Legal Research

Bluebook 19, Still On Top But Faces Competitors

Posted on June 14, 2010
The co-publishers of A Uniform System of Citation, aka "The Bluebook", have announced the availability both in-print and online of the 19th edition of their long-standing guide to recommended legal citation.The Bluebook has traditionally been regarded as "the bible" of...

Twitter's Transformative Power On The Streets Of Chicago

Posted on June 09, 2010
A previous blog post reported that both Google and the Library of Congress were planning to provide access to several years of the Twitter archives. The tone of the post was rather facetious indicating a less than positive view of...

A Peek at the New Pacer Case Locator Interface, For Law Students

Posted on June 02, 2010
About a month ago, a previous blog posting announced that the PACER "Case Locator" Interface Debuts. Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from federal...

Listen To The "Supremes" (US Supreme Court) On Your I-Phone

Posted on May 26, 2010
Tired of streaming popular music on your I-Phone? Want something more edifying on your commute home? Well, Bucko, the Pocket Justice app may be just what you're looking for! Get free access to any of the top 100 Supreme Court...

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"Desire To Learn", Learning Management System, To Replace ?Blackboard? At DePaul

Posted on May 24, 2010
While only a few law school faculty members use "Blackboard", the Learning Management System that DePaul centrally supports for all classes ( most use the Westlaw product "TWEN" ). They should be aware that DePaul University will be replacing Blackboard...

Laws of Illinois Digitization Project Now Online

Posted on May 24, 2010
"Through an award from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) , the Western Illinois University Libraries and Illinois State Library have digitized many volumes of the Laws of Illinois; some of the volumes were digitized through...

LLMC & CRL To Digitize Scholarly Law Research Materials

Posted on May 20, 2010
A previous posting told about a joint LLMC (Law Library Microform Consortium) and LC (library of Congress) project to digitize rare Native American titles. More recently, LLMC has announced its partnership with another important library organization, CRL ( Center For...

Law Library of Congress Website About Nominee Elena Kagan

Posted on May 17, 2010
On April 9, 2010 Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire after nearly 35 years on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court. President Obama announced the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace Stevens on May...

Would-be Solo Practioners Get Local Help

Posted on May 13, 2010
The may 11 issue of the Chicago Lawyer has a multi-part article,By Sherry Karabin, "Positioning yourself for the next step" with observations and recommendations for the job search in the tough economic environment of today. One of the options it...

Beyond The "Floppy" - Storage Media & "The Cloud"

Posted on May 10, 2010
By now most folks are aware of Sony's April 23rd announcement that they will be discontinuing sales in Japan on March of 2011, of the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk introduced in 1981. Earlier Sony had ceased its outsourced production...

State Deficit Watch - Illinois Can't Mail Out "Legislative Synopsis And Digest" Volumes !

Posted on May 06, 2010
The DePaul Rinn Law Library has received a post card from the State Legislative Reference Bureau advising us that the subscription that we have with the State for the print publication known as the "LEGISLATIVE SYNOPSIS AND DIGEST", cannot be...

Check Out Barnes & Noble's "Nook" Read-In-Store Feature

Posted on May 05, 2010
Since the release of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader in 2007 and it's market success, many new vendors have jumped into the e-reader marketplace. For a sample of some current offering see, The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet. One of...

Poetry & Legal Writing - Judge Wolfson Finds Common Ground

Posted on May 03, 2010
A recent article in the Chicago Lawyer, "Poet: A way with words ", describes how defense attorney and long time Illinois Appellate Court judge and interim DePaul Law School Dean, Warren Wolfson, has been writing poetry since his college days....

PACER "Case Locator" Interface Debuts

Posted on April 30, 2010
The PACER user interface has a long history. An article in the Third Branch in Sept 2000 describes it's beginning, "In 1997, the Judiciary added the U.S. Party/Case Index, a national index for U.S. district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts, with...

Recent Additions & Enhancements to HeinOnline Collections

Posted on April 30, 2010
The HeinOnline folks are continually making additional digital products available to their subscribers. Recently they added a collection of bar association journals.The main law journal library had only provided the journals of the American Bar Association...

Appointment of Law Alumnus to Bishop, Raises Issues

Posted on April 22, 2010
DePaul University has announced the elevation of Most Rev.Thomas J. Paprocki, a 1981 DePaul College of Law graduate, to the position of Bishop for the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois. The announcement highlights Father Paprocki's excellent work in co-founding the Chicago...

DePaul Remembers Law Alumnus And Civil Rights Hero Benjamin Hooks

Posted on April 20, 2010
Benjamin L. Hooks, 85, a lawyer, DePaul Law School alumnus, Baptist minister and longtime head of the NAACP, died April 15 at his home in Memphis. The young Benjamin Hooks returned from service in the US army during WWII to...

Economic Downturn Can Be Win-Win For Some New Lawyers & Non-profits

Posted on April 14, 2010
With every week providing more stories of sizable layoffs and new-hire furloughs at big law firms, there is a "silver lining" to this dark economic cloud. A story from the April 4 Chicago Tribune, Business section, "Careers on hold, lawyers...

Twitter To Become A Historical Resource - Really !

Posted on April 14, 2010
Many internet users still wonder what value an instantaneous 140 character tweet about anything, can have. Well it appears that the venerable Library of Congress (LC) and the digital juggernaut Google both believe that collectively Twitter postings can become important...

Law School Clinics Under Attack

Posted on April 08, 2010
Two recent blog postings report on the backlash by economic and political interests against the work of student staffed legal clinics at publicly supported law schools. Maryland Legislature Backs Down on Threat to Clinical Funding Law school clinics under attack;...

"Avatar" - Seeing People Through The Trees

Posted on April 07, 2010
I might have been one of the last persons to see the movie Avatar. There were only eight other people in the theater. We didn't even see the 3-D version that had so wowed earlier audiences. When I discussed the...

Rare Native American Titles To Be Scanned By LC & LLMC

Posted on April 06, 2010
The Library of Congress (LC) and the Law library Microform Consortium (LLMC) have launched a joint project to scan the library's "Heritage Collection" of Native American titles. The titles include a rich collection of historical, anthropological,legal and literary documents...

A Closer Look At WestlawNext

Posted on March 31, 2010
WestlawNext was recently introduced to a Chicago audience at a gala breakfast presentation here in Chicago. A key point the speaker made was that a detailed examination and analysis of user behaviors, in addition to user interviews, had been employed...

New GPO Pilot Project For Free Federal Court Opinions

Posted on March 26, 2010
There is good news for users of the Government Printing Office's (GPO) no-fee collection of government information, regarding access to certain federal court opinions. According to a March news release,The Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC), has approved...

St. Patrick's Day - The Shamrock v. Green Beer

Posted on March 16, 2010
A recent somewhat tongue-in-cheek posting by a professor of theology and religion expresses wariness regarding the continued acceptance of widespread celebration of St. Patrick's Day in the U.S. In the posting, "Celebrate St. Patrick while it's still legal", Phyllis Zagano...

DePaul Law Professor Bandes Speaks On "Exclusionary Rule Under The Roberts Court"

Posted on March 16, 2010
Congratulations to Professor Susan Bandes, who gave an excellent talk on Friday, March 12, 2010 at the University of West Virginia Law School on the exclusionary rule in the Roberts Court. You can find a link to a video of...

City Council Meeting Videos Now To Be Archived

Posted on March 15, 2010
For two years, Chicago City Council meetings have been streamed live on the web site of the City Clerk, Miguel Del Valle. Most Chicago residents probably are unaware of this service to watch the Council in action for either educational...

New DePaul Law Journal Sponsors Symposium

Posted on March 11, 2010

New Book,"The Assassination of Fred Hampton", Makes DePaul Law Connection

Posted on March 08, 2010
A new book has been authored by Jeffrey Haas, one of the several lawyers and activists who worked for 13 years to get some justice and accountability for the murders of Black Panther Party members, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark...

Bloomberg Trying TO Break Into Legal Research Big League

Posted on March 05, 2010
Recently the big news in online legal research was Westlaw's release of their new interface, WestlawNext and LexisNexis's announcement that their next-generation interface is also coming soon. (See: New Platforms for Westlaw & Lexis Nexis - The Google-ization of Legal...

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