"public"—Use of the word "public" is meant to be expansive and to not narrowly apply to only the traditional users of legal documents (i.e., lawyers). Early efforts at publishing court decisions on the Internet have shown that there is interest in these documents that goes beyond lawyers doing legal research. Potential users could include businesses, advocacy groups, journalists, genealogists, and the simply curious. One of the drawbacks of the current system of commercialized distribution is that the profit drive causes publishers to focus on specific target markets to the exclusion of other members of the public.

"access"—The use of the word "access" is also meant to be expansive. The meaning of access has changed along with technological changes in the delivery of information. Although the public's right to access public documents might have been met by a court decision's availability through a local courthouse or library, the meaning of "access" should keep pace with technology. In short, access yesterday is not the same as access today.

"court opinions"—While court opinions provide a specific legal function, they are also public records that can provide a vast array of valuable information beyond their original purpose. As an expression of the law, it is important that the public have access to them to remained informed on the law. Many court opinions, however, also provide important historical information on legal concepts, social issues, and the people involved in those disputes (e.g., Is it enough to say that the decision in Brown v. Board of Education is just a court document?). Viewed in this broad scope, the information contained in court opinions plays an important role in educating and informing the citizens of a healthy democracy.

"lower the cost of legal research"—Although lawyers wouldn't seem to be so impoverished that the average person should be concerned about saving them money, the high cost of online legal research is passed along to clients and raises the general availability and access to legal services. As legal costs rise, quality legal services increasingly rise beyond what many people can afford. Lowering the cost legal research would take some of the pressure off rising legal costs and increase the availability and quality of legal research available to those serving clients with limited resources.

"inspire innovation"—The few legal research publishers that provide general databases of court opinions dampen innovation in the development of research tools. While these publishers try to innovate and certainly have an incentive to create better research tools in competition with each other, the very small number of publishers limits potential innovations to only a few companies and requires innovation to align with the proprietary system of each company. By uncoupling the publication of the source documents from the research tools used to navigate them, OpenGavel hopes to lower barriers and allow anyone with an innovative idea to pursue and develop it.

"nonprofit"—A profit-driven version of OpenGavel would by its nature undermine some of its own goals, including inclusion of certain under-served target markets, separation of source documents and research tools, and lower legal costs. While some revenue-generating steps may be taken to support the project (such as advertising or support services), the importance of revenue activities should remain secondary to the project's main goals.

"web-based publication"—As part of the expansive view of "access" discussed above, web-based publication allows the widest and cheapest means of distribution. The goal is not so much to be web-based, as it is to provide availability to largest number of people. A web-based system is the prefered method as long as it is the best means to meet that goal.

"use of open standards"—Open standards would allow third-party developers of research tools and others to more-freely integrate court documents in whatever manner they determine. Similar to being "web-based" open standards are not so much a goal as a means to meet the projects other goals of maximizing access and inspiring innovation. The project's vision of open standards also leads it to support similarly "open" forms of case citation, as opposed to the proprietary closed systems developed by commercial publishers.