Legal Research

Westlaw Next in Law Schools

Posted on February 10, 2010
My colleague, Joe Hodnicki, at the Law Librarian Blog has information about the introduction of Westlaw Next for law schools. According to Anne Ellis, law students may have access as early as the Fall 2010 semester.

Big Changes to Westlaw (and Lexis eventually)

Posted on January 27, 2010
Westlaw is unveiling its new platform, Westlaw Next, to law firm customers this Monday, February 1st, and it is rumored that Lexis won't be far behind with a new platform. I haven't seen the "new Westlaw" yet, but I will...

Phone Interviewing Tips

Posted on January 21, 2010
When you're hunting for a job and you've applied for positions in diverse locations, you'll usually end up doing some phone interviews. I participated in my first phone interview when I began applying for law librarian jobs in 2005, and...

Time's 50 Best Websites 2009

Posted on January 05, 2010
Reading Time's list of 50 best websites is a good way to assess where you stand in the Web 2.0 world. If half or more of this list is completely unfamiliar to you, it's time to get clicking!

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Kids & Keyword Searching

Posted on January 05, 2010
I'm just starting to catch up on all of the articles that piled up in my Google Reader account over the holidays, so I just read this Christmas day piece from the New York Times on kids and keyword searching....

More on Google Scholar Legal

Posted on December 08, 2009
Ready for one more post on legal material on Google Scholar? Sure you are! The availability of legal opinions on Google Scholar is this holiday season's "shiny new toy" that people can't stop talking about. Over at 3 Geeks and...

Law Review Articles on Google Scholar and HeinOnline ? A Comparison

Posted on November 24, 2009
No sooner had we posted our comparison of Google and Lexis/Westlaw case law searching than we find, on the HeinOnline Blog, a post comparing law review searching on HeinOnline and Google Scholar. The conclusion: if you have HeinOnline (and at...

Google Case Law Searching: Pros & Cons

Posted on November 24, 2009
In this post, the Zief reference librarians, Amy Wright, Lee Ryan, and John Shafer, summarize Google Scholar's case law search functions, pointing out its strengths and weaknesses for legal research. Pros Google Scholar conveniently brings together free internet case law...

SF Chronicle Praises Leo's Work

Posted on November 20, 2009
A San Francisco Chronicle article praised Professor Richard Leo's "easy to read" book, Police Interrogation and American Justice, noting that "Leo writes as clearly as he talks on a witness stand as an expert." Congratulations, Professor Leo!

Google Scholar Has Case Law

Posted on November 18, 2009
There are already tons of tweets and posts about Google Scholar's new case law content, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Yes, Google Scholar has case law now! Here's a roundup of posts about this exciting new development:...

The Paperless Law Review? An Experiment at USF

Posted on November 11, 2009
One of ZiefBrief's favorite parts of the job is working with USF four excellent student-edited journals. This year we're excited to watch the University of San Francisco Law Review move toward an entirely paperless editing cycle. Led by Editor-in-Chief Robin...

LexisNexis Releases iPhone App

Posted on November 10, 2009
WisBlawg just posted on the new LexisNexis iPhone app - see Bonnie Shucha's post for reviews and more info!

Blogs and Social Bookmarking

Posted on November 10, 2009
I gave a presentation to the Northern California Association of Law Libraries on getting started with blogs and social bookmarking. Here's my presentation.

Selling Term Papers Illegal in CA

Posted on November 06, 2009
Above the Law posted today about a recent article in CommonWealth magazine that discusses online term paper trafficking services. The article alleges that a Massachusetts attorney, employed as a staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court, responded to the journalist's...

New Search Option on HeinOnline

Posted on November 05, 2009
This week, HeinOnline announced a beta "faceted search" option for its Law Journal Library. "Faceted search" is just a fancy way of saying that, if you choose this search option, HeinOnline will cluster your law review search results into different...

New/Updated CALI Lessons RSS Feed

Posted on November 04, 2009
If you assign CALI lessons to students or first-year associates, you'll be happy to know that you can now sign up for RSS feeds that will alert you whenever CALI adds a new lesson or updates an existing lesson. Thank...

Senator Franken Takes the DOJ to Task About the USA PATRIOT Act.

Posted on September 28, 2009
On September 23rd the full United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary met to discuss "Reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act: Ensuring Liberty and Security" Their guests that day included David S. Kris (Assistant Attorney General in the National Security Division...

Berkeley Law Conference on Social Networking & Ethics

Posted on September 21, 2009
Well, isn't this timely! Just after we blogged the NYT article about attorneys who found themselves in trouble with their state bars due to social networking blunders, we discovered that Berkeley Law will be holding a conference on social networking....

Ethical Hot Water for Social Media-Using Attorneys

Posted on September 12, 2009
The New York Times has a great article today about lawyers who have been subjected to ethics investigations due to material that they posted on blogs and Facebook. After attorney Sean Conway called a Florida judge an "Evil, Unfair Witch"...

Everyone Wants to Help You Get Through Law School

Posted on August 25, 2009
Oh, maybe not everyone.... But lots of blogging law professors do, and Paul Caron of the TaxProf Blog has helpfully collected their posts in his post, Advice for the Incoming Law School Class of 2009. Your own professors would like...

Santa Clara OneL Blog

Posted on August 21, 2009
My colleague, David Brian Holt, is both a law librarian and a law student at Santa Clara, and he just posted about a new OneL blog by SCU law students, From Here to Attorney (ouch! - it hurts a little...

Book Reviews on Concurring Opinions

Posted on August 19, 2009
Concurring Opinions just announced that it will serve as a forum for book reviews - law professors, attorneys, law students, and academics from non-law fields are all welcome to submit "serious yet short" reviews on law-related books to the blog's...

Free Legal Research: We're Not There Yet

Posted on August 19, 2009
Greg Lambert of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has a thoughtful post on the future of legal research and the role of "free versus fee" sources: The good and bad thing about legal research today is the fact that...

Richard Leo Featured in New Yorker

Posted on August 17, 2009
The New Yorker's August 24 issue features a Jeffrey Toobin piece on Richard Leo's efforts on behalf of the wrongfully-convicted Norfolk Four. In 1997, Michelle Bosko was raped and murdered in Norfolk, Virginia. Despite the fact that "abundant" forensic evidence...

Nailing the First Year of Law School - Help is Out There

Posted on August 17, 2009
At this time of year, as the new law students arrive, we at ZiefBrief can feel the anxiety in the air, as 1Ls wonder if they'll be able to cope with law school. (Confidential to new USF law students: you...

Google's Caffeine

Posted on August 12, 2009
Google announced this week that it is testing a new search engine, code named "Caffeine." According to media reports, the new search engine is supposed to include changes to indexing, ranking, and crawling, although Google is being a bit coy...

Prof. de la Vega Briefs the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Posted on August 06, 2009
Professor Connie de la Vega, who recently filed a Supreme Court amicus brief on the issue of life without parole for juvenile offenders, continues her advocacy on behalf of prisoners. Her latest brief, filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human...

Professors de la Vega and Leighton File Amicus Brief

Posted on July 28, 2009
Professors Connie de la Vega and Michelle Leighton recently filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. (Download a PDF version of the brief here:Download Amicusbrief) The brief, filed...

Good Luck on the Bar Exam!

Posted on July 27, 2009
Best of luck on the bar exam to all of our recent grads - you're going to do just fine!

Students Have Mixed Reaction to E-Book Readers

Posted on July 16, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reported today on several higher education initiatives designed to test student reaction to e-textbooks. At Northwest Missouri State University, 200 students received the Sony Reader loaded with course texts. Although some students stuck with the Reader,...

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