Legal Research

Petition to Decision: Online Archive of Supreme Court Justices' Papers on Sec. 1983 Cases

Posted on October 19, 2010
UMKC Law prof David Achtenberg has launched Petition to Decision, "a comprehensive digital archive of all the available papers of the Supreme Court justices relating to selected civil rights cases" under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Petition to Decision presents an...

Review of Web-based OCR Services

Posted on October 19, 2010
In The Best OCR Tools for Converting Images to Text, Digital Inspiration's Amit Agarwal reviews three free and three relatively low cost web-based OCR services for converting common images formats like scanned PDFs into text. The article provides brief descriptions,...

The Bluebook (be)comes Standard on WLN.

Posted on October 19, 2010
Almost six months ago, one of our Westlaw reps provided me with a quick demonstration on Westlawnext (WLN). I had lukewarm feelings about it at the time, but the more I use it, the more I seem to like it....

SSRN To Offer Hard Copy Services

Posted on October 19, 2010
The Social Science Research Network sent out an email announcement today that it will soon make available a "Purchase Bound Hard Copy" feature. This will not replace free PDF downloads as much as be another option to acquire the text....

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Carving Out a "Vicarious Charitable Exemption" by State Statute: How OCLC Acquired Tax-Exempt Status Under Ohio State Law

Posted on October 18, 2010
Following up on Vicki Szymczaki's Is OCLC Wexish? (Mar. 15, 2010) and our SkyRiver Tech and Innovative Interfaces Seeks Access to "OCLC's Unlawfully Acquired Database" in Unfair Competition Complaint (Aug. 10, 2010) posts, many may find Disruptive Library Technology Jester's...

It's Time to Start Writing: The 2011 AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

Posted on October 18, 2010
From the announcement (with a hat tip to Connie Lenz, Associate Director for Collection Development, Univ. of Minnesota Law Library): Have you been thinking of writing an article of interest to law librarians? Need a push to get started? Well,...

Former LexisNexis Executives Appointed to Top Positions at Bloomberg Law: Lou Andreozzi, Chairman, and Larry D. Thompson, COO

Posted on October 18, 2010
Bloomberg announced today that Lou Andreozzi has been appointed Chairman of Bloomberg Law. Most recently he was the president and CEO of IQNavigator, a software-as-a-service provider of solutions for legal data analysis and review. According to the Bloomberg press release,...

Yet Another New Law School

Posted on October 18, 2010
Belmont College broke ground last Thursday on a new law school in Nashville, Tennessee. This comes four days after the announcement that a law school was in the offing. The plan is to begin classes in the fall of 2011...

Despite Applying Facebook's Strictest Privacy Settings, Popular Facebook Apps Transmit Personal Information to Advertising and Data Collection Firms

Posted on October 18, 2010
"Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information?in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names?to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found, reports Emily Steel and Geofrey A...

Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs

Posted on October 17, 2010
Tax Relief Blog http://blog.myirstaxrelief.com http://blog.myirstaxrelief.com/index.xml Reviews tax law legislation, news and reports nationally. Published by Mike Habib, EA. Maritime Law Blog http://www.maritimelawblog.net http://www.maritimelawblog...

Is the Impact of Social Media Activism Exaggerated?

Posted on October 17, 2010
According to Malcolm Gladwell, the answer is "yes." He contrasts the civil rights movement with today's social media activism in his New Yorker article, Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted. It is a good article but I...

Profiting Off of Volunteer Free Labor

Posted on October 16, 2010
The effinglibrarian caught a little flack from Facebook fans for his facetious LISNews post by characterizing Facebook as the time-wasting destination for the unemployed. "You probably see people using Facebook at your library and wonder why they aren't out looking...

Friday Fun: Saving the World One Typo Correction at a Time

Posted on October 15, 2010
Being a well-known typo creator, I love this idea. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson are on a mission. See their The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time (Crown, Aug. 3, 2010) and book...

It's Time for "Plain Language:" Obama signs H.R. 946, the Plain Writing Act of 2010

Posted on October 15, 2010
H.R. 946, the Plain Writing Act of 2010, was sent to the President on Oct. 1, 2010 and signed into law on Oct. 13, 2010. No Public Law number on THOMAS as of yesterday evening because, well I don't know...

A Sweetest Day Moment: The Internet Addiction Test (Or why I have dinner plans for this Saturday)

Posted on October 15, 2010
The Internet Addiction Test is the first validated and reliable measure of addictive use of the Internet according to the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery which hosts the online test. The Center's director, Dr. Kimberly Young, certainly has the credentials...

Getting to Five: New Biography of Justice Brennan (NB the $2.05 price differential on Amazon for pBook-Kindle eBook editons)

Posted on October 14, 2010
Some, well really who wouldn't say, as Chuck Leddy does that "William Brennan was probably the most liberal US Supreme Court justice in the post-World War II era." See Leddy's Christian Science Monitor review of Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel's...

Protecting Speech Interests of the Fair User from the Imbalanced Legal Landscape that Favors Copyright Holders

Posted on October 14, 2010
By way of following up on Mark Giangrande's When Is eReserves Like Illegal File Sharing? about the on-going litigation in the Northern District of Georgia, Civil Action No. 1:OB-CV-1425-0DE, where three academic publishers (Cambridge, Oxford, and Sage) are suing Georgia...

Opening: Associate Law Librarian for Research and Electronic Services, Emory Univ. School of Law

Posted on October 14, 2010
The Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library at Emory University School of Law is seeking an experienced, energetic, and creative professional to join our team as Associate Law Librarian for Research and Electronic Services. This is a new position that will...

MetaLib: Introducing GPO's Federated Search Tool

Posted on October 14, 2010
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) released MetaLib (http://metalib.gpo.gov), a federated search tool for retrieving U.S. Government Publications (reports, articles, and citations) by simultaneously searching across approximately 53 Federal Government databases...

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Legal Skills Prof Blog

Posted on October 13, 2010
Teaching legal skills to produce law school graduates prepared for practicing law is a very important matter these days. Nova Southeastern Law prof Jim Levy and I have been talking about the need for a blog on this topic for...

Time to Rally the Troops for Passage of the Electronic Message Preservation Act, H.R. 1387

Posted on October 13, 2010
Before rushing to the airport, meaning adjourning a week earlier than scheduled and until after the November elections, Congress passed a continuing resolution which will keep the federal government open until COB Dec. 3. But the Senate did not take....

CRS Report on FOIA and Nondisclosure Provisions in Other Federal Laws

Posted on October 13, 2010
A snip from the summary of The Freedom of Information Act and Nondisclosure Provisions in Other Federal Laws (R41406, Sept. 13, 2010): Congress continues to consider how to balance the federal government?s growing need for sensitive or confidential business information,...

It's Settled, Here is the 40 Best Law Schools

Posted on October 12, 2010
On October 6th, Chicago Law prof Brian Leiter wrote "We haven't run a meaningless Internet poll in awhile, and since there's not much real news, here it goes: let's rank the top 40 law schools in the U.S." And now...

West of the future, beyond second thoughts, thunder claps images out loud.

Posted on October 12, 2010
OK, the post's title comes from the opening line of a poem I wrote a zillion years ago. The next line goes something like this (can't really remember) "Sound for listening to silence, rebound." Seems an appropriate lead-in to... "[T]here...

Amazon Announces Kindle Singles

Posted on October 12, 2010
Amazon announced "Kindle Singles" today, which will be short form works created outside traditional publishing. Works would be larger than a magazine article but smaller than a novel, or between 10,000 and 30,000 words. They would be published online and...

TRI CEO Tom Glocer of the Imminent Threat of Cyber Attack

Posted on October 11, 2010
As I've mentioned before I like Tom Glocer's personal blog and I am not repeating it now just because I'm in the midst of Westlaw negotiations that may go badly as in "good-bye Westlaw" badly. Meaning, I was promised a...

The Law Zombie, Great as a Faculty Member, Less So as a Law School Applicant: Advice from YLS Admissions Dean

Posted on October 11, 2010
It's good to know some law schools read the personal statements of applicants. Of course when its Yale Law School, the high GPA and LSAT scores of applicants makes reviewing applications a necessary screening process. On (203) Admissions Blog, Associate...

Opening: Director of the Law Library and Information Technology, Ave Maria School of Law, Naples Florida

Posted on October 11, 2010
The Director of the Law Library and Information Technology is responsible for overseeing all aspects of library and information systems operations, including budgetary creation and control, personnel management (3 professional librarians, 5 IT professionals, 3 library paraprofessionals and 1 part-time...

New ACTA Not As Bad As The Old ACTA

Posted on October 11, 2010
The U.S. Trade Representative's Office released an official "near final" text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement last week. The new text shows that some of the more extreme provisions that concerned piracy of intellectual property via the Internet were watered...

On Palm Readers, Fortune Tellers, Blackbirds, Crows and Odd Marriage Laws

Posted on October 10, 2010
In New Orleans it is illegal for palm readers and fortune tellers to officiate a wedding according to Alexandra Gekas' Woman's Day article, 10 Obscure Marriage Laws in the U.S. Perhaps, Kentucky should require couples to see a palm reader...

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