.01 Introduction
You are here to develop better title skills. We attend these Institutes to broaden our understanding of legal theory and practice, to improve our issue-spotting skills, and to better communicate in writing our legal conclusions in a comprehensive, yet concise, succinct, accurate, readable and user-friendly manner. After all, this is what we are about.
Today, Jonathan and I hope to expose you to an amazing new world of title technology. We share the same love of title, see trees despite the forests, and are driven to solve the puzzle--any puzzle. I suppose that these are good traits to have as title examiners. But Jonathan and I bring a unique perspective--a generational perspective, if you will--to the game. And, it is a game, is it not? I earned my spurs in the vaults of county recorders fighting for abstract books and hoping to keep my take-off sheets out of the laser vision of courthouse prospectors. My office was decorated with mounds of Deister Ward & Witcher abstracts. Chaining was an art form, and the more complex chains adorned my walls well beyond the euphoria of discovery or the disappointment of a duster.
Jonathan, on the other hand, birthed with a keyboard in one hand and a Sony Walkman in the other. Anything with buttons, animated screens, and paddles or toggle switches had his rapt attention. He was the Super Mario Brothers Maven, the Archimedes of Atari. He was always plugged in, wired up, and, in his case turned on. He can chain the title faster, track and calculate interests quicker, and identify and clear the defects sooner, than I could ever hope do to--all because he has access to data. His data source is four keystrokes away.
This is a clinical paper. Indeed, it takes a radical departure from the scholarly products for which the Foundation is known. Both paper and presentation will be informal, bordering on folksy, and may risk sounding like recitations from a technical manual rather than cutting-edge wizardry. We hope it will be as useful as it may be boring.
[Page 14-2]
The prospectus for this Institute announced that we will commence with a presentation of technology and segue into a workshop. The workshop would have worked if we had 150 registrants seated in a school room format with PC's connected to the Internet. We had grand designs. But, a workshop is not practical for 540 attendees. Nevertheless, we want to make the presentation interactive and achieve some aspects of a seminar workshop by involving you participants; and we will. We have reserved a few minutes at the end of each section for your comments as to how you apply technology to your projects.
Finally, we have added two schedules to this paper. The first are the PowerPoint slides that correspond to the slides identified in this paper and appear at Schedule "A". The second is the Schedule of Commercial Programs and Websites that appears at Schedule "B".
.§ 14.02 Technology Title Searches
.[1] The Twentieth Century Examiner
JDL: Dad, back in your day how did you commence a title examination?
PWL: Back in my day? This is still my day. Yet, I catch your drift. You want to know how I engaged in title projects in the Halcion days of the 1970's and 1980's, right? (Well maybe not the 80's and the oil busts). You want a glimpse of the old ways to segue into the new-fangled?
JDL: Right! No disrespect intended.
PWL: This is how it went down.
. [a] Client Contact
I received a crises call from a landman announcing the drilling was rigging up and needed a drilling title opinion a week ago. Maybe things are not so different today. He identified the lands and the lease (if federal, Indian, state) to be examined and requested an opinion. In calmer times I received a letter.
. [b] Title Repositories and Technology
I began at the BLM and gathered my records. Technology was a photocopier or maybe even a pocket camera, and, oh yes, a hand-held, business or scientific calculator, to find gross and net interests. I built a BLM abstract and moved on to the BIA or Utah Division of State Lands and Forestry (now "SITLA") and did the same. My last stop was the county recorder. Before the photocopier, I transcribed relevant documents onto my Tract Index Sheet, located the applicable instruments in the Official Records, and chained while I went along.
Slide #4: Take off sheet (Tract Index)
[Page 14-3]
Once recorder's purchased photocopiers, I built a photocopy abstract and chained in my motel room at night. I returned to fill gaps in the morning. Again, technology was the advent of the photocopier and the hand-held calculator.
.[2] Examinations in the Twenty-First Century
PWL: How do you do it today?
JDL: I do it a bit differently.
. [a] Client Contact
In most instances a client will email saying that an abstract is being prepared and I will be seeing it in a week or two. Sometimes I receive a drilling schedule spanning many months with spud dates. At other times the request for an opinion comes with client-prepared ownership plats, lease data sheets--all electronically. Then I take each opinion in order at my own pace--which has for the past six years been frantic.
In yet other cases, I receive a call from our receptionist stating that I have four banker's boxes of abstracts--for one opinion waiting at the front desk; or I receive an email alerting me to enter a DropBox and download documents preliminary to a title examination. Simple technology is at play from the "get-go."
In rare cases, typically involving smaller clients, I also receive a crises call (some things don't change) stating that they needed a DTO or DOTO yesterday. In these instances we will do a stand-up and obtain the necessary information ourselves. You know--the old way.
PWL. So how does your "stand-up" proceed?
JDL. Dad, usually it is not a "stand-up." It is "sit-down."
Slide #5 BLM GLO Website
. [b] BLM Records
I start at the BLM, as well. I do everything--well almost everything--on line in my office. I proceed to the BLM Websites and download plats, Historical Indices ("HI's"), land status reports, mining claim reports, and patents, surveys, if necessary. If a federal lease is involved, I download Serial Register Pages. Assuming federal...
To continue reading
Request your trial