Legal Research

Elon University/Pew Internet Project's Imagining the Internet Website

Posted on April 02, 2010
The Elon University/Pew Internet Project site Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast is a content-rich website that documents future possibilities for the Internet while simultaneously providing a peek back at the past. The site includes Special explanatory sections on...

Former Google CIO Douglas Merrill on Getting Organized in the Google Era

Posted on April 02, 2010
Snips from the blurb for Douglas Merrill's Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right (Broadway Business, March 16, 2010): Whether it's a...

Amazon Bullies Back but the Target is Wrong

Posted on April 02, 2010
Earlier this week, Scotland on Sunday reported a story about how Scottish bookshops are being strong armed by Amazon not to undercut prices set on the Amazon Marketplace for their books. The Amazon Marketplace allows sellers to offer their goods...

WestlawNext's Temporary Access Agreement: Johnny Westlaw Gets the Word from Academic Law Library Directors (Or How to Contract Syphilis from TR Legal)

Posted on April 01, 2010
Did you know that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln maintains an online collection of government comics? Me neither so a big hat tip to Free Government Information. My favorite, so far, is Johnny Gets the Word. It's supposed to be about...

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Jones McClure Publishing Launches Experiment in Crowdsourcing a Print Title

Posted on April 01, 2010
Jones McClure Publishing has reached near final draft stage of "O?Connor?s California Civil Pretrial Handbook." Jason Wilson is opening the print title to crowdsourcing as an experiment in print publishing. If you are a California practitioner or law librarian and...

Reminder: Tomorrow's Collection Development in Law Libraries in the Face of Shrinking Budgets

Posted on April 01, 2010
Friday's episode of Law Librarian Conversations, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CDT, will focus on collection development in academic law libraries. Co-hosts Richard Leiter and Marcia Dority Baker will be joined by Michael Chiorazzi (U of Arizona), Greg Lambert (King...

Opening: Reference Librarian, OSU Moritz Law Library

Posted on April 01, 2010
The Moritz Law Library at The Ohio State University is currently seeking a Reference Librarian. For a position description and application information, please go to The Ohio State University Career Site at https://www.jobsatosu.com/, choose the "Search Postings" link on the...

140 Characters Simply Isn't Enough for Some People: The 1st International Longest Tweet Contest

Posted on April 01, 2010
The 1st International Longest Tweet Contest is open for submissions until April 12. The goal is fit the most bits of information into a tweet. So far the record is 4.2 kilobits encoded per tweet, based on exploiting the fact...

The iPad and HTML 5

Posted on April 01, 2010
With the iPad launching this Saturday, a few thoughts are in order for what it all means. Some analysts predict that Apple could sell between 2.5 million to 10 million iPads in 2010. Steve Jobs and the stockholders will be...

Will the Student-to-Faculty Ratio in Law Schools Be 7.6:1 in 2038?

Posted on March 31, 2010
Why is tuition up? Look at all the profs in the March issue of National Jurist reports that the average law school faculty size has increased by 40 percent between 1998 and 2008. The average full professor's salary has increased...

Updated Research Guides from GlobaLex

Posted on March 31, 2010
UPDATE: A Guide to Fee-Based U. S. Legal Research Databases by Mary Rumsey UPDATE: Basic Guide to Researching Foreign Law by Mary RumseyUPDATE: Researching Icelandic Law by Rán Tryggvadóttir and Thordis Ingadóttir; Update by Erna Mathiesen UPDATE: Performing Legal Research:...

Openings: Associate Director for Public Services and Reference/Student Services Librarian, Georgia State Univ. Law Library

Posted on March 31, 2010
First, the Reference/Student Services Librarian, a position newly reorganized to serve the evolving needs of the modern law student. Details on the job duties and required qualifications can be found at http://careers.aallnet.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=3331096 Second, the Associate Director for Public Services, a...

Tax Foundation's Analysis of $938 Billion Health Care Reform Legislation

Posted on March 31, 2010
The $938 billion health care reform legislation signed by President Obama on March 23 is financed primarily through net cuts to Medicare and an increased Medicare tax on high-income taxpayers, according to the Tax Foundation. "The Medicare spending cuts would...

Legal Spend Just Another Corporate Cost: The Evolution of the Practice of Law from Profession to Business

Posted on March 30, 2010
Ari Kaplan, who was the keynote speaker last week at the ABA Techshow, recently reported on the results of his survey about client expectations and shifting business models in the legal profession. The Evolution of the Legal Profession is based...

Benefits of Crowdsourcing Projects for Libraries

Posted on March 30, 2010
Crowdsourcing can harness digital volunteers to transcribe, create, enhance and correct text, images and archives writes the National Library of Australia's Rose Holley in Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It? D-Lib Magazine, March/April 2010...

My First Hands On With WestlawNext

Posted on March 30, 2010
We had our WestlawNext roadshow part two yesterday. This would be the academic version. It varied only slightly from the presentation we saw on March 10th here in Chicago in that the promotional videos were not part of the program....

To Scroll or Not to Scroll

Posted on March 29, 2010
This weekend Wired Blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a study from Arizona State University that compared student retention of what they read online vs. what they read in print. The report, titled "To Scroll or not...

National Jurist's Annual Waste of Time: Academic Law Library Ranking

Posted on March 29, 2010
Once again National Jurist has published its asinine annual ranking of law school libraries. 50 percent of the score is based on the number of volumes and unique titles. The ratio of library study seating to enrollment counts for 20...

Chronology of Federal Government Efforts to Restrict and Privatize Government Information, 1981 - 1998

Posted on March 29, 2010
From 1981 until 1998, Anne Heanue and the Washington Office of the American Library Association published a series called Less Access to Less Information by and about the U.S. Government. It's a chronology that documents the efforts to restrict and...

Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs

Posted on March 28, 2010
Charlotte Divorce Lawyer Blog http://www.charlotte-divorce-lawyer-blog.com http://www.charlotte-divorce-lawyer-blog.com/index.xml Discusses divorce law news, cases and reports in North Carolina. Published by the Law Offices of David P. Sheehan. Stock Attorneys Blog http://www...

Copyright Provisions in Law Journal Publication Agreements

Posted on March 27, 2010
Copyright Provisions in Law Journal Publication Agreements [SSRN] found that a minority of journals ask authors to transfer copyright while most journals permit authors to self-archive articles. The author, Benjamin J. Keele (Indiana University Bloomington, School of Library and Information...

Friday Fun: What Do You Mean I Have to Teach on Fridays!

Posted on March 26, 2010
Hat tip to Univ. of Florida law prof Jeffrey Harrison's MoneyLaw blog post (Remember the blog's subtitle is "The art of winning an unfair academic game.") [JH]

Substance, Not Intelligence Insulting Marketing Pablum and Evasive Sales Tactics: Lambert's Open Letter to Lexis on Learning from the WestlawNext Fiasco Ahead of the Launch of "New Lexis"

Posted on March 26, 2010
Well, damn it all to hell! Don't you just "hate" it when some energetic young whipper snapper beats you to the punch. I had a first draft of a post on what Lexis ought not do when it launches "New...

Chamber of Commerce Releases 2010 Lawsuit Climate Survey

Posted on March 26, 2010
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce?s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) released 2010 Lawsuit Climate Survey which ranks the states with the best and worst legal climates for business. According to the survey, the states with the worst legal climates are...

New Report Stresses Value of Libraries in Digital Age

Posted on March 26, 2010
The U.S. Impact Public Library Study is among the first to substantially measure how individuals use Internet access at libraries. The report associated with that study, Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S...

Shock and Awe-Inspiring: All Your WestlawNext Pricing Questions Answered in a Simple Two-Page Handout

Posted on March 25, 2010
"You got to love a clearly written two-page document," writes Greg Lambert about "WestlawNext: Overview of Chargeable Events and Chargeable Time." The TR Legal guide identifies "twenty-four scenarios along with three footnotes listing caveats to some of the scenarios," according...

2010 Legal Research Teach-In Kit Now Available

Posted on March 25, 2010
The Research Instruction and Patron Services SIS has released of the 18th Annual National Legal Research Teach-In Kit, compiled and edited this year by Laura J. Ax-Fultz and David E. Lehmann. The 2010 kit includes legislative history materials, a primary...

Is WestlawNext's Search Algorithm Worth Paying a 68% Premium to Use It? (Or Does AALL Have Any Clue What Is Going On?)

Posted on March 24, 2010
And that premium apparently reflects a 45% 3-year licensing agreement discount. See Lisa Solomon's The Immodest Premium for WestlawNext post. See also one library's experience which has lead to boycotting WestlawNext here. Of course, TR Legal approaches pricing on an...

Side by Side Comparison of Health Care Bills (Plus FDsys Links)

Posted on March 24, 2010
ProPublica has created a side-by-side comparison of the full texts of H.R. 3590, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, 2009 and the House?s reconciliation which was passed by the House on March...

Google Leaves China, Sort Of

Posted on March 24, 2010
Google's China operations have moved their servers to Hong Kong. Though part of China, Hong Kong operates under a different legal system that was in place when Britain controlled the city as a colony. This comes in light of Google's...

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