appellate jurisdiction since their creation under the United States Constitution. The early reporters were unofficial as they were published solely by private entrepreneurs, but in the middle of the 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court and many state supreme courts began publishing their own official reporters. In the 1880s, the West Publishing Company started its National Reporter System (NRS), which is a family of regional reporters, each of which collects select state court opinions from a specific group of states. The National Reporter System is now the dominant unofficial reporter system in the U.S., and 21 states have discontinued their own official reporters and certified the appropriate West regional reporter as their official reporter. West and its rival, LexisNexis, both publish unofficial reporters of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. West also publishes the West American Digest System to help lawyers find cases in its reporters. West digests and reporters have always featured a "Key Numbering System" with a unique number for every conceivable legal topic. The U.S. federal government does not publish an official reporter for the federal courts at the circuit and district levels. However, just as the UK government uses the ICLR reporters by default, the U.S. courts use the unofficial West federal reporters for cases after 1880, which are the Federal Reporter (for courts of appeals) and the Federal Supplement (for district courts). For cases from federal circuit and district courts prior to 1880, U.S. courts use Federal Cases. The Federal Reporter, the Federal Supplement, and Federal Cases are all part of the NRS and include headnotes marked with West key numbers. West's NRS also includes several unofficial state-specific reporters for large states like California. The NRS now numbers well over 10,000 volumes; therefore, only the largest law libraries maintain a full hard copy set in their on-site collections. Some government agencies use (and require attorneys and agents practicing before them to cite to) certain unofficial reporters that specialize in the types of cases likely to be material to matters before the agency. For example, for both patent and trademark practice, the United States Patent and Trademark Office requires citation to the United States Patents Quarterly (USPQ). Today, both Westlaw and LexisNexis also publish a variety of official and unofficial reporters covering the decisions of many federal and state administrative agencies which possess quasi-judicial powers. A recent trend in American states is for bar associations to join a