Legal Research

Yelpers Weigh In On SF Jury Duty

Posted on September 27, 2008
Even the tiniest mom and pop businesses gather Yelp reviews, but I was surprised to see that the experience of jury duty in San Francisco now has 21 Yelp reviews.* What's not so surprising -- the collective two and a...

Summary of 2007-2008 U.S. Supreme Court Term

Posted on September 09, 2008
Looking for a concise summary of the Supreme Court's major decisions during the 2007-2008 term? You can find it in American Law Reports on Westlaw at 30 A.L.R. Fed. 2d 637 (Westlaw password required for access). In addition to summarizing...

First Year Tips: Better Late Than Never!

Posted on September 08, 2008
Professor David Post from Temple Law has a few more useful tips for first-years in his post at Volokh Conspiracy, and his most important tip, IMHO, is don't blow off your first-year legal writing and research class! More from Professor...

The No Billables Experiment: One Year Later

Posted on September 08, 2008
Last fall, we posted about an Atlanta law firm, Ford & Harrison, which dropped billable hour requirements for first-year associates. So how is the experiment working one year later? According to this National Law Journal article, the experiment is a....

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Coping with Information Overload

Posted on September 02, 2008
At the start of every semester, I definitely suffer from a bit of information overload, helpfully defined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (!) as the "provision of information in excess of the cognitive and emotional ability of an individual...

First-Year Tips: The Ever-Popular "How to Read a Legal Opinion"

Posted on August 20, 2008
Orientation has brought a flock of new law students to the Zief Library, and reminded us that one of the hardest things about the beginning of law school was trying to make sense of the cases assigned for the first...

First-Year Tips: CALI Exercises

Posted on August 19, 2008
Even though I was a pretty dedicated law student, there were certain concepts that I had a hard time grasping during my first year of law school. In Property, the rule against perpetuities gave me fits. In Contracts, it was...

Googling Your Way to Trial Victory

Posted on August 13, 2008
Want to find out how members of your jury really think? Google them and read their blogs and social networking pages. The National Law Journal reports that increasing numbers of litigators are turning to the Internet in order to get...

Attorney's Bar License In Jeopardy After Street Racing Death

Posted on August 13, 2008
We all know that having a license to practice law doesn't necessarily stop attorneys from engaging in negligent or criminal behavior. However, until today, I never heard of an attorney who jeopardized his or her bar license by engaging in...

Aftershocks From the LA Quake Hit State Bar

Posted on August 07, 2008
Somehow, we knew that this story wasn't going away anytime soon. The National Law Journal has an article today, "Complaints Surface Over Bar Exam Disrupted by Earthquake," which details concerns that some test-takers had about the proctors' reaction to the...

Bar Examinees All Shook Up

Posted on August 01, 2008
Kevin Underhill's very funny blog, Lowering the Bar, has this wry report on the impact that last Tuesday's 5.4 earthquake had on bar examinees in the Los Angeles area. According to Kevin, some of the test-takers were more rattled than...

Read Law Professor Barack Obama?s Final Exam's

Posted on July 30, 2008
There has been a lot of commentary about an article in the New York Times that discussed Barack Obama?s 12 years as a law professor at University of Chicago (click here to see article). Turns out he was generally considered...

Monica Goodling -- Poor Lexis Researcher?

Posted on July 29, 2008
The release of "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General" (click here for the 524 KB .pdf file from the DOJ site) has been all over the...

Monday Buzz: Cuil Takes On Google

Posted on July 28, 2008
Well! I was all set to blog today about the new search engine that everybody is talking about, Cuil (pronounced "cool"), but Shawn, my colleague at Gleeson, has beat me to it! Check out Shawn's informative post about Cuil on...

Google Tackles Wikipedia

Posted on July 24, 2008
Google's latest is a new site, Knol, which is basically a rival of Wikipedia. According to Google, a "knol" is a unit of knowledge written about a subject. If you write a knol, you get to take author credit for...

Louisiana Seeks Reconsideration of SCOTUS Ruling

Posted on July 21, 2008
The SCOTUS Blog is reporting that Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, basing its request on the Court's omission of any discussion of the federal statute that permits the death penalty for...

Tips for First-Year Law Students

Posted on July 21, 2008
Over at Ms. JD, Carlie Boos has a great post about surviving the first-year of law school. I love her emphasis on the importance of networking and learning to explore the social aspects of law school -- topics that usually...

Neat Research Tools -- Capitol Words and LOUIS

Posted on July 09, 2008
Just so we are clear on this, ZiefBrief is the alter ego for a crew of dedicated law librarians here at the Dorraine Zief Law Library. After surfing the web for a while, some of the members of the team...

Exciting New Features on HeinOnline

Posted on July 03, 2008
Starting this week, HeinOnline allows you to create and organize bookmarks and save search queries. All you need to do is use the MyHein tab when you sign into HeinOnline, create your own user account, and you're ready to start...

Oops...We Missed a Law!

Posted on July 03, 2008
Most of the legal community has heard about the US Supreme Court's recent decision, Kennedy v. Louisiana, a 5-4 decision concluding that the United States Constitution prohibits imposing the death penalty for child rape. According to the NY Times, one...

Take me out to a lawsuit, take me out to a tort...

Posted on June 26, 2008
Ziefbrief usually resists the urge to report on every news report concerning what appears at first glance to be a case of litigation gone wild. But there comes now a report from the American Heartland that we feel inclined to...

Legal Blogs: Inspiration for Finding Law Review Topics

Posted on June 25, 2008
The annual hunt for law review topics is another seasonal activity revealed by ZiefBrief's current usage statistics. Immersing yourself for a time in the legal news is a great way to get at least a kernel of a topic. The...

Summer Reading - Preparing for Law School (2008)

Posted on June 24, 2008
Based on ZiefBrief's statistics, many newly-admitted law students spend these summer months mining Google for tips that will help them survive the beginning of law school. We believe that the best way to spend this summer is relaxing and doing...

Z-Flyer Available For Your Enjoyment

Posted on June 20, 2008
The Dorraine Zief Law Library occasional newsletter, the Z-Flyer, is now available as a .pdf file for your edificationh (click here to download this 544kb file). This edition includes: * A Report from the International Association of Law Libraries 26th...

Is Google Changing Our Brain Wiring?

Posted on June 11, 2008
There's an interesting article in the Atlantic this month, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Author Nicholas Carr worries that Internet use is changing the way that we read and absorb information: Over the past few years I?ve had an uncomfortable...

Indispensable Practice Guide

Posted on June 05, 2008
The Zief librarians are always on the lookout for the next indispensable, "must have" practice guide, and we think all of our readers will agree that Cheerleading and the Law: Risk Management Strategies is a necessity for all lawyers confronting...

Oral Argument Audio Files

Posted on June 03, 2008
Howard Bashman just posted an announcement on How Appealing to let his readers know that the Fifth Circuit is now making audio files of oral arguments available on its website. Here is a short roundup of some other jurisdictions that...

Gossipy Law Blogs and Biglaw

Posted on June 02, 2008
The National Law Journal has an article today, "Gossip Blogs Bedevil Law Firms," which discusses how quickly law firms' dirty laundry -- things like layoffs, firings, associate lawsuits, and "Summer Associates Gone Wild" incidents -- gets aired for public consumption...

Cal. Supreme Court Shares Background on Same-Sex Marriage Cases

Posted on May 23, 2008
As noted in recent ZiefBrief posts (link to post 1, link to post 2) the California Supreme Court recently released a ground-breaking expansion of all Californians' right to marry. In a welcome move, the Court has posted a handy web...

The Debut of Google Health

Posted on May 20, 2008
Following a two-month trial at the Cleveland Clinic and over a year of development, Google Health is now available to anyone with a Google Account. Google Health allows you to aggregate and store all of your medical records online, including...

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