Legal Research

Google Dictionary Has Legal Definitions

Posted on December 04, 2009
Google has invaded the legal world in yet one more way. It now offers a dictionary which includes legal terms. It's not exactly going to challenge Black's for authority or definitions, but it seems to have some value. Search for...

Library Etiquette Noted

Posted on December 04, 2009
As exam periods start in most law schools, a timely note of how students should conduct themselves in the law library appears in the Virginia Law Weekly, with the UVA Law Library Code of Etiquette. Food, noise, and the "hey,...

AALL Election Results In

Posted on December 04, 2009
Congratultions to all! Vice President/President-Elect (July 2010 - July 2011): Darcy Kirk Associate Dean for Library and Technology and Professor of Law University of Connecticut School of Law Treasurer (July 2010 - July 2013): Susan Lewis-Somers Associate Director for Public...

Friday Fun: The Daily Show on Eminent Domain

Posted on December 04, 2009
Hat tip to Matt Festa on Land Use Prof Blog who writes about this 2006 Daily Show episode that came out about a year after Kelo, "Apparently the town [in Long Island] proposed taking the [Deepdale] country club golf course...

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AALL Releases New Edition of How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers

Posted on December 04, 2009
AALL's Legal Information Services to the Public SIS has published a new edition of How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers. Hat tip to Bonnie Shucha, WisBlawg. [JH]

Retirement Planning Guide for Boomer Lawyers (and Law Librarians)

Posted on December 04, 2009
A quarter-million Boomer lawyers are expected to start retiring by 2011. Lawyers at Midlife: Laying the Grouwndwork for the Road Ahead by Michael Long, John Clyde and Pat Funk offers them a detailed guide for retirement that includes a set...

Reminder: BlogTalkRadio's The Law Librarian Program to Discuss Google SLOJ This Afternoon

Posted on December 04, 2009
On this afternoon's The Law Librarian program, Richard Leiter, co-host Marcia Dority Baker, Greg Lambert and Roger Skallbeck will be discussing Google Scholar's Legal Opinions and Journals with Google Scholar Chief Engineer, Anurag Acharya. Talk about a hot topic! The...

Opening: Educational Services Law Librarian, PhoenixLaw

Posted on December 04, 2009
Primary duties of the Educational Services Law Librarian will include: Creating, preparing, and teaching legal research modules; Providing reference service (includes weekend and evening rotation); Creating research guides and promotional materials for resources and workshops; Participating in the Lawyering Process...

Vote for the Best Book Covers of 2009 by Dec. 7

Posted on December 04, 2009
Amazon has "nominated 60 especially eye-catching and evocative covers from 2009 and opened up the voting to you in 10 categories. (The first round of voting goes through December 7, and then you'll be able to vote for one of...

Social Media Use at Various Types of Law Libraries Noted

Posted on December 03, 2009
Here is a brief follow-up to James B. Levy's post from October 27th, Social Media Use At Work - What Employers Do and Don't Allow. That post covered a survey of corporate access to various social media by employees. LLRX...

On Nudging AALL to Support GPO's Digitization of Legacy Documents

Posted on December 03, 2009
Betsy McKenzie is calling on law librarians to nudge AALL to get involved by supporting efforts to digitize 2.2 million legacy GPO documents, something already supported by ALA and ARL. "We are professionals and have joined as members in a...

The Future of Law e-Books: Jason Wilson Responds to Eugene Volokh

Posted on December 03, 2009
In his series of very interesting blog posts, Jason Wilson responds to Eugene Volokh?s series of posts on the future of e-Books and the law. Definitely a must-read. [JH]

Neem: Academic Libraries Should Stick to Their Core Mission

Posted on December 03, 2009
Faced with declining funding, Johann Neem believes academic libraries are changing their mission rather than fighting to save an important academic institution. "Rather than make clear why we need academic libraries, the library?s leaders are seeking instead to become vague...

AAUP Calls for Placing Adjunct Faculty on Tenure Track

Posted on December 03, 2009
In Conversion of Appointments to the Tenure Track (2009), the AAUP calls for placing adjunct faculty on tenure track. From the Report: With respect to faculty tenure, the Association holds to the following tenets: With the exception of brief special....

Opening: Librarian, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, New Orleans

Posted on December 03, 2009
The Fifth Circuit Library System headquarters library in New Orleans is seeking an experienced law librarian to provide reference services to the federal judiciary throughout Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The library system serves over 200 federal judges and related court...

Headnote Numbers in Texts of Google SLOJ Opinions?!

Posted on December 02, 2009
Richard Leiter reports that "a few searches in Google SLOJ have retrieved cases that have headnote numbers embedded in them." No headnotes, no key numbers, "but the headnote numbers themselves are clearly embedded in the text of the cases" he...

Free Political Lectures Available Via the Web

Posted on December 02, 2009
Online College has posted a collection of of links titled 100 Awesome Open Lectures for Political Minds. Some specific lectures include American Political Thought, The Supreme Court, Civil Liberties, and Civil Rights, and Law and Society. More generalized subject areas...

Google Book Settlement: On Taking the Public Good Into Consideration By Congressional Intervention

Posted on December 02, 2009
If the public good matters at all in the Google Book Settlement litigation, Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard suggests two solutions in his New York Review of Books think piece, Google and the New Digital Future....

Advice for Law Profs (and Legal Research Instructors) on Legal Education

Posted on December 02, 2009
Teaching Law by Design: Engaging Students from the Syllabus to the Final Exam (Carolina Academic Press, June 1, 2009) should be mandatory reading for new law professors, regardless of their subject matter and whether they teach casebook or skills courses...

Did Lawyers' Claim That "No Effort" Made to Extradite Polanski in Court Filings Lead to His Recent Arrest in Switzerland?

Posted on October 01, 2009
"Yes." Two law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times that accusations in court documents filed by Polanski's attorneys led prosecutors to look for a new opportunity to extradite him which in term led to his recent arrest in Switzerland....

Republicans in the Majority: Snapshot Stats of Members of Congress Twitter Use

Posted on October 01, 2009
The CRS report, Social Networking and Constituent Communication: Member Use of Twitter During a Two-Week Period in the 111th Congress (Sept. 21, 2009), examines Member of Congress use of Twitter. After providing an overview and background of Twitter, the report...

Driven By Images: How, When and Why Legal Practice Has Moved From a Words-Only Dependency

Posted on October 01, 2009
Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel's Law on Display: The Digital Transformation of Legal Persuasion and Judgment (NYU Press, Oct. 1, 2009) offers a comprehensive survey and analysis of how new visual technologies are transforming both the practice and culture of...

New UK Supreme Court Opens for Business Today

Posted on October 01, 2009
The new United Kingdom Supreme Court opens for business today, October 1, 2009. The Court assumes the jurisdiction of the current Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and the devolution jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council...

Library of Congress Tests the Federal Cloud with DuraSpace Project

Posted on September 30, 2009
Federal News Radio's Francis Rose interviews LC's Bill LeFurgy about DuraSpace, a pilot project to store some LC records in the federal cloud. You can listen to the 14 minute interview here. Hat tip to ResourceShelf. For recent federal cloud...

Copyright as Information Policy: Balancing Creative Works and Technologies Used to Duplicate and Manipulate Them

Posted on September 30, 2009
When it comes to issues of online infringement, copyright policy protects the incentives copyright has long served to provide authors, and at the same time facilitates the emergence of innovative Internet services and equipment that might be used to duplicate...

Immersion Therapy for Professional Legal Education

Posted on September 30, 2009
If there's one professional education model that produces students with a firm grounding in professional education, it has to be found in the medical school-hospital residency system. Patients will die if freshly-minted MDs don't know what they are doing...

Google Scholar Bad for Scholars, OK for Everyone Else?

Posted on September 30, 2009
Peter Jackso has an interesting article in Library Journal, Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems. He cites an even more interesting essay by Geoffrey Nunbeg, Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars, published in the Chronicle of...

An Aha Moment for William Safire

Posted on September 30, 2009
William Safire died Sunday. He was 79. Those of us old enough to recall, those of us full of senior moments, will remember that he wrote many President Nixon's speeches on the economy and Vietnam who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning...

C.U.N.Y. Law School Gets a New Home

Posted on September 30, 2009
In the news today, the City University of New York announced that it has found a new home for this Queens, N.Y. based law school with a special mission: public interest. As a resident native of N.Y.C., I am particularly...

American Lawyer's The Global 100 Law Firms for 2009 Released

Posted on September 30, 2009
A snip from the lead story, The Great Game by Richard Lloyd, "our Global 100 rankings, compiled in conjunction with London's Legal Week, provide a glimpse of the impact of the financial meltdown on the world's largest firms ... The...

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