Legal Research

Legalworkshop.org Plain English Overwrite for Law Reviews

This teaser from the National Law Journal Web version caught my eye:

Are you interested in legal issues but shudder at the thought of wading through massive law review articles riddled with footnotes? A new Web site just might be the answer. Legalworkshop.org aims to bring content from some of the most prestigious law reviews in the nation to a wider audience by offering condensed version of articles translated from scholarly language into plain English, and at no cost.

This is a very interesting idea. First a new and free aggregated source for accessing peer reviewed legal research. Second a digesting of information into a publicly accessible readable format.

From the about page on the site:

The Legal Workshop features "op-ed" versions of the articles published by the member journals. These concise and lively pieces are written for a generalist audience, combining the best elements of print and online publication.

Each Legal Workshop Editorial undergoes the same rigorous editorial treatment and quality screening as the journals' print content, but readers are able to offer comments and esteemed academics have the option of submitting response pieces, which are checked for citations and substance.

By aggregating the work of multiple law reviews, The Legal Workshop is able to provide frequently updated content. New article-based content is posted every Monday and most Wednesdays and Fridays. The Legal Workshop provides a one-stop forum for readers wishing to stay abreast of contemporary legal scholarship.

Which Law Reviews are participating?

• Cornell Law Review
• Duke Law Journal
• Georgetown Law Journal
• New York University Law Review
• Northwestern University Law Review
• Stanford Law Review
• University of Chicago Law Review

The part I appreciate most about this growing collection of material is the consideration of the “full meal deal.” There are links to the full versions of the workshoped articles, they have considered web 2.0 and offered RSS feeds, links to DIGG or sharing on LinkedIn and Facebook, and added the ability to comment on the articles. There is also good functionality for drop-down topical browsing and searching.

Nicely done folks!

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).