Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Non-lawyers can access Westlaw and search the databases themselves. There are restrictions on what information you can seek and how you can use it, but the restrictions apply to lawyers just as they do to non-lawyers. Besides, records of criminal convictions are not restricted. You can see Westlaw's explanation of these restrictions at http://west.thomson.com/about/privacy/records.aspx.

The same information is available from other sources, so you do not need to have a Westlaw account to get it. One of these sources is KnowX.com; I believe it is a subsidiary of the same parent company that owns Westlaw and that it thus has access to essentially the same database. KnowX and several other similar companies are readily accessible via the internet.

Note that some courts provide less information to these databases than do others. A search that turns up nothing does not necessarily mean that the subject has a clean record. But most convictions are reflected in the data, so using one of these services (or a competitor) will probably get you the information you want.