Legal Research

U.S. Government YouTube Channel

Posted on June 01, 2009
The official YouTube channel of the U.S. Government aggregates other channels from across the government and features select video content. The channel is broken down into playlists by topic such as Reference and General Government, Money and Taxes, Public Safety...

Google Book Store Competition for Kindle, and the EU Takes a Look at the Deal

Posted on June 01, 2009
There are a number of stories running in the press concerning the Google book deal with publishers. One theme concerns the potential competition Google poses to Amazon and the Kindle. As of now, Amazon sets a $9.99 price for most...

AALL's Slate of Candidates for Executive Board Announced

Posted on June 01, 2009
The 2009 AALL Nominations Committee has decided on the following slate of candidates. Vice President/President-Elect Darcy Kirk, Associate Dean for Library and Technology and Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law Library, Hartford, Connecticut Merle J...

MS Bing Goes "Live" Early, Available Now

Posted on June 01, 2009
The Bing search engine is now live to the world, two days early, though still with a preview tag below the logo. Many news reports still have the "will Bing matter in the long run" as a search tool theme....

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GM Bankruptcy Information Updated

Posted on June 01, 2009
Debtor in Principal Case: General Motors Corporation Case No.: 09-50026-reg Venue: Bankr. S.D.N.Y., http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/ Petition: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15995649/General-Motors-Bankruptcy-Petition Judge: Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Gerber Calendar: In future, but not yet, calendar will be available at http://www...

40 (Only 40?) Rules for Living and Managing the Google Way

Posted on May 31, 2009
Here's the over-the-top product description for What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis (Collins Business, 2009): In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer...

The Process of Selecting Judge Sotomayor

Posted on May 30, 2009
From background memos to telling special interest groups to support the choice or get out of the way, to the President reading candidates writings and calling every member of the Judiciary, "something few if any presidents have done," Sotomayor Pick....

What's Next for Kindle?

Posted on May 29, 2009
Atom Films reckons Kindle can only get bigger, skipping ahead six models to the ?Kindle 9XXXD.? Hat tip to Mashable. Also on Mashable, you can see how the latest version of Kindle is so advanced even illiterates can use it!...

Miller's Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements

Posted on May 29, 2009
Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements [SSRN] by EvidenceProf Blog editor Colin Miller (John Marshall Law School, Chicago) contains information about submitting essays and articles to general online law review supplements. It covers 19 general online law reviews and...

100 Tweets from the Confucius of the Legal Twittersphere

Posted on May 29, 2009
Matthew Homann, The [Non]Billable Hour, has published what I believe to be the first e-book compliation of tweets. It republishes his favorite tweets about law practice. A sample from 100 Tweets: Thinking About Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less:...

50 Best Blogs for Law Librarians

Posted on May 29, 2009
Online University Lowdown identifies 50 "best blogs" for law librarians in four categories: University Law Library Blogs, Law Librarian Blogs, Legal Research Blogs and Law Library Blogs. LLB is listed ("In addition to its legal info, this site offers info...

Judge Sotomayor, Legal Realist?

Posted on May 29, 2009
In 1996, Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivered a speech to law students about professional morality. She then turned it into a law review article, Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U.L. Rev. 35 (1996)(with Nicole...

Court Rules OK to Extract DNA from Arrestee Without Conviction

Posted on May 29, 2009
In a case of first impression, a federal magistrate judge in California has ruled that it is constitutional to take DNA samples from individuals at the time of arrest for a felony. The laws in question are the Bail Reform...

Passports Now Required for U.S. Border Crossings

Posted on May 29, 2009
The rules for traveling across borders is changing on Monday, June 1. U.S. Customs will now require citizens to have passports or other secure documentation to pass through borders to Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. More details are at www.getyouhome...

Survey Underway to Gauge Law Librarian Unemployment and Layoff Concerns

Posted on May 29, 2009
Christine Sellers, Law Librarians of Leisure, is conducting a survey to gather statistics on how many law librarians have been laid off or are worried about being so. Here's the link to Christine's survey. The survey only takes a couple...

Brown and Lambert Report on Their Crowdsourcing Experiment for Law Firm Work

Posted on May 28, 2009
Toby Brown and Greg Lambert decided to run an experiment to see how well crowdsourcing might work for a firm. "We wanted to show immediate value and cost savings and to demonstrate which types of tasks might be handled this...

Context Awareness Widget Supports Text Composition

Posted on May 28, 2009
James E. Powell, Linn Marks Collins and Mark L.B. Martinez (all Los Alamos National Laboratory) describe their Context Awareness Tool (CAT) which supports text composition by providing awareness of relevant content and references proactively and non-intrusively in The Fierce Urgency...

Thomson Reuters Replaces WestBlog with Legal Current Blog

Posted on May 28, 2009
From the announcement: "The new blog, Legal Current, will introduce you to key voices - ours and others - from across the global legal marketplace, and will showcase many of the bright minds behind the technology, innovation, content and trends...

Openings: Assistant Director & Public Services Librarian, Wayne State University Law Library

Posted on May 28, 2009
The Wayne State University Library System is seeking to fill two professional positions in the Law Library: Assistant Director (Position #036242) Responsibilities: The Assistant Director reports to the Director of the Law Library. Primary responsibilities include: administering daily operations for...

Kudos to Julie Jones

Posted on May 28, 2009
Julie M. Jones, Head of Information Services & Lecturer in Law, Cornell Law Library and LLB contributing editor, has been appointed Associate Director for Library Services at the University of Connecticut School of Law Library. Julie starts her new position...

Microsoft's New Search Engine Is Officially Announced, Previewed

Posted on May 28, 2009
The big news in the tech press is Microsoft unveiling Bing, it's upgrade to Live Search. It should be live to the general public around June 3rd. The name is short and designed to give people the opportunity to say...

Sotomayor: "Court of Appeals Is Where Policy Is Made" In Context (and More Important Resources Like SCOTUSblog's Summary of Sotomayor's Opinions)

Posted on May 27, 2009
The question asked during a panel discussion at Duke Law School in 2005: Where should a law school student clerk? District Court ("doing justice to the individual case" by examining the facts) or Court of Appeals ("always thinking about the...

Revising the AALL Competencies of Law Librarianship: An LLB Interview with Julie Pabarja, CPE Chair

Posted on May 27, 2009
The AALL Continuing Professional Education Committee (CPE) is in the process of revising the AALL Competencies of Law Librarianship. In April and May 2009 the CPE hosted a lively listserv discussion, available at http://share.aallnet.org/read/?forum=aall-cpe, for the purpose of soliciting input...

Transparency Lite at Launch of Data.gov

Posted on May 27, 2009
Last week, Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President, announced the launch of a new initiative to open government, WhiteHouse.gov/Open [video on Administration's Open Government Blog]. With the announcement comes the long anticipated Data.gov website...

Should the Criminal Justice System Give Special Treatment Based on Family Ties?

Posted on May 27, 2009
In Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (Oxford UP, Mar. 2009), Dan Markel (Florida State), Jennifer Collins (Wake Forest) and Ethan Leib (Hastings) argue that in many circumstances there are simply too many costs to...

Reminder: Registation Deadline for The Shared Electronic Resource Understanding Webinar is June 5

Posted on May 27, 2009
"The Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (SERU): Can It Work in My Library" webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm (Eastern Time). The presenters, Karla Hahn, Assistant Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries...

Opening: Reference Librarian, George Washington University Law School Law Library

Posted on May 27, 2009
The George Washington University Law School, Jacob Burns Law Library seeks a librarian to provide legal reference and research assistance to the law school community and other library patrons. Responsibilities include participating in daily reference desk duties, performing legal research...

Kudos to Slaw

Posted on May 27, 2009
Congratulations to Slaw on being awarded the Hugh Lanford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. [JH]

Sotomayor: The News Coverage Angle

Posted on May 27, 2009
Joe posted some wonderful links to resources for the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I'd like to augment them with a few of my own. Many of the news outlets have their own take on the nomination,...

Early Reviews of WolframAlpha for Legal Research

Posted on May 26, 2009
Call it a fact search engine or a knowledge search engine, WolframAlpha is creating quite a buzz and rightly so. [Blog | Community] The recently launched computational search engine creates data sets from search results on the fly. The results...

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